Australia’s most acclaimed Indigenous actor, David Gulpilil, has died of lung cancer, a government leader said. He was 68 years old.
Gulpilil found his widest audiences with his roles in the 1986 hit film Crocodile Dundee and in director Baz Luhrmann’s 2008 epic Australia, in a career that spanned five decades. He was often described as a bridge between Indigenous Australia and the outside world who never fit comfortably in either place.
“It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen,” South Australia state premier Steven Marshall said.
An accomplished didgeridoo player, Gulpilil mixed with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley. He was feted in New York and Paris. He also spent periods of his life as an itinerant, drinking and sleeping in parks in the northern city of Darwin, and stints in prison for alcohol-fuelled offences.
Gulpilil said he never saw a European Australian until he was eight years old and considered English his sixth language, his biographer Derek Rielly wrote. Gulpilil’s Christian name was foisted upon him at school.
Gulpilil was a 16-year-old ceremonial dancer performing in the Indigenous mission of Maningrida in 1969 when he met the British director Nicolas Roeg, who was scouting for filming locations. Gulpilil starred in Roeg’s acclaimed 1971 film Walkabout as a lone youth who comes across and rescues two lost British children. The British siblings were played by a teenage Jenny Agutter and the director’s seven-year-old son, Lucien.
Roles followed in Storm Boy in 1976 and The Last Wave in 1977.
His final role was the remake of Storm Boy in 2019, in which he played the father of the central character in the original, Fingerbone Bill.
