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Angela Punch McGregor

Angela Punch McGregor has built a career that moves easily between Australian film, television and theatre. Born in Sydney on 21 January 1953, she discovered theatre through school plays at 13, beginning with the role of the Spoon in The Owl and the Pussy-Cat. She later studied acting at Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1973. Her screen career gathered momentum in the 1970s. After appearing regularly as Jane Potter in the television series Class of ’75, she delivered AFI Award-winning work in two significant Australian films of 1978: The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Newsfront. Further AFI nominations followed for We of the Never Never and Annie’s Coming Out. Her other film credits include The Delinquents, Spotswood, Tom White and Savages Crossing, placing her alongside performers including Kylie Minogue, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Mendelsohn, Russell Crowe, Colin Friels and John Jarratt. Television has given Punch McGregor an equally varied run of parts. She played Ros Parrish in Home and Away from 1994 to 1995 and made guest appearances in Rafferty’s Rules, Halifax f.p., Fire, All Saints, White Collar Blue and Love My Way. Later work included the miniseries The Principal and the television biopic Mary: The Making of a Princess. Theatre, however, has remained central to her working life. Across productions for many of Australia’s major theatre companies, she has appeared in plays ranging from Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream to A Streetcar Named Desire, Long Day’s Journey into Night and Festen. She played Juliet opposite Mel Gibson’s Romeo in 1979 and took on Miss Havisham in a 2002 adaptation of Great Expectations. After illness, insecurity and burnout led to a hiatus from acting in the mid-1990s, Punch McGregor studied natural medicine and later practised it. She also passed her experience on to younger performers, serving as a lecturer in acting at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts from 2006 to 2014 and teaching at Sydney’s HubStudio.