Max Gillies

Maxwell Irvine Gillies AM (born 16 November 1941) is an Australian actor and a founding member of the 1970s experimental theatre company, the Australian Performing Group.

Early life and education

Gillies studied art teaching at Frankston Teachers College and featured in the theatre productions School for Scandal and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll with Kerry Dwyer in 1964. He graduated from Monash University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. He then studied secondary teaching at the Melbourne Teachers' College, now part of the University of Melbourne.

Career

Max Gillies was a member of the Australian Performing Group (APG) in the 1970s. The group was officially formed in 1970 and then set up a theatre in a former pram factory in Drummond Street, Carlton. Here, and in other venues throughout Melbourne and other parts of Australia, the ensemble presented alternative, experimental, avant-garde and radical plays, musical comedies, vaudeville, stage shows, street theatre and circus acts, using comedy, drama, music and dance. In the many APG productions in which he appeared, Gillies became renowned for his prodigious talent as an actor and comedian. Those plays included "The Hills Family Show", "Dimboola" and "A Stretch of the Imagination".

In 1984–85, Gillies hosted The Gillies Report on ABC Television. This was followed in 1986 by Gillies Republic and in 1992 by Gillies and Company. He was known for his ability to dress up and parody a wide range of political figures, both on television and in live solo theatrical performances (i.e. The Big Con and Your Dreaming: The Prime Minister’s Cultural Convention). In July 2008 he resurrected his caricatures of Australia's former prime ministers in a live production of No Country for Old PMs: An Evening with Max Gillies at the Noosa Longweekend festival.^[1]

Gillies stated in an interview with The Courier-Mail that he and co-writer Guy Rundle were watching the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, for a possible new caricature in a new production being developed. "I'm watching him closely" he said.^[2]

Personal life

He is married to publisher Louise Adler, and they have two adult children.

Accolades

Honours

Gillies became a member of the

• Australian prime ministers: Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, William McMahon, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Kevin Rudd.
• Other Australian politicians:
  Sir John Kerr, Don Chipp, Andrew Peacock, Fred Nile, Russ Hinze, Gareth Evans
  .
• Australian state premiers: Robert Askin, Henry Bolte, Neville Wran, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, John Bannon.
• Australian businessmen:
  Alan Bond, John Singleton, John Elliott
  .
• Australian writers:
  Bob Santamaria
  .
• Foreign leaders:
  Queen Elizabeth II, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Pope John Paul II
  .
• Other people: Tony Barber, Barry Crocker, David Attenborough, Jonathan Shier, Frank Sinatra, David McNicoll, Arthur Daley (a main character from Minder)

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

References

External links

• Max Gillies at
  IMDb

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