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Jack Charles, a member of the Stolen Generations, was born on 5 September 1943 at the Cummeragunja Mission Station in New South Wales, Australia. His mother was Bunurong and his father Wiradjuri. His great-great-grandfather, a Djadjawurrung man, was among the activists who opposed government policies at the Corranderrk reserve in Victoria in 1881. Taken from his mother at just four months old due to the Australian Government's forced child removal program, Jack grew up in the Salvation Army Boys' Home in Box Hill, a suburb of Melbourne, where he was the only Aboriginal child and suffered sexual abuse.
Jack Charles is an actor, musician, potter, and Aboriginal elder. His film credits include the seminal Australian movie The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), as well as Bedevil (1993), Blackfellas (1993), Tom White (2004), and Pan (2015), among others.
Much of his early life was marked by struggles with drug addiction and petty crime. He began his acting career in 1970 and, in 1971, co-founded Nindethana ('place for a corroboree') at The Pram Factory in Melbourne, Australia's first Indigenous theatre company. Their inaugural successful play, in 1972, was Jack Charles is Up and Fighting, featuring music composed by him.
Jack was the focus of Amiel Courtin-Wilson's notable 2008 documentary Bastardy, which chronicled seven years of his life. The film described him as: "Addict. Homosexual. Cat burglar. Actor. Aboriginal." Bastardy was officially selected for film festivals in Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney, and Sheffield Doc/Fest.
In 2010, Ilbijerri Theatre presented Charles' one-man show Jack Charles v The Crown at the Melbourne Festival. He was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Male Actor in a Play for his role. Jack Charles v The Crown has toured nationally and internationally. In 2012, he appeared in the Sydney Festival production I am Eora. He portrayed Chief Great Little Panther in Joe Wright's 2015 film Pan.
In April 2014, Jack was honored with a Lifetime Achievement award from Victoria's Green Room Awards, becoming the first Indigenous recipient. In 2016, he played Uncle Paddy in two episodes of the ABC horror drama series Wolf Creek, and also portrayed Uncle Jimmy in the ABC drama series Cleverman.
In 2019, he received the Red Ochre Award from the Australian Council for the Arts, which recognizes outstanding Indigenous Australian artists for lifetime achievement.
Jack’s memoir, Jack Charles: Born-Again Blakfella, co-written with Namila Benson, features a Foreword by Dr Gary Foley and a Preface by Amiel Courtin-Wilson. First published in hardback by Viking in 2019, it was later released in paperback by Penguin Books in 2020. The memoir was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards' 2020 Biography Book of the Year.
