DAVID GULPILIL

(1 July 1953 - 29 November 2021)

The Aboriginal Australian actor and dancer David Gulpilil, who has died aged 68 from cancer, made his film debut in Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout in 1971. He had previously appeared in a documentary called In Song and Dance in 1964 but it was Roeg who, while looking for Australian locations, ‘discovered' the young man and his talents as a performer and put him on the screen in the first of the many films that Gulpilil was to make.

He was born David Gulpilil Ridijimiraril to a Yolngu family and brought up in a traditional Aboriginal lifestyle. He was already a talented dancer before his film career started at the age of sixteen. His appearance in Walkabout led to his becoming a celebrity on the international scene, where he met the likes of Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Bob Marley and Bruce Lee. His further appearances in films included Philippe Mora's 1976 Mad Dog Morgan, about the bushranger Dan Morgan, with Dennis Hopper and Jack Thompson, Henri Safran's Storm Boy, as Fingerbone Bill, Peter Weir's The Last Wave, with Richard Chamberlain, Peter Faiman's Crocodile Dundee with Paul Hogan, and Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff, etc.

From 2001 he was in Rolf de Heer's Western The Tracker, for which Gulpilil won several Australian acting awards, then Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence, Baz Luhrmann's Australia and Catriona McKenzie's Satellite Boy. He was nominated and won several awards in 2013 for Rolf de Heer's Charlie's Country, about an indigenous Australian returning to his tribe after being disillusioned by modern society. He also played himself in My Name Is Gulpilil and appeared on television and made several documentary films. David Gulpilil had trouble with alcoholism for a time and was arrested for assault on one of his three wives who were Miriam Ashley, Airlie Thomas and Robin Djunginy. Seven of his children survive him.

MICHAEL DARVELL