Today's Birthday, May 19: Australian actress Claudia Karvan (1972 - ).
She's one of the most recognised faces in Australian television drama with her performances attracting a number of awards.
Claudia Karvan's performances in The Secret Life of Us (2001), Love My Way (2004) and Saved (2009) earned her a Logie for Most Outstanding Actress.
She won her first Australian Film Institute award for Best Actress for the G.P. in 1996 and won the award again in 2005 and 2007 for her role in Love My Way.
Karvan says she seeks roles that have "complex and surprising storytelling that have enough subtext to keep me satisfied".
"I'm happy if I can stab a vampire in the neck or behave like a misanthrope or turn a cartwheel," Karvan told The Australian.
In her most recent series, Newton's Law, she plays a solicitor.
"I've been wishing for a role that has authority, maturity, heart, warmth and is not apologetic about any of those qualities," she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Karvan was born in Sydney in 1972 and attended SCEGGS Darlinghurst.
When she was eight she lived with her mother and brothers in Bali for a year.
They returned and moved to King's Cross, where her stepfather owned the nightclub Arthur's.
She began screen acting in 1983 in the film Molly, before appearing alongside Judy Davis in Gillian Armstrong's High Tide four years later.
In 1993, Karvan won a Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Best Actress for her role in The Heartbreak Kid.
She starred alongside fellow Australians Guy Pearce in Flynn (1991), Dating the Enemy (1996) and Jack Irish (2016), and Hugh Jackman in Paperback Hero (1999).
In 2006 she was in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.
She has since appeared in Spirited (2010), Puberty Blues (2012), The Time of Our Lives (2013) and many more.
Karvan recently joined the cast of the second season of Stan series The Other Guy, which is written by and stars former triple j presenter and comedian Matt Okine.
Karvan also sits on the board of Screen Australia.
Karvan has two children, Audrey and Albie, and is a stepmother to Holiday, from her partner Jeremy Sparks' previous relationship.
Australian Associated Press
