FILMOGRAPHY

2005] The New World
2005] Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
2005] The Proposition
2004] The Life Aquatic
2003] Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
2003] The Sleeping Dictionary
2002] Max
2001] Vanilla Sky
2001] He Died with a Felafel In His Hand
2001] Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
2000] Vertical Limit
2000] Almost Famous
2000] The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz
1999] Mauvaise passe
1999] Simon Magus
1998] There's No Fish Food In Heaven
1998] Woundings
1997] "Frontier" (mini)
1997] True Love and Chaos
1996] Down Rusty Down
1996] Shine
1995] Dad and Dave: On Our Selection
1993] Joh's Jury (TV)
1993] The Nostradamus Kid
1992] Secrets
1991] Dead to the World
1991] Flirting
1990] The Last Crop (TV)
1989] "Bangkok Hilton" (mini)
1989] The Prisoner of St. Petersburg
1989] Songlines (video 'Romeos')
1988] Lover Boy
1988] Dadah Is Death (TV)
1987] The Year My Voice Broke
1987] Dogs in Space

LINKS

IMDB
Naoh's Lark interview with Noah
Too Cool For That: Noah Taylor

Noah Taylor

Born 4 September 1969 London, England, UK.

Grew up in St Kilda Melbourne.

3 time nominee for an AFI [Australian Film Institute] with best actor in Shine (1996), Dad and Dave: On Our Selection (1995) & The Year My Voice Broke (1987). Also 3 time nominee for a SAG award with Outstanding Cast Performances on Almost Famous & Shine + a best actor nomination for his work on Shine. He has won the Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor 3 times: in 1988 for The Year My Voice Broke, in 1991 for Flirting and in 1993 for The Nostradamus Kid.

Noah's stage credits include leading roles in such productions as "Pierrot Lunaire," "Bloody Mama," "Alien in the Park," "The Grim Reaper," "Baron in the Trees" and "Eric and Verna."

Naoh left home and school at 16 and began his acting career at the St. Martin's Youth Theater.

Noah was in a band called The Honky Tonk Angels. The band included Noah's "Flirting" co-star Kym Wilson,"Year My Voice Broke" co-star Loene Carmen & actress Justine Clarke [Japanese Story]. Noah also played guitar for many of his own bands including Cardboard Box Man, Flipper & Humphrey and The Thirteens.

Noah has a few tattoos on his arms, most based on girls he's once dated.

Noah on his career:
"I think I have been incredibly lucky in that I have some opportunities to work in some pretty interesting films and worked with some interesting people. Probably because I don't live in Los Angeles or I've never been based there, people's curiosity is possibly a little bit tweaked because they don't really know who I am, so maybe they imagine that I'm far more interesting than I actually am,"

Noah on playing Hitler (in Max):
"He's a fascinating figure and I've always had a sort of interest in, the dark side to life. Also he's emblematic of so much of what is wrong with the world at any given time and I don't like to shy away from that. I'm not the sort of person who tends to look away from something just because it's dark. To me, you have to know darkness in order to know light."

Noah on deciding to take on the role of Hitler:
"I purposely didn't really discuss it with anyone outside of my family and friends because if you DO discuss it too much with agents and people like that, then there does become a whole bunch of reasons why you should or shouldn't do something and you can never be a hundred percent sure whether those motives are for YOUR good or for theirs. Having said that, I do work with very good people that I trust and they understand that I'm probably not the easiest client in the world and, for the most part, they know what I'm about."

Noah on acting:
"I think I was a very awkward teenager and uncomfortable at having any sort of attention on me anyway and I found the sort of roles that I was getting in Australia in particular limiting and frustrating. I think the conundrum is, the sort of roles I've always been interesting in playing since being interested in acting, which was from a fairly early age, were roles of much older people be they villains or broken people, not eighteen year old characters. But having said that, I know that the film industry is geared towards making films about young people for the most part. So I'm getting more excited about it as I get older and I have more to say from personal experience. I think it's your job as an actor to go out and live out in the world and come back and report, not to be a model."

Noah on his role in Tomb Raider:
"While everyone else was doing that, I was napping and smoking cigarettes. Actually, I'm a pretty physical type of person. I know you won't believe it, but I used to do boxing and karate and stuff like that. But I'm equally at home on the couch."

Noah On Tom Cruise:
"I met Tom about 12 years ago at a party in Sydney that these really horrible, pretentious people were having. No one was talking to me and I thought, "Bugger this, I'm going," then this guy sat down and started shooting the breeze, very nice and friendly. And that was my first introduction to Tom. He's a very respectful person, thanks all the extras at the end of the day. In that way, he and Cameron are sort of a dream team to work with [on Vanilla Sky]."

Noah on what drew him to Shine:
"As much as I'd love to say, 'I did this picture because it meant da-da-da-da,' I did it because it was a job. I'd turned down a lot of stuff, and when Shine came along, it was not only acceptable to me, but in the end it turned out to be a good thing for so many different reasons. For David Helfgott, it has improved his life fiscally and emotionally. The director, Scott Hicks, spent ten years developing and researching this film and letting it percolate in his head, so it was nice to see it pay off for him. And the film obviously strikes some deep chords with people, whereas a lot of films today are wasteful. They deal in banal entertainment when they could be healing. Personally, I prefer music to film because music is much purer. It can be divine, whereas film is so often just eight inches away from being snuff. So it's a dirty business, film. But, you know, it's a job."

Geoffrey Rush on Noah:
"Noah and I built up a really nice actor to actor repartee. We were a lot like brothers... I'm a generation older than he is, sort of from a university hippie background. Somehow we liked each other. He referred to me as Bill Prosciutto, the old ham."

Noah on his father:
" I've fought intensely with my father all my life. It's the most terrible feeling in the world to hate someone you love. I almost physically killed him in a really intense argument. We love each other, but it's very hard for us to talk for more than ten minutes without exploding into some stupid argument. But it has been important for me to work at a reconciliation with him. He had a terrible car accident with his parents and my brother and his wife. I was supposed to be in the car - except I had had a fight with him. He was driving, and they got hit by this other car, and my grandparents died in the back. My father never got the opportunity to tell his father he loved him. His father was this tough, old Irish guy, and words like love weren't bandied around easily. It's this obvious big regret in my father's life."

Noah on creating a character:
"I feel I can do a limited amount of things, and I'll just try and do them. I won't go for a huge, soaring performance. I think about the script as a piece of writing, like a good novel. And I do things like drink thirty cups of coffee in the space of a half hour, get heart palpitations, and whiz myself around and feel sick and giddy. I'm not a trained actor, and I can certainly see there are techniques to be learned, but my only real interest in acting is an interest in people. For a long time I didn't want to do acting because I saw it as being good at being insincere. You're like a good liar. It sort of revolts me to say "I love you" to someone in a film, because it's a sacred thing, and if you do it well on film, what does that say about you? So sometimes it's just about physically manipulating my body. If the scene requires being slapped around - and there's a lot of slapping around in Shine - I like to be slapped around. It's a hell of a lot quicker way to get the job done. You get over it. And if you know it's coming, it's not such a big deal."

Thandie Newton on Noah:
"Just before each love scene [in 'Flirting'] Noah would take an intense look at a photo of his girlfriend. I was 16, half naked, waiting on the bed thinking 'My leading man doesn't fancy me!'"

Post Shine Noah's thoughts on Hollywood:
"I'd love to work in American independent cinema, but I've flat-out rejected the idea of working in Hollywood. I'm not interested in Hollywood films - (a) because I don't like them, and (b) the price you have to pay for that sort of fame would be an abomination. I like to be able to lead a normal life."