OBITUARY
Michele Fawdon
Born: 15 Dec, 1947.
Died: 23 May, 2011.
Michele Fawdon
Born: 15 December 1947
Died: 23 May 2011
MICHELE Fawdon carved out a distinguished career as an actor on Australian stage, film and television.
Her first major role was as Mary Magdalene in the 1972 stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar with Jon English and Trevor White.
It was in that role that Geoff Jenkins, barely a teenager, first fell in love the 23-year-old actress and future soul-mate.
“Michele was so cute, sexy, vulnerable and I just fell madly in love with her,” he says of that first magic encounter.
Michele won AFI Best Actress Awards for her lead role in Cathy’s Child in 1979 (up against Judy Davis, Sigrid Thornton and Ruth Cracknell) and for the Leading Role in a Telefeature in 1987, The Fish are Safe. She was nominated again in 1985 for an AFI best actress in Unfinished Business.
Two Australian Film and Television “Sammy” awards came her way for Best Actress in Cathy’s Child and The Silent Cry in 1980.
She appeared in acclaimed television series including The Flying Doctors, A Country Practice, Blue Heelers, City Homicide, GP and Marshall’s Law and most recently had a role in the TV1 series Killing Time due to screen in Australia this year.
But it was her most important role, her best production, as Geoff tells it, that brought the family to Healesville.
They were living in the Blue Mountains when Michele announced she was going to be a mother.
Daughter Lulu was five when they moved to the Yarra Valley in the late ’90s to be closer to Geoff’s family.
They fell in love with Healesville, made it their home and embraced the community as their own.
It was a long journey from Harrow in England where Michele was born in 1947. From the time as a four-year-old she stepped up to sing at a beach-side Punch and Judy Show, she had her heart and mind set on acting.
She went to the prestigious Bush Davies School of Theatre Arts as a child and started acting at 12.
The family, father Alan, mother Yvonne and brothers Paul and Tony, lived in several countries before coming to Australia.
Her father had been a bomber pilot in WWII and trained pilots after the war until the family settled in Tamworth where he worked for the CSIRO cloud seeding.
Michele performed in school productions and joined Hayes Gordon’s Ensemble Theatre in Sydney after leaving school.
After Superstar she joined other young actors in John Bell’s NIMROD Theatre. Aubrey Miller directed Michele in plays including Chekov’s Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard – productions spoken about with awe by people who were fortunate to see them.
Geoff and Michele met again in 1988 when they were cast together in The History of Australia – The Musical.
“I was more a dancer-singer-actor, a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades,” said Geoff adding he had to win Michele’s affections.
“She didn’t want anything to do with me… I had to seriously chase her down. We would go out for dinner, and all that stuff and would walk along the Bondi promenade like teenagers…”
And, yes; they fell in love!
After moving to Healesville Michele combined a less-hectic acting schedule with family life.
Geoff said she never played on her acting success.
“People would often recognise her from her television roles, but here she was a mum, a regular person who adored being a mother, and was good at it.”
She was on the parents’ club at Healesville Primary School for the six years Lulu attended, and was instrumental in setting up HEARTS youth drama group.
Michele, who had directed for Theatre Nepean and Q Theatre in the Blue Mountains, was the obvious choice to run and direct the group.
HEARTS put on several very good productions and inspired several young people to start their own artistic careers.
Geoff said overwhelmingly the many tributes he and Lulu received after Michele’s death from cancer spoke of her love and dedication to acting and her generosity of spirit.
“Michele had a great love of life, a great interest in a lot of things. She loved gardening, she was political, had an opinion on everything, was a great friend… she managed to fit an incredible career into her life and make a baby at 47,” he said.
“Absolutely, her life was a life well lived.”
