Leah Purcell (born 14 August 1970, Murgon, Queensland) is an Indigenous Australian actress, director and writer. She is a Helpmann Award winner.

Biography

She is a film, television and theatre actress, singer, director and playwright. She is the youngest of seven children of Aboriginal and white Australian descent. Her father was a butcher and a boxing trainer... After a difficult adolescence, looking after her sick mother who died while Leah was in her late teens, problems with alcohol and teenage motherhood, Purcell left Murgon and moved to Brisbane and became involved with community theatre.

In 1996 she moved to Sydney to become presenter on a music video cable television station, RED Music Channel. This was followed by roles in the ABC television series Police Rescue and Fallen Angels. She co-wrote and acted in a play called Box the Pony, which played at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre, the Sydney Opera House, the 1999 Edinburgh Festival and in 2000 at the Barbican Theatre in London. She then wrote and directed the documentary Black Chicks Talking, which won a 2002 Inside Film award. She appeared in the acclaimed Australian film Lantana starring Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush and in the theatre in The Vagina Monologues. She went on to feature in 2004 films Somersault, The Proposition (starring Guy Pearce and Emily Watson and written by Nick Cave) and Jindabyne (starring Gabriel Byrne) as well as playing the role of Condoleezza Rice in David Hare's play, Stuff Happens in Sydney and Melbourne.