Brian Moll

Brian Percy Moll (19 May 1925 – 9 August 2013) was an Australian character actor, director and producer who emigrated to Australia from his native England in 1950. Quitting his job as a publicity officer, he became a professional actor in 1968. He was best known for his soap opera television roles, but also appeared in film and numerous theatre productions.

Brian Percy Moll was born in Chaucer Road, Wanstead, North East London (formally Essex) on 19 May 1925. He was conscripted to Her Majesty’s Royal Navy in 1943 at the age of eighteen years and spent the later years of World War II serving on a minesweeper. His ship was involved in the D-Day operation and he watched the action from just off the Arromanches beach. In October 1950 he arrived in Melbourne Australia under the £10 assisted passage emigration scheme. In December 1975 he took Australian Citizenship.

By 1953 he was taking on leading parts with the Little Theatre Company in Melbourne and as well as acting he was producing and directing difficult plays such as Chekov and Ibsen. In 1963 he moved to Brisbane and he joined the Queensland Arts Theatre. He continued his acting career in his spare time. In the 1960s he was campaigning in Brisbane for a new permanent arts centre and was involved in these plans which resulted in the Arts Complex being built.

In 1970 he was in It’s a Rum Do and had the role of Samuel Marsden, the priest who was partly responsible for bringing merino sheep to Australia which started the wool industry. The play was chosen to be given a Royal Command Performance in the Brisbane Arts Centre. ]He was presented to the Queen and he told her that over the past two years he had played eight priests. She asked him “Why” and she smiled when he answered “It was my purity of spirit and a bald head”. After this, his acting career took off .

He was known for his villainous roles, once remarking that this was due to his bald head (he had been totally bald since the age of 25). He had many guest roles on television series; mini-series and telemovies; and films.

In the 1970s he became famous playing the recurring role of slimy Town Clerk Eddie Buchanan in soap opera Number 96, and later Dr. Vincent Snape in The Young Doctors. He was also known for his long running itinerant role as devious town councillor Alfred Muldoon from 1982-1992 in the soap opera A Country Practice. He also acted in the film Street Fighter.

In 1990, he appeared as Mr. Gordian in Bloodmoon, a horror film.

Moll died in a Queensland nursing home in 2013, aged 88, His ashes were scattered near his home on the Sunshine Coast.