Mercia Deane-Johns

Mercia Deane-Johns has trained at a Television and Film Course at Crawford Productions, 1974. She plays Classical Piano at Sixth Grade Level and she has studied ballet at the Gertrud Bodenwieser Dance Centre, Sydney. Mercia has a diploma of classical singing and theory of music from the London College of Music, Ealing, London. She is an Associate of the London College of Music (A.L.C.M) which qualification she obtained in 1975.

She was on a twelve-month contract at the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1978.

She has studied Tai Chi and had private lessons with the late Tennyson Yuifor one year, 1980.

Deane-Johns attended Southern Cross University during 2006-2010 and obtained a bachelor of arts in writing and communication.

Film and television

1970s

Deane-Johns's first credited film role was in the 1973 sex comedy Alvin Purple also known as The Sex Therapist starring Graeme Blundell and directed by Tim Burstall.

She was in the Australian TV series Homicide in 1975 and 1976 as Brenda Lukins.

One of her early jobs was in the 1970s series Matlock Police which ran from 1971 - 1976 in which she and Sigrid Thornton played girls who were incarcerated in a home. She performed in the Crawford Productions TV series Bluey as 'Debbie Morley' in 1976. In 1977, she appeared opposite John Hargreaves in Young Ramsay, a series about a young city vet who does to work in the country. In the same year, she was in Cop Shop a long running Crawford Productions police drama series. She had a small role in the 1978 Australian TV movie Demolition which starred John Waters and veteran Oz actor Vincent Ball. Other 1970's roles included guest starring in an episode of Skyways with Tony Bonner in 1979.

She went on to play a wide range of characters: Italian mammas, the Israeli girl Timna in The Sullivans, the outrageous and eccentric Sharon Taylor in TVs Chances. She has played motor cycle chicks, secretaries, academics and even a prostitute in the 1983 film Going DownGoing Down which, while given only a limited distribution at the time, has grown in reputation as a minor gem of Australian cinema.

1980s

Deane-Johns had a small part as a secretary in Phillip Noyce's Heatwave in 1981 and in the same year had a more substantial role as Angela in Winter of Our Dreams, directed by John Duigan, playing alongside Judy Davis and Bryan Brown. In 1982, she was in Winner Take All – Downside Risk. This was an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) TV series about the fast-paced world of big business and co-starred Peter Curtin, Tina Bursill, Briony Behets and Diana McLean.

In 1985, she was in Winners – the other facts of life with Dennis Miller, Anne Grigg, Sheila Florence and Candy Raymond. Later in the 1980s Mercia played opposite a teenage Nicole Kidman in the TV miniseries Vietnam.

1990s

In 1991 Mercia Deane-Johns appeared in What's Cooking? an Australian cooking television series which ran from 1991 - 1999 on the Nine Network.

In the 1990s, as well as Chances, she was in the police series Water Rats.

Deane-Johns was in the television film McLeod's Daughters in 1996 with Jack Thompson, Tammy MacIntosh and Kris McQuade.

She was in the long-running Home and Away from 1997 – 2001, playing Melanie Rainbow.

2000s

In 2000, she was in several episodes of the hospital drama All Saints.

As well as performing in several episodes of the police drama Blue Heelers which ran from 1994 - 2006; in the early 2000s she was in the drama Above the Law (TV series).

In 2002, she was in the Canadian-Australian Co-production of Guinevere Jones, a teenage fantasy series where she played the part of evil witch Morgana Le Fay.

In 2007, she played the part of Barbara in Unfinished Sky a story about an Outback farmer who takes in an Afghani woman who has fled from a brothel.

She played Grace Barton in ten episodes of Packed to the Rafters from 2009 - 2010.

2010s

She appeared in a supporting role in the 2015 released Australian movie Last Cab to Darwin, a comedy/drama road film directed by Jeremy Sims (star of Chances, coincidentally) who co-wrote it with Reg Cribb from their original 2005 Drover's award-winning play.

As of 2017, her most recent film role is the part of Bulldozer in Throbbin' 84 which is a crime comedy set in 1984 also starring Alan King and Roslyn Gentle. The film takes its name from the 1984 Australian compilation music album Throbbin' '84.

Background

She has worked with some of Australia's best-known actors. The late John Hargreaves, Judy Davis in John Duigan's Winter of Our Dreams, Nicole Kidman in the popular Kennedy Miller series Vietnam (miniseries) and the late Charles Bud Tingwell who was a regular of Australian films. She has appeared with John Meillon who is remembered from the Crocodile Dundee films as well as Heatwave. She has also worked with John Ewart who is known for Sunday Too Far Away and Alwyn Kurts who famously portrayed the gruff Inspector Colin Fox in the TV series Homicide.

Much of her work like Homicide, Cop Shop, Matlock Police, Division 4, and Bluey was done at Crawford Productions.

Voiceovers

As well as acting, Deane-Johns has done voiceovers including four episodes of Persons of Interest in 2014. In each episode, a person of interest is given their previously secret intelligence file and attempts to answer the allegations contained in it.

Theatre appearances

Deane-Johns has made many stage appearances, ten are listed here:

• Meanwhile Back on Planet Earth A musical about Liza Minnelli at the Bondi Pavilion, Sydney in 1995.
• Bloody Poetry. Precious Theatre Company. The Stables. Mary Shelley. 1986.
• The Blind Giant is Dancing ACT Theatre Company in 1984.
• George and Mildred Australian Tour with the Elizabethan Theatre Company in 1980.
• The Playboy of the Western World at the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) in 1978.
• Electra (Play by Sophocles) at the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) in 1978.
• Once a Catholic The Actors' Company Theatre, Ultimo, NSW. 1978.
• The Happy Apples The Actors' Company Theatre, Ultimo, NSW. 1978
• Spats - Back in Business The Speakeasy, Kensington, NSW. 1976
• Two and Two Make Sex with Patrick Cargill on an Australian Tour in 1975.

Writing

Deane-Johns is also a writer and has kept an anecdotal record of her thespian experiences in a series of articles called Mercia's Missives. She describes the difficulties in working with misogynistic directors, unsympathetic make-up artists, bitchy co-stars and young actors who think they are God's gift to women.

Comedy

As well as singing and acting Mercia has done stand-up comedy and has ambitions to appear at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe one day. She appeared with co-star and fellow Australian singer and actress Anne-Maree McDonald in Caliente in 2011. This was a one-hour stand-up comedy routine which they performed at The El Rocco Room, in Sydney's Kings Cross, New South Wales.

The administrations of Australian Prime Ministers John Gorton (1968 – 1971) and Gough Whitlam (1972 - 1975) put considerable extra funding in to the Australian film industry which led to the "New Wave" of the late 1970s and early 1980s. There were many productions like Picnic at Hanging Rock with Helen Morse and Anne-Louise Lambert, My Brilliant Career with Judy Davis, Wendy Hughes and Sam Neill released in August 1979, Summerfield with Nick Tate, John Waters and Elizabeth Alexander made in 1977 and The Plumber with Judy Morris and Ivor Kants directed by Peter Weir in 1979. Other famous films of that time include Gallipoli (1981) and Crocodile Dundee (1986).

Mercia Deane-Johns featured in three films of the Australian New Wave Heatwave (1981) Winter of Our Dreams (1981) and Going Down (1983).