Quick Facts
Biography
Steve Le Marquand (born 1967) is an Australian-born actor, known both locally and internationally for his film and stage work.
Personal life
Born in Perth, Western Australia in 1967, his family moved to Sydney when he was quite young.
His younger sister is the columnist and media commentator Sarrah Le Marquand.
He is married to Australian actress and singer Pippa Grandison and they have a daughter together, Charlie.
Plays cricket for the Cricketer's Arms Cricket Club.
Career
Prior to acting, Le Marquand motorcycled his way around Australia, working on various cattle stations, docks, pubs, barges and melon farms. He then studied performing arts at Penrith in Sydney’s outer west at the University of Western Sydney (Theatre Nepean) before stumbling across an agent in Penny Williams (RIP 2010) in 1992.
His first job was a TV commercial for Arnott’s Ruffles which was banned a day after its release for sacrilege. His second job was on the Australian TV series Police Rescue and since then he has played an assortment of thugs, baddies, larrikins and cops (both good and bad) in a number of TV shows, including Underbelly:Razor, Rake, Laid, All Saints, Farscape, Crash Palace, Young Lions, Blue Heelers, Water Rats, Big Sky, GP, Murder Call, Home and Away, Wildside'', and the ABC mini-series A Difficult Woman. He recently played the lead role of Tony Piccolo in the Movie Extra hit Small Time Gangster for which he received an ASTRA Award nomination for Most Outstanding Actor.
On film he has featured as a down and out ex Rugby League star in Heath Davis' Broke; a sleazy cult leader in Nick Matthew's One Eyed Girl; (due for release in 2013), a dodgy drug dealer in Stephan Elliott's A Few Best Men; a battle hardened sergeant in Beneath Hill 60 (which earned him a Film Critics Circle of Australia Best Supporting Actor nomination 2009); a snarly stockbroker in 2008's surprise hit, Men's Group; a tall thug in Jeremy Sims’ Last Train to Freo (for which he was nominated for Best Lead Actor at both the Australian Film Institute and Film Critic’s Circle Awards); a WWII digger in Kokoda; a larrikin Aussie climber in Martin Campbell’s Vertical Limit; a clumsy, shotty-loving bank robber in Gregor Jordan’s Two Hands; a moustachioed cop in David Caesar’s Mullet; a weird-arsed beachcomber in Lost Things and an all-singing-all-dancing sailor in Disney’s remake of South Pacific.
He won the Nicole Kidman Best Actor Award at Tropfest 1996 for (his own) short film Cliché, and was also the lead actor in the Tropfest 2005 hit, Bomb.
Le Marquand has been seen on stage in Gaybies for Darlinghurst Theatre;Death Of A Salesman, Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll (also for MTC and QTC), Paul, The Spook, Buried Child and Waiting For Godot for Company B Belvoir; Holy Day for the Sydney Theatre Company, Don’s Party for the Melbourne Theatre Co and STC; Ugly Mugs, Songket and The Return (which was the stage version of Last Train to Freo) for Griffin Theatre; and was a member of the STC’s Actors' Company where he appeared in Tales From The Vienna Woods; The Serpents Teeth; Gallipoli and The War Of The Roses (alongside Cate Blanchett) with the Company.
Le Marquand co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in the hugely successful theatre production He Died With A Felafel In His Hand, which had its humble beginnings at Rozelle’s Bridge Hotel in 1995 before running for several years in Melbourne, Perth, Hobart, Brisbane, Edinburgh, Toronto, New York and Wagga Wagga.
He and his wife, Pippa Grandison, have established an acting and singing coaching business on the Central Coast of NSW called Central Coast Performance and Audition Coaching.