Alice Garner

Alice Miriam Olivia Garner (born 14 September 1969) is an Australian actress, author, musician, teacher and historian.

She is the daughter of Australian novelist and screenwriter Helen Garner and writer and actor Bill Garner.

Garner's acting career began as a child in the 1982 film Monkey Grip adapted from her mother's 1977 novel of the same name, which Alice featured in as a character, under the name of Gracie. She was nominated for an AFI Award for her role. She starred in Love And Other Catastrophes in 1996, winning the Film Critics Circle of Australia award for best supporting actress, and played the role of Carmen in the popular ABC TV series SeaChange. Other credits include films Jindabyne, Strange Planet and award-winning short film Maidenhead, and on television, the role of Caitlin in Secret Life of Us.

In September 2001 she and Kate Atkinson (with whom she had worked on SeaChange) founded Actors for Refugees, to counter negative stereotyping of refugees and asylum seekers through public readings by volunteer performers around Australia.

Garner speaks French fluently and in 2001 gained a Ph.D. in French history from the University of Melbourne for her study of representations of sea and shore in south-western France.

Presently Garner is an ARC postdoctoral research fellow at La Trobe University and is researching the history of the Australian-American Fulbright Program. In her own time, she is also investigating the history of hitchhiking.

She has published two books: The Student Chronicles (MUP 2006), a memoir of her undergraduate years at Melbourne University, and A Shifting Shore: Locals, Outsiders, and the Transformation of a French Fishing Town, 1823–2000 (Cornell University Press, 2005), which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's General History Prize in the year it was published.

Garner currently works as a French teacher at Albert Park College.

She plays cello in a trio (euphonia) with Mairead and Dee Hannan. She is also a member of the Xylouris Ensemble. The ensemble, led by Giorgos Xylouris on Laouto, performs contemporary, original and traditional Cretan music.

• 1982 – nominated for the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, for Monkey Grip
• 1996 – nominated for the Australian Film Institute Awards, Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Love and Other Catastrophes
• 1997 – won Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Best Supporting Actor – Female, for Love and Other Catastrophes
• 2002 – won the Screen Music Awards, Australia for Best Soundtrack Album, for One Night the Moon shared with Mairead Hannan, Paul Kelly, Kev Carmody, John Romeril, Deirdre Hannan
• 2005 – shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's History Awards General History Prize for A Shifting Shore: locals, outsiders and the transformation of a French fishing town, 1823–2000

Garner is married with three children.