Mercia Deane-Johns is an Australian actress of film, stage and television. She is also a writer, singer, and stand-up comedian. She has played a wide array of characters since she was 12 years old and has appeared in many film roles and TV series on Australian screens.

Education

Born in Melbourne on 21 February 1958, Mercia Deane-Johns 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. Deane-Johns has a diploma in 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 Yui^[1] for one year, 1980.

Deane-Johns attended Southern Cross University during 2006–2010 and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in writing and communication.^[2]

Career

Film and television

Deane-Johns was in the Australian TV series Homicide in 1975 and 1976. She performed in the TV series Bluey as Debbie Morley in 1976. In 1977, she was in Cop Shop, a long running police drama series.

In 1981, she appeared in Heatwave and Winter of Our Dreams.^[3] Heatwave, directed by Phillip Noyce was based on the Juanita Nielsen disappearance case of the 1970s. Winter of Our Dreams was an award-winning drama written and directed by John Duigan. In 1982, she was in Winner Take All – Downside Risk,^[4] a TV series about the fast-paced world of big business. In 1985, she was in Winners – The Other Facts of Life.^[5] In 1991 Deane-Johns appeared in What's Cooking? an Australian cooking television series.^[6]

In 1991 Channel 9 introduced a new series called Chances, based around a family who won AUD$3 million in a lottery and the effect it had on their lives. Deane-Johns played the part of Sharon Taylor, a good time girl who made a living as a hairdresser. Chances was discontinued in 1992 after a run of 127 hour-long episodes.

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. 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. In 2007, she appeared in Unfinished Sky a story about a farmer who takes in an Afghani woman who has fled from a brothel.

In 2014 she had a supporting role in the film Last Cab to Darwin.^[3] In 2017 she played the part of Bulldozer in Throbbin' 84.^[7] The film takes its name from the 1984 Australian compilation music album Throbbin' '84.

Deane-Johns appeared in two seasons of The Other Guy in 2018 and 2019. She performed in season two of the comedy drama series Mr Inbetween in 2019. She was also in the documentary series Location Scout which was about the making of the Australian comedy film Top End Wedding, which was filmed around Darwin in 2018.

She has worked with some of Australia's best-known actors^[8] imcluding John Hargreaves, Judy Davis, Nicole Kidman, Charles Bud Tingwell, John Meillon and Alwyn Kurts.

Voiceovers

As well as acting, Deane-Johns has done voiceovers including four episodes of Persons of Interest in 2014.^[9]

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.^[10]

Deane-Johns wrote for the (now defunct) Australian Playboy magazine for four years in the 1980s. As she relates in her cogitations Mercia's Missives: "I spent a lot of time in my room, writing a column for Playboy magazine, simply entitled Women. Peter Olszewski, also known as JJ Mc Roach, the founder of the Marijuana Party was the editor at the time. I enjoyed writing for Playboy. I had a lot of material around me at the time for inspiration. Things were fine".

Comedy

As well as singing and acting Deane-Johns 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^[11] in 2011. This was a one-hour stand-up comedy routine which they performed at The El Rocco Room, in Sydney's Kings Cross.

Posing for Australian Playboy

When pregnant with her daughter Natasha, Mercia was the first pregnant woman in the world to be photographed for Playboy.

Music

Having a diploma in music Deane-Johns has worked extensively with the recently deceased Damien Lovelock. She toured with the Celibate Rifles in 1990 on their world tour and sang in Damien's band Wigworld singing Patti Smith songs amongst others. In 1990 she performed in Damien Lovelock's promo-video for the single 'Disco Inferno' (April, 1990), taken from the 1988 album 'It's A Wig Wig World'.^[12]

She has sung in many jazz trios and duos and also cover bands for Woodstock and Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood Mac.

New Wave

The administrations of Australian Prime Ministers John Gorton (1968–1971) and Gough Whitlam (1972–1975) put considerable extra funding into the Australian film industry which led to the "New Wave" of the late 1970s and early 1980s.^[13] 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.^[14] 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 Winter of Our Dreams (1981) Heatwave (1982) and Going Down (1982).

Filmography

Films

Television

Theatre

Award

She won an award at the 18th Melbourne Underground Film Festival in 2017 for Throbbin' 84.^[41]