Kate Mulvany Siblings: Meet Tegan Mulvany
Actress Kate Mulvany PHOTO/The Australian
Kate Mulvany is an Australian actress, playwright, and screenwriter whose career has left an indelible mark on theatre, television, and film.
Born on February 24, 1977, in Geraldton, Western Australia, Mulvany grew up in a close-knit family, the daughter of Glenys, a schoolteacher, and Danny Mulvany, a Vietnam War veteran who migrated to Australia as a “ten-pound Pom” from Nottingham, England.
Her early life was shaped by significant challenges, including a battle with Wilms’ tumor, a form of renal cancer diagnosed at age two, likely caused by her father’s exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
This health struggle, which left her with a spinal disability and chronic pain, informed much of her later work, particularly her semi-autobiographical play The Seed.
Mulvany graduated from Curtin University in Perth with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 and has since built a career that spans acting in high-profile projects like Hunters and The Great Gatsby, as well as writing critically acclaimed plays and screenplays.
Siblings
Kate has one sibling, a younger sister named Tegan Mulvany, who is also an actor and improviser.
Their mother, Glenys, an English teacher, nurtured their love for literature, while their father, Danny, passed on his passion for words through stories and books, despite his own struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder from the Vietnam War.
Tegan, like Kate, has pursued a career in the performing arts, though her work primarily focuses on acting and improvisation rather than the extensive writing and screen work that Kate has undertaken.
Career
Mulvany began acting in 1997, quickly establishing herself as a formidable presence in Australian theatre with lead roles in productions like Cassius, Lady Macbeth, and a critically lauded performance as Richard III, where she incorporated her real-life spinal disability into the role.
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Her theatre work extends beyond acting; she is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, having written over 35 plays that have been performed internationally.
Her adaptation of Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones has been staged by major theatre companies in Perth, Sydney, and Melbourne, while her adaptation of Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South trilogy for the Sydney Theatre Company earned widespread acclaim.
Mulvany’s bold reimagining of Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart in 2019, the first adaptation by a woman, was praised for its feminist perspective.
On screen, she has appeared in films such as The Great Gatsby (2013), Griff the Invisible (2010), and The Merger (2018), and played Sister Harriet in the Amazon Prime series Hunters (2020–2023), alongside Al Pacino.
Her screenwriting credits include the internationally acclaimed series Upright, the Emmy-winning Beat Bugs, and episodes for Disney Plus’s The Artful Dodger.
In 2024, she starred in the film adaptation of Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy, bringing her characteristic depth to the role of Stella.
Accolades
In 2004, Mulvany won the Philip Parsons Young Playwrights Award for her semi-autobiographical play The Seed, which also earned the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Independent Production.
Her adaptation of The Harp in the South secured both the Stage AWGIE Award and the Major AWGIE Award, along with the David Williamson Prize and a Sydney Theatre Award for Best New Australian Work.
In 2017, she received the Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a Play for her role in Richard 3.
Mulvany’s adaptation of Mary Stuart was nominated for the 2020 AWGIE Award for Stage, and her work on Jasper Jones was shortlisted for the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting in 2015.
Beyond theatre, she was honored with the Mona Brand Award in 2020 for women writers of stage and screen and received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Curtin University in 2017 for her contributions to the arts.
In 2020, she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the Australia Day Honours for her service to the performing arts.
Mulvany’s role as a patron of the Hayman Theatre at Curtin University from 2018 to 2021 and her advocacy for MiVAC, a landmine clearance and victim support organization, further highlight her impact both within and beyond the arts.