At a glance…
- Kate Mulvany OAM stars in Netflix’s new adaptation of My Brilliant Career.
- Kate has an extensive acting background including The Twelve (2022), Hunters (2020) and The Great Gatsby (2013).
- A disability advocate, Kate suffers from long-lasting effects of her father’s exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
- Kate penned acclaimed fictionalised autobiographical play The Seed in 2007, based on her father’s service and its aftermath.
- Kate is married to actor and composer Hamish Michael. The pair wed in 2015.
As she prepares to hit screens in the Netflix remake of My Brilliant Career, Kate Mulvany OAM reveals the making of her own extraordinary one – from a childhood battle with cancer, to the beauty of drama and proudly claiming her disability.
On the coast of Western Australia, some 500km from Perth, there’s a place where the wind blows.
It is blustering, sometimes deafening, and constant. It blows in people – some who stay, and some who blow back out. And it is the place that actress and writer Kate Mulvany began her incredible life.
The port town of Geraldton, she tells The Weekly as we sit down for a wide-ranging chat on the eve of her latest project, is “very isolated and one of the windiest places in the world. It’s Tim Winton country”. And it’s where her parents, Danny and Glenys, decided to settle down after they married.
Who is the father of Kate Mulvany?
Danny had arrived in Australia as a Ten Pound Pom. Conscripted almost as soon as he stepped off the boat in this country, he was sent to serve in the Vietnam War. Upon his return, he built roads across outback Western Australia.
“He fell in love with the communities out there, the lifestyle,” Kate reflects. “The sun and the dirt. And he fell in love with my mum when they met in Port Hedland.”
Glenys is of Scottish descent and was working as a schoolteacher. And she fell in love with the former soldier too. Together, the duo moved to Geraldton, a place they felt would be perfect to start a family.
But the road to a successful pregnancy was fraught. Glenys suffered several miscarriages before Kate finally came along. These lost pregnancies – and the renal cancer that struck down Kate when she was just three years old – were, the couple would later learn, a result of Danny’s exposure to chemical weapon Agent Orange during his service.
Contaminated with Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), the dangerous by-product of Agent Orange has led to higher rates of cancers, neurological disorders and birth defects in both children and grandchildren of exposed veterans.
Not that Danny and Glenys were aware of any of this when they were trying to conceive. And it wasn’t until 1994 that the Australian Government would officially admit that Vietnam War veterans and their children had suffered these effects.
“[The cancer] had probably been there from conception,” Kate says of the effect her father’s war service unknowingly had. “But by the time it was discovered, it was the size of a football.”
A childhood shaped by cancer
Cancer would shape her family, as well as Kate.
“You’re the vessel for the cancer,” she explains, “but everyone else – not just in your family, but your community – has it too. And in a way that’s a blessing, because the load is shared.”
Her dad was the captain of the local soccer team, La Fiamma. The bulk of the team were Sicilian, but there were Greek, African and Aboriginal players, too. “And Aussies as well,” adds Kate. “They’d come from all over and made a new start in this town, and there was a child amongst them who was sick. It was their food, their stories, their accents – and the soccer – that I believe got me better.”
Still, it was a seven-year battle for Kate. A huge chunk of her life in which she was receiving chemo and radiation treatment before finally going into remission at the age of 10. She was made to feel normal throughout.
“I know that everyone was treating me with care,” she explains, “and I was fragile, but I was still living a Geraldton life. I was running around barefoot and swimming in the Indian Ocean, going to the soccer matches and going to school. But I just happened to have less hair.”
The power of storytelling
It was during her many stints in hospital that she discovered the joy of storytelling. Having been diagnosed at three, she learnt to read earlier than other kids given that there wasn’t much else to do in the hospital. Her mum was an English teacher so there were plenty of books for her to discover. And at the hospital, there were no televisions to relieve the boredom.
“The only screen I can remember was the one in the radiotherapy room where you could watch your mum and dad when you were getting zapped,” she laughs now.
She vividly remembers one day reading a Little Golden Book and being displeased with the ending.
“So I decided to change it,” she says, “and I wrote a new page at the end. It was very arrogant of me, I guess, but I think it was thrilling, that idea that you can change a story – that you can control the narrative when sometimes your own narrative isn’t in control. Storytelling is a really nice way to find some grounding and it’s a beautiful escape.”
Unlike the town itself, life at home was quiet. But it got rowdier when her younger sister, Tegan, arrived when Kate was nearing eight years old. And at 14, an event changed her world again.
The Johannesburg Theatre Company arrived in Geraldton to perform Molière’s farce, Tartuffe. A friend of her mum’s felt Kate would enjoy the theatre and took her along to the performance. Then she took her to the stage door.
“Mrs Newman took me to this portal into the backstage world,” Kate says, glowing at the memory. “I saw all these people that I’d just watched on the stage with their make-up dripping off them and peeling off their costumes and having a beer and hugging each other and the sets coming down. And I just went, ‘I want to be part of that world’.”
Finding her tribe
Kate had always been bright. At school, she’d leapt a year. And when it came time for her to attend university when she was just 16 – to study the theatre and scriptwriting that had enraptured her – the entire Mulvany family uprooted from Geraldton to Perth in support. At the time, she thought she’d probably end up as a schoolteacher. But acclaimed writer Elizabeth Jolley was her tutor, a huge supporter, and “I just got bitten,” she laughs.
Studying alongside her at Curtin University were incredibly talented people including Toby Truslove, Rohan Nichol and Belinda Bromilow.
Together, they would put on shows all over town. At lunchtimes, they’d pool their Austudy payments to buy a barbecue chicken and salad at the local Coles before climbing up on the roof of the Hayman Theatre where they’d feast and dream of the future ahead.
It’s a bond that endures to this day.
“We’re all there for each other,” Kate says. “That’s very common in theatre families, and I’ve been really blessed that community has found me.”
Making a choice
Her first paid job in drama, she recalls, was playing a body in a morgue for a short-lived anti-drugs TV ad.
But her big break came at the theatre. She’d landed a part in subversive play Killer Joe at Perth co-op theatre The Blue Room. It had become a cult hit. Acclaimed producer Diana Bliss snuck in the fire exit and took a seat on the floor to catch the final performance – and she was completely struck by the talented newcomer, picking up the play and taking it around the country with Kate front and centre.
“If I hadn’t got that show, things would’ve been very different,” she says now. That same week she’d been rejected by both NIDA and WAAPA. And she’d started taking boot scooting lessons for the job she’d taken at a local theatre restaurant to help pay the rent.
“I remember having to say to my boss, ‘I’ve got a job in a play’,” Kate laughs now. “And him saying, ‘You gotta choose boot scooting, or you gotta choose theatre.’”
Needless to say, the latter won.
A lifetime of pain
Leaving Perth behind, she relocated to the east coast, where she began what would become an incredible run: adapting theatre works, writing her own and acting on stage, as well as screens big and small. From this point on, she was constantly at work, including penning acclaimed fictionalised autobiographical play The Seed in 2007, based on her father’s service and its aftermath.
In the wake of her childhood cancer, Kate has been in constant, chronic pain. She had ribs removed at the time to extract the tumour surgically. And thanks to what was life-saving radiotherapy, she was left with a disability she minimised by describing as “a bad back” or “a bit of scoliosis”.
The reality is far starker.
The side of her back which received the radiation treatment, she tells us now, is atrophied. “The side that wasn’t … kind of turned into the Incredible Hulk. As a result of the radiotherapy, I have osteoporosis. All of the pressure from the built-up muscle on one side is breaking my bones and continues to break my bones.”
What is Kate Mulvany known for?
She has learnt to adapt in its wake, holding her body in ways that contradict her “crookedness”. But in 2017, she landed the titular role of Richard III in a Bell Shakespeare production. And she decided this was the perfect opening to fully reveal the extent of her disability for the first time.
“It was the most liberating thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “I’ve always been told to hide so that people didn’t look at me or not want to cast me. I even took off my shirt on stage to show the full extent.”
Kate won a Helpmann Award for her performance, an accolade she accepted on behalf of all those affected by Agent Orange.
Why does Kate Mulvany use a cane?
Chronic pain is so often hidden. At our shoot, Kate moves with an incredible grace and presence. If you didn’t know – or wonder at the appearance of her canes, many of which have been given Shakespearean names – you would be forgiven for not realising the debilitating effect of her condition.
The pain, she says, “feels like I have a rod almost the size of a pool cue through my spine at all times. And as the day goes longer, and as I get older, it tightens and tightens and tightens, which means your body starts to form around the pain. That in itself causes trouble, because all of a sudden you’re using muscles that aren’t supposed to be used in that way.
“But, you know, you adapt. The disabled body is an incredible thing and something to be proud of because it’s so adaptable … What others see as my flaw is my ferocity.”
She developed this outlook when she was having her treatment, and there were so many things she was told she would be unable to do, including walking. So the fact she is able to stride through life – albeit painfully – is a gift she doesn’t take lightly.
It’s an incredible attitude given it’s not the only lasting effect of the Agent Orange her father was exposed to. She can’t carry children, something she found out when she was 19.
Who is Kate Mulvany’s husband?
“I was furious,” she says of how this news landed for her. “When you’re that age, you’re kind of like, ‘I can do everything. I’m going to have six children. I’m going to be this and that.’ To have someone say not only that you can’t have children, but you can’t have children because of an illness that might have come from a war? It really messes with your head. I was infuriated that the rules of my body had been taken away from me.”
She’s blessed with multiple godchildren, and she’s also a proud aunt with nephews in Tasmania and a niece in WA. She and her husband, actor and composer Hamish Michael, love being a community for the kids in their lives and there are no regrets over not having children of their own.
“I told him straight out, ‘Look, if you want this to happen, this is the situation’,” she says of approaching the topic of family with the man she’s been with for 18 years now. “And he said, ‘It’s okay, I don’t want children. I just want you.’ He’s a good egg.”
Kate’s never been more in demand. She’s come off the back of an incredible run of work, including playing Robbie Williams’ mum in autobiographical film Better Man, as a “kick-ass nun” vigilante in US series Hunters, and portraying a cult disciple in disturbing drama The Clearing. And her latest work will hit screens next month. Kate plays Augusta in the Netflix remake of Miles Franklin classic My Brilliant Career, the eccentric and charismatic patron of hot-headed heroine Sybylla (Philippa Northeast).
The novel was always on her English teacher mother’s bookshelf, Kate says.
The power of friendship
“And I recall very strongly watching the film as a child and wondering why my mum was so enamoured with Sam Neill … and Judy Davis,” she adds with a laugh. “So as a writer and actor I went, ‘Ooh, if there’s any way I can be a part of this.’ And I got the nod thankfully.”
Her mother is not the only one enamoured with Sam Neill. Kate starred opposite him in the 2022 miniseries The Twelve and the pair bonded quickly, joking together between scenes of the courtroom drama. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We spoke just a few months before the actor’s death in July 2026 at the age of 78.]
“Sam is just a genuinely empathetic, kind, caramel-hearted human being,” she says. “And cheeky.”
With Sam recently tackling his own cancer journey, Kate shared moments of connection with her former co-star throughout.
Life as an actor, she muses, is a travelling circus. “We land on plots of land with each other in this business, and then we go our separate ways. But sometimes there’s heart connections made, and you never lose it. I’m just so honoured to call Sam my friend.”
She phoned him when she landed the role in My Brilliant Career. Sam, who played Harry Beecham in the original, made a personal video for Christopher Chung, who plays Harry in the new version, telling the newcomer to, “Go for it. He’s yours now.”
A talented cast
Kate is in awe of the talented cast, particularly leading lady Philippa Northeast. It was, she says, “like watching a star being born on set”.
Miles Franklin’s Sybylla wanted a true life, rather than a safe one. It resonates deeply with Kate, who muses that the childhood illness which shaped her family meant they no longer sweated the small stuff. When Kate declared her desire to be an actor, it didn’t faze her parents, who had seen her endure much worse than the inevitable knocks that would come with pursuing a creative arts career.
“And that means you don’t lead a safe life,” she says. “You want to be like Sybylla and say ‘I’m worth it’ to the world.”
This article originally appeared in the August 2026 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. SUBSCRIBE so you never miss an issue
My Brilliant Career launches on 13 August 2026 on Netflix. For more information, head here.
