Mercia Deane-Johns

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.

Born in Melbourne on 21 February 1958, Mercia Deane-Johns trained at a television and film course with Crawford Productions, in 1974. She has studied ballet at the Gertrud Bodenwieser Dance Centre, in Sydney. Deane-Johns obtained a diploma in classical singing and theory of music from the London College of Music, Ealing, London in 1975. She is also an Associate of the London College of Music (A.L.C.M).

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, in 1980.

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

She plays classical piano at sixth grade level.

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 the early 1980s, Deane-Johns appeared in several Australian New Wave films, including Heatwave (1981) directed by Phillip Noyce and based on the Juanita Nielsen disappearance case of the 1970s. The others were Winter of Our Dreams (1981), an award-winning drama written and directed by John Duigan and Going Down (1982).^[3] In 1982, she was also 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] That same year, she played the part of Sharon Taylor on the risqué series Chances. The series 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 to 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 Afghan 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] a film taking 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 Location Scout a documentary series 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] including John Hargreaves, Judy Davis, Nicole Kidman, Charles Bud Tingwell, John Meillon and Alwyn Kurts.

In addition to acting, Deane-Johns has performed voiceover work, including four episodes of Persons of Interest in 2014.^[9]

Deane-Johns is also a writer and has kept an anecdotal record of her thespian experiences in an online blog 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 also wrote for the (now defunct) Australian Playboy magazine from 1988 to 1990. 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". She also wrote for Fame magazine from 1986 to 1987, and Simply Living.^[11]

As well as singing and acting Deane-Johns has performed stand-up comedy and has ambitions to appear at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe one day. In 2011, she appeared with fellow Australian singer and actress Anne-Maree McDonald in Cabaret Caliente^[12] performing a one-hour stand-up comedy routine at The El Rocco Room, in Sydney's Kings Cross.

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

Having a diploma in music, Deane-Johns worked extensively with the late Damien Lovelock. She toured with the Celibate Rifles in 1990 on their world tour and performed in Lovelock'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".^[13]

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

^[40][41]

She won an award at the 18th Melbourne Underground Film Festival in 2017 for Throbbin' 84.^[42]

Mercia Deane-Johns at IMDb