Noah Taylor

This article is about the actor. For the Desperate Housewives character, see Noah Taylor (Desperate Housewives).

Noah Taylor
Born	Noah George Taylor (1969-09-04) 4 September 1969 London, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1987–present

Noah George Taylor (born 4 September 1969) is an English-born Australian actor and musician.

Early life

Taylor, elder of two boys, was born in London, England, the son of Maggie (née Miller), a journalist and book editor, and Paul Taylor, a copywriter and journalist. Taylor's Australian parents returned to Australia when he was five, and he grew up in Clifton Hill and St Kilda, Victoria, suburbs of Melbourne. His parents divorced when he was 14. Taylor left both school and home at 16 with no intention of becoming an actor; a friend, however, suggested that he try the theatre as 'something to do at the weekends', and Taylor found the experience so enjoyable that he opted to make it his career. After performing in plays at St Martin's Youth Theatre in South Yarra for a year, he gained the attention of director John Duigan, who cast him in the 1987 film The Year My Voice Broke, the first part of a planned trilogy. Taylor also appeared in its sequel, 1991's Flirting, which also starred Nicole Kidman.

Career

Taylor first gained international attention playing the tormented young pianist David Helfgott in the 1996 film Shine. Taylor's resume includes action movies (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), comedies (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), psychological thrillers (Vanilla Sky) and historical dramas (Max, in which he played the young Adolf Hitler.)

Taylor once commented in an interview that he was sick of acting out the nostalgic reminiscences of other people. He has done this in a number of films including The Nostradamus Kid, which was based, apparently, on the memories of the Australian author Bob Ellis, a young David Helfgott in Shine, based on the book by Helfgott's sister, the protagonist in John Birmingham's memoir He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, and Almost Famous, based on the memories of the film's writer and director, Cameron Crowe.

He appears in the video Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow – a song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, along with the video for M.O.R. by British alternative rock group Blur. Taylor stars in Simon Rumley's mystery thriller Red White & Blue, which had its world premiere as part of the SXSW Film Festival in March 2010.

In 2011, he released his first EP, Live Free or Die!!!, with his band Noah Taylor & the Sloppy Boys on Z-Man Records.

Personal life

When not acting, Taylor draws and paints, and is also an accomplished musician, playing viola and French horn as a young teenager, and guitar from the age of 16. He plays the piano by ear. He has sung and played guitar in several of his own bands, including Honky Tonk Angels, Cardboard Box Man, Flipper & Humphrey, Access Axis, and The Thirteens, a country-western rock band described by Taylor as, "three manic depressives playing sad angst and western music for sad people". He names Johnny Cash and Lou Reed as two of the artists he admires. On 14 November 2012 he married Dionne Harris, an Australian fashion designer.

Taylor lives in Brighton, East Sussex.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography

• The Year My Voice Broke (1987) – Danny Embling
• The Prisoner of St. Petersburg (1989) – Jack
• Bangkok Hilton (1989) – Billy Engels
• Songlines: Video for "Romeos" by Alphaville (1989)
• Flirting (1991; sequel to The Year My Voice Broke)
• "The Promised Land" episode of TV's Inspector Morse (1991) – Dave Harding
• The Nostradamus Kid (1992) – Ken Elkin
• Secrets (1992) – Randolf
• Shine (1996) – Adolescent David Helfgott
• Simon Magus (1999) – Simon
• Almost Famous (2000) – Dick Roswell
• Vanilla Sky (2001) – Edmund Ventura
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) – Bryce Turing
• He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (2001) – Danny
• Max (2002) – Adolf Hitler
• Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003) – Bryce Turing
• The Sleeping Dictionary (2003) – Neville Shipperly
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) – Vladimir Wolodarsky
• The New World (2005) – Selway
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) – Mr. Bucket
• Lecture 21 (2008) – Peters
• The New Daughter (2009) – Professor Evan White
• Red, White & Blue (2010) – Nate
• Submarine (2010) – Lloyd Tate
• Red Dog (2011) - Jack
• Lawless (2012) - Gummy Walsh
• Game of Thrones (2013) - Locke
• Mindscape (2013) - Peter Lundgreen

External links

• Noah Taylor at the Internet Movie Database