Claudia Karvan

Aussie actress Claudia Karvan lived out one of the most unconventional of childhoods, as the daughter of two nightclub proprietors in the seedy, adult-oriented Kings Cross district of Sydney. Though Claudia spent a short period dabbling in rebellious and somewhat edgy behavior, she remained inherently intellectual and gravitated heavily to literature as a primary source of fascination. Karvan moved into film at the tender age of 9, when a friend's father cast her in a prominent role in the family-oriented drama Molly; numerous additional assignments followed, culminating with a lead as a wayward abandoned adolescent whose path intersects with that of the mother who abandoned her (Judy Davis), in white-hot director Gillian Armstrong's slice-of-life drama High Tide (1987). Karvan scored even greater acclaim and popularity as one of the stars of the 90210-like Australian series drama The Secret Life of Us, about a group of trendy twenty-somethings, and then produced and co-starred in a follow-up series about similar characters in their thirties, entitled My Way. Meanwhile, Karvan's feature work continued; projects included the 1992 Redheads, the 1994 Tales of Erotica, and the 2000 outing Risk. In 2008 Karvan lent her voice to the groundbreaking claymation feature $9.99, opposite Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia and Secret Life co-star Samuel Johnson.

~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide