Paul Blackwell was a well-known Australian stage actor and occasional film actor.
He attended the National Institute of Dramatic Arts from 1980 to 1982 and has appeared in many productions from some of Australia's best-known theatre companies, including Company B, Sydney Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Patch Theatre and Opera Australia.
He has appeared in several films, though often in small parts.
His only major film role was the 1996 film The Quiet Room directed by Rolf De Heer; it was critically acclaimed and was screened as part of the main competition of the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
His recent film appearances include Candy, directed by Neil Armfield and starring Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush and Abbie Cornish; December Boys, starring Daniel Radcliffe; Hey Hey its Esther Blueburger and the silent film Dr.
Plonk, another collaboration with Rolf De Heer.
A couple trapped in a cinema are manipulated into becoming unwilling actors in a film being captured by CCTV cameras.
This film is a smart, rueful and dead-on portrait of life's unending quest to fit in; and the girl who solves it by completely breaking out - introduces a feisty outsider hero unlike any other seen on screen. Esther Blueburger's quest begins when she escapes from her Bat Mitzvah party and is befriended by Sunni.., the effortlessly cool girl who is everything Esther thinks she wants to be. With the help of Sunni, Esther goes away from her ordinary life and leaves behind her malfunctioning Jewish family to hang out with Sunni's far breezier and super-hip single mom Mary and attend Sunni's forbidden public school as a Swedish exchange student.
For many years, four teenage orphans at an Australian outback convent have watched their younger comrades find new parents, and realize that they may never be adopted. The Reverend Mother sends the four boys away on a seaside vacation, where they meet Teresa and Fearless, a couple who would make perfect parents. The youths compete with one another to be the one Teresa and Fearless decide to adopt.
A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.
A group of film students set out to finish filming a movie that was never completed after its director was murdered. After they begin filming, they realize they're in for a bit of trouble, not unlike the late director...