Ewen Leslie

Biography

He was born in Fremantle, Western Australia. He gained a scholarship to study theatre at John Curtin College of the Arts and at age 12 was cast in the TV series Ship to Shore. He was accepted into the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts straight out of high school and graduated in 2000. He has become a leading actor across Film, TV and Theatre. In 2007 he was cast by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Riflemind, a play by Andrew Upton which premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company. He was offered a place in the STC Actors Company by Robyn Nevin, and in 2009 won a Helpmann Award and a Sydney Theatre Award for his performance as Prince Hal/Henry V opposite Cate Blanchett in The War of the Roses (directed by Benedict Andrews). In 2010 he played Richard III at the Melbourne Theatre Company directed by Simon Philips. Alison Croggon in The Australian wrote: ‘This is a deeply intelligent performance, physically and emotionally unafraid. It marks the ascension of a remarkable actor’. He won his second Helpmann Award and a Green Room Award for this performance. The following year he played Hamlet in a sellout season at the Melbourne Theatre Company (a role he would reprise in 2013 in Sydney for Belvoir St Theatre). He played one of the lead roles in The Wild Duck (directed by Simon Stone) which had successful seasons in Sydney, Melbourne and Oslo for The Ibsen Festival. He was The Player in STC’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead opposite Toby Schmitz and Tim Minchin. In 2015 he traveled to Paris to perform in Simon Stone’s production of Thyestes, and played the title role in Belvoir’s award-winning production of Ivanov.