Maggie Millar
Convention topic: Leaving the Father's House: Why Saying Goodbye to God is Good News for Girls and Women.
Maggie will chair the Women’s Panel on Saturday.
Maggie Millar is an honours graduate of RADA London, having won a scholarship, and winning ,the Gertrude Lawrence award for her portrayal of the mother in William Inge’s Picnic. Well known for her many TV roles (Bellbird, The Sullivans, All the Way, Prisoner and most recently Rev. Rosie Hoyland in Neighbours), she has won three awards for excellence – one in theatre for her performance as Catherine in The Heiress and two for her television work - appeared onstage with many theatre companies including the Old Vic Company (with Vivien Leigh directed by Sir Robert Helpmann), Elizabethan Theatre Trust, Melbourne Theatre Company, J C Williamson, Playbox, La Mama, etc, in the films Phar Lap, Bushfire Moon, The Bit Part and Pieta, and on many ABC radio programs. She served on the Women's Committee of the M.E.A.A. (formerly Actors Equity) being specially interested in the portrayal of and opportunities for women in the entertainment industry.
When faced with a reduction in work opportunities (something many older women in the industry experience) she embarked on a different path after her celebrated performance as Molly Bloom.
She has written and spoken extensively on the subjects of Body Image and Self-Acceptance, and Older Women and the Media. Women of Substance (Allen & Unwin) and Sizeable Reflections (Women's Press UK) both contain her contributions. As well as presenting at many seminars, including a NSW Government Summit on Body Image, (on which she also wrote the report Caring for Health ) and Melbourne University’s Key Centre for Women’s Health on Older Women and the Media. she has travelled extensively in country areas giving workshops and presentations on Ageing, Body Image and Self Acceptance. She was on the Media committee for Seniors Year and has contributed to seminars and workshops with Council on the Ageing.
An adoptee and first mother, she was Public Relations Officer for Jigsaw Victoria, the organisation which successfully campaigned for changes to adoption laws in Victoria. She has devised a varied program of Poetry and Prose Readings which she has presented at many venues and festivals in Australia, as well as conducting popular workshops for writers on reading their own work in public.
In the last few years she has developed her skills as a pastel painter, holding her first successful solo exhibition in 2000 at Chapel off Chapel, and is currently doing a Visual Arts Diploma.
In January 2001 she returned to the stage, appearing in two successful seasons of A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters with Alan Hopgood, her former TV husband in Bellbird,. She has appeared in two Pantomime productions in the U.K., and opened the Daphne du Maurier Festival in Fowey, Cornwall, in May 2003. She produced Actors for Refugees Club Refuge in Canberra, including two performances in Parliament House. In 2007 she played the lead in If I Should Die Before I Wake, a play by Rebecca Lister at Chapel off Chapel about confronting death and disability, and initiated a project together with Alan Hopgood for Diabetes Australia Victoria on living with Diabetes entitled A Pill A Pump and a Needle and a one woman version entitled A Very Good Thing! In June 2008 she read her celebrated Molly Bloom on Bloomsday in Dublin.
A “splendid speaker” she was chosen to address over 500 prominent Victorian women at the last Mary Owen Dinner in May 2005,and was inducted into the Victorian Women’s Honour Roll for her advocacy in the fields of adoption, body image and ageing in 2007.
Maggie has organised conferences for the Rationalist Society of Australia and is married to its president, Ian Robinson.
