Justine Clarke is an Australian actress, singer, musician, author and television host. She has been acting since the age of seven and has appeared in some of Australia's best-known TV shows. She is also a film and stage actor, and won the Best Actress Award at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival in Argentina in 2006 for her role in independent film Look Both Ways.
Clarke's first significant acting role was as the character Anna Goanna in the 1985 filmMad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The same year she appeared in the TV series The Maestro's Company and featured in the 1986 mini-series Professor Poopsnaggle's Steam Zeppelin. The following year she made appearances in A Country Practice and Willing and Abel. In 1988, Clarke began an eighteen months role on the soap opera, Home and Away, as one of 17 original cast members, playing the character of Ruth "Roo" Stewart. The character of Roo was reinstated in the cast list in 2010, portrayed by Georgie Parker, making the character of Roo one of only two remaining original characters in the series. Clarke was one of several Home and Away cast-members to star in a stage musical about the soap, which toured the UK in 1991. Following her departure from Home and Away in 1989, Clarke appeared in the short-lived series Family and Friends before going on to act in several mini-series including Come In Spinner, Golden Fiddles and Tracks of Glory. Clarke's film Turning April in 1996 was followed by Blackrock with Heath Ledger in 1997. More recently she has starred in the films Danny Deckchair and Look Both Ways. The role of Meryl Lee in Look Both Ways scored Clarke a nomination for an Australian Film Institute Lead Actress award in 2005 and the award for Best Actress at the Mar del PlataInternational Film Festival. In 1999, Clarke became a presenter on long-running ABC Kids television program, Play School, a role that she maintains to the present day. After appearing in three episodes of the series Wildside, she played Dr Samantha O'Hara in 21 episodes of All Saints. She also played the leading role in the Australian medical drama The Surgeon and appeared in the third season of the critically acclaimed Australian TV Drama series Love My Way, as Simone, the estranged sister of Asher Keddie's Julia. 2009 saw Clarke star in the Showcase television series Tangle. In 2012, she appeared in Woodley. Other television appearances followed, including playing the role of Bernadette in The Time of Our Lives from 2013–2014; Eve in House Husbands in 2016, and as Noelene Hogan in Hoges; as well as appearances in Rake and Gallipoli. In 2010, Clarke starred in the short film Peekaboo. She has also provided the voice of Miss Cassandra in the Maya The Bee films. Clarke created and starred in the popular children's television seriesThe Justine Clarke Show!, which premiered in 2017 on ABC KIDS.
Theatre
An experienced stage actor, Clarke has worked with the Sydney Theatre Company in productions such as The Man with Five Children, Trelawny of the Wells, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Herbal Bed, Hedda Gabler, Stiffs and Muriel's Wedding, and for Belvoir Company B in Michael Gow's Toy Symphony.
Music
Clarke has released multiple gold and platinum-selling albums and DVDs of children's music through ABC Music. Her albums include I Like To Sing ; Songs To Make You Smile ; Great Big World ; A Little Day Out With Justine Clarke ; Pyjama Jam! ; and The Justine Clarke Show!. Clarke has twice won the ARIA Award for Best Children's Album, in 2013 for A Little Day Out With Justine Clarke and in 2018 for The Justine Clarke Show!. Clarke's first-ever, career-spanning greatest hits collection, Everybody Roar! The Best of Justine Clarke, was released in November 2019. In 2019, she released her first ever original Christmas song, 'Here Comes A Merry Christmas', written with longtime collaborators Peter Dasent and Arthur Baysting. Music videos for many of Clarke's most well-known songs, including 'Watermelon' and 'Dinosaur Roar', are broadcast regularly on ABC KIDS TV. In 2016, Clarke collaborated with singer-songwriter Josh Pyke on 'Words Make The World Go Around', a song to celebrate, promote and raise funds for the work of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation In the 1990s, Clarke performed in a number of bands with fellow Australian thespians, including Loene Carmen and Noah Taylor. These groups included the country and western combo The Honky Tonk Angels; punk bandThe White Trash Mamas; and the avant-garde Cardboard Box Man. In the late '90s she was a backing vocalist in the Sydney band Automatic Cherry, which also featured The Cruel Sea guitarist James Cruickshank. The band released the albumSlow Burner in 1997. In 2014, Clarke teamed up with Tex Perkins for series of shows paying tribute to Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. Clarke is also a jazz vocalist and cabaret singer, popular on the Sydney club circuit.
Personal life
Clarke has three children named Josef, Nina and Max with her husband, actor Jack Finsterer and reside in Sydney.
