Hannah Dawson’s Biography as at 24.09.2013

Hannah was born on 27 October 1994, a striking addition to the previously drab and undistinguished population of New South Wales, Australia. Keenly dramatic from an early age, Hannah finally persuaded her doting parents, Elaine and Peter, to enrol her in acting classes at the age of ten (indeed, so persuasive was Hannah that her parents had, in fact, applied for her to be admitted for early entry to Law School). Despite being the youngest in her acting class, Hannah regarded her tender years as an asset and exploited her mastery of ‘pester power’ to secure fabulous kiddie roles. Clearly her youth would never interfere with her determination to perform. Hannah has maintained her passion for acting and has built a steady repertoire of performances, with almost eight years’ experience treading the boards.

Having lived most of her life in Canberra, Hannah has taken advantage of the broad range of opportunities offered by the national capital — and the fact that Canberra is conveniently located close to Sydney, the true home of performance opportunity. Most of her training has been at that beacon for talent, Canberra’s National Acting School, where she has studied under the watchful eye of acting teacher par excellence and now good friend, Bobby Farquhar. Hannah won a scholarship to study full time from 2009 to 2010 and managed to persuade her way into an extension of the scholarship until she left in December 2012 (her parents regarded this as further evidence of a brilliant legal career gone to waste). She also gained a host of frequent travelling points for the road to Sydney, where she attended a broad variety of courses conducted by well-known and highly respected directors and actors prominent in the Australian television and film industry. In December 2009 Hannah joined a class at The Australian Film and Television Academy (TAFTA), one of Australia’s most highly regarded acting institutions. Despite the fact that, once again this was an adult class and Hannah was the youngest student, she refused to be daunted and made the most of what was a rare and valuable opportunity. Her ‘pester power’ clearly remained undiminished.

As Hannah will tell anyone who asks (and lots of people who don’t), her most memorable experience as an actor thus far has been studying in Los Angeles, ‘where stars are born’. She has been to Los Angeles on three separate occasions, proving that Aussie accents are still the rage in the City of Angels. The first course she attended was a Hollywood Immersive with director Lilly Dawson (sadly, no relation!) and involved full-day classes with prominent acting mentor Margie Haber at the Margie Haber Studios in Los Angeles. The second and third times Hannah travelled to Los Angeles she did so as a member of the Australian Institute for Performing Arts with Marg Haynes. She studied at a number of other renowned academies including the Young Actors’ Space, Second City and Improv Olympic. Hannah found all these courses extraordinarily valuable in raising her acting to a new level and pushing her well beyond the limits of what she had achieved in Australia. She loved the thrill of performing in the US (an experience she hopes to repeat again and again if only her parents would selflessly take on those second, third and fourth jobs that would provide her the income to fly there several times a year).

Hannah is currently undertaking tertiary training in the Professional Actors Program at Actors College of Theatre and Television in Sydney (and is finally the same age as the rest of the students). This is a course that she knows will equip her to make her way in her chosen profession anywhere in the world (but preferably Los Angeles).

Acting aside, Hannah also enjoys writing and creating her own scripts and dabbling in monologues which she frequently uses for auditions. She was a member of the writing team for Canberra Dramatics’ rewrite of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in which she later played Rosaline, a part that was brought to life in the writing process. The play was renamed Take their life re-imagined and was nominated for a Canberra Area Theatre award for most creative piece. Hannah’s creative monologues clearly proved their worth.
Those creative monologues proven golden again when Hannah won a place as a semi-finalist in the 2010 Vancouver Acting Competition. She was particularly delighted with this as her entry involved a monologue she had written and filmed called Anna T Mitchell.

Despite her tender years, Hannah has already attracted the interest of Australian television. She scored a part in the popular Australian television series Packed to the Rafters, in which she played a schoolgirl, and won a role as Samantha in Tricky Business in 2012. She has won roles in corporate films including The Chaplain, a motivational production for troubled children designed to encourage them to discuss their plight with the school chaplain. The film proved highly successful and was screened in all Canberra schools. Hannah’s other corporate roles included the ‘difficult employee’ in a training film created by Gatecrasher Media for Upton Martin Management Training and designed for a leadership development program for the Defence Science Technology Organisation and the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation. Hannah has also appeared in a television commercial advertising the Canberra Film Festival. This was a new experience for Hannah whose facial features were used to create an animated television commercial called ‘The Fifty Foot Woman’. Hannah tried to explain that she isn’t fifty foot, but without success …

Hannah continues to develop her film work with some of her footage recently included in a 3D short film called BlackOut3D by Winifred Yang which is currently in the editing room. Some photos from this film are attached and illustrate the extraordinary nature of this production. The striking make-up is the work of SharpFX, which boasts a portfolio that includes The Hobbit, Matrix 2 and 3, Ghost Rider, House of Wax, Anacondas, Troy, Queen of the Damned, Babe 2, Prey and The Dark Lurking. For an extended look at this team’s stunning creativity, turn to their website at: http://www.sharpfx.com.au/resume/

Throughout her school years, Hannah was involved in a number of live stage productions and performed in a broad variety of roles. Her favourites include Jekyll and Hyde, in which she played both Nellie and a male role, Simon Stride; The Wedding Singer, in which she once again performed in multiple roles including Linda and a number of other characters; and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in which she took the lead role of Gwendolen Fairfax.

Hannah has just completed a role in her first professional film, Good Monster, Bad Monster. This film is part of the Anthology Locks of Love by Evan Croker. The film is scheduled to premiere in the near future and promises to be both extraordinary and surprising and, by all accounts, truly ground-breaking.

When asked what inspired Hannah to begin acting, she often recounts her memories of watching her first Doctor Who episode on television with her dad in 2005. Ever since, it has been her dream to win a role in a Doctor Who episode. Hannah is keen to play the Doctor’s assistant, although she feels she is more likely to be cast as an alien! She adds that this would not faze her and she would be equally glad to apply her considerable talents to portraying an alien of spectacular dimensions.

Hannah brings to each and every role an incredible passion for acting and a determination to bring that role to life. She understands the hard work that is part and parcel of every performance and is not afraid to devote long hours to honing her craft. She loves the technical aspects of acting and is investing her time in preparing to eventually take on the world, seizing every opportunity to shine and greeting every role, however modest, as created just for her. This, she believes, is the essence of performance.

Hannah would like to invite you to take a look at her resume on IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3896167/ and share her journey towards her performance goals. She has an official website, http://www.hannahdawson.com, which also describes the road she has travelled over the years and the path she is now taking towards success in her chosen profession.

As Hannah will tell you, this is only the beginning …

By Elaine Dawson Edited By Cathy McCullagh