Biographies

Best known for his lead role as Tom in the multi-award winning drama series Love My Way, actor and writer Brendan Cowell has appeared in numerous films since his big-screen debut in the 1998 Australian feature Kick. In 2007 Cowell won the Film Critics Circle of Australia award for best actor for his understated performance as a cop suffering from tinnitus in Matthew Saville's award-winning feature Noise. He was nominated for AFI and IF Awards the same year. Between 2005 and 2008, he received numerous award nominations for his performance in Love My Way, for which he also wrote. In 2007 Cowell co-starred in Ten Empty, a film he co-wrote with director Anthony Hayes. In 2001 and 2002, he also starred in and wrote for the SBS Television series Life Support. Cowell has won several awards for scriptwriting since his first play Men was performed at the Old Fitzroy Theatre in 2000, including the 2001 Gloria Dawn Payten Award, the 2001 Patrick White Playwright's Award, the 2003 Griffin Award and the 2005 Nicholas Parsons Young Playwright's Award. He received an Established Writers grant from the Australia Council in 2005 to develop his play Self Esteem. Brendan's latest play Ruben Guthrie recently played to sold out audiences and rave reviews at the Belvoir Street Theatre. Brendan is soon to publish his first novel and is one of the writers commissioned to adapt Christos Tsiolkos' novel The Slap for an upcoming ABC-TV series. In 2010, Brendan will perform in True West at the STC to be directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He is also the lead in Beneath Hill 60, the WW1 set feature film directed by Jeremy Sims being released in April.

Character: Jim

Jim is an emotionally stunted, 30-something man, who drives a miniature train for a living and lives in a bungalow at the back of his sister's house. He and his best friend Blake are one-nightstand sort of guys. They don't do relationships. But three and a half years after meeting the English backpacker Alice, Jim finds himself in love but without the heart or the words to tell her, a shortcoming that may cost him the best thing in his life.