Robyn Jane Malcolm (born 1965) is a New Zealand actress, who first gained recognition for her role as nurse Ellen Crozier on the soap opera Shortland Street. She is best known for playing Cheryl West, matriarch to a sometimes criminal working-class family, in the television series Outrageous Fortune. She has also worked in Australia, including roles in the TV series Rake and Upper Middle Bogan. She plays the lead role in the six-part 2023 NZ drama After the Party.

Early life and education

Robyn Jane Malcolm was born in 1965 in Ashburton, New Zealand. She attended Ashburton College, and graduated from Toi Whakaari (New Zealand Drama School) with a Diploma in Acting in 1987.

Career

Malcolm's first long-running television role was nurse Ellen Crozier in soap opera Shortland Street. She appeared on the show for over five years. She played the lead role in television feature, Clare, based on the cervical cancer experiment at Auckland's National Women's Hospital which resulted in the Cartwright Inquiry. In 1999, Malcolm was one of the founding members of the New Zealand Actors' Company along with Tim Balme, Katie Wolfe, and Simon Bennett. The company produced and toured a number of successful stage productions throughout New Zealand. In 2005, Malcolm took on the role of Cheryl West, matriarch of the West family, in Outrageous Fortune. Mixing comedy and drama, the show became one of the highest-rated and most honoured in New Zealand history. Malcolm co-starred in 2010 feature film The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell, playing mother to a family obsessed with go-karting and motorsports. She has also had small roles in movies Absent Without Leave directed by John Laing, The Last Tattoo directed by John Reid, Gaylene Preston's Perfect Strangers, and Christine Jeffs' Sylvia. She had a minor role as Morwen in the second film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She played Kirsty Corella in the Australian television series Rake, and Julie Wheeler in Upper Middle Bogan. She plays Mrs Keene on the 2023 drama series Black Bird. Malcolm plays the lead role in the six-part drama After the Party, which aired on TVNZ from 29 October 2023. The Guardian reviewer Luke Buckmaster called it "one of the greatest performances in any TV show in years".

Recognition, awards, and honours

Malcolm was nominated for Best Actress at the 1998 TV Guide Television Awards for her work in Shortland Street. She was nominated again for her role in Clare. In 2003, Malcolm won an International Actors Fellowship at the Globe Theatre in London. For her role in Outrageous Fortune, Malcolm won several television awards, including the Qantas TV Awards for Best Actress in 2005 and 2008, TV Guide Best Actress in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 and Air NZ Screen Awards Best Actress in 2007. Malcolm won the Woman's Day Readers' Choice Award for Favourite New Zealand Female Personality in 2005, and New Zealand's sexiest woman at the 2007 TV Guide Best on the Box awards. In the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours, Malcolm was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to television and theatre. In March 2024 she was honoured with a Best Actress accolade at the Series Mania film festival in Lille, France. She received this prestigious award in the International Panorama section for her outstanding performance in After the Party, a series she co-created with writer Dianne Taylor. This recognition marked a significant milestone as the first time a New Zealand entry had been considered for an award at the festival.

Filmography

Films

Television

Theatre

Personal life

Malcolm was formerly married to Allan Clark and has two sons. She is in a relationship with Scottish actor Peter Mullan, whom she met while filming Top of the Lake in 2013. Her sister is married to Roger Sutton, the former CEO of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority.

Activism

Malcolm voiced Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand advertisements for the New Zealand general election, 2008. Malcolm has helped spearhead an actors' union campaign to negotiate standard contracts for actors in The Hobbit films. The producers refused, saying that collective bargaining would be considered price-fixing and therefore illegal under New Zealand law. The situation escalated into international calls for an actors' boycott of the films, but the boycott was called off. Several days later, the producers said they were considering moving the films to another country as they could not be guaranteed stability in New Zealand.