Judy Davis

Born: April 23 1955
Where: Perth, Australia

The tempestuous star first came to the attention in Gillian Armstrong's hit romantic drama My Brilliant Career.

A shrewd judge of roles, appearances have included Passage to India, Barton Fink and Husbands and Wives.

Like Bette Davis in the 1930s and 40s, Davis is not one to suffer fools and has no trouble expressing her feelings, be it on stage, screen or TV.

The youngest of three, Davis admitted to suffering a repressed childhood, in part due to her family's staunch Catholicism.

After dropping out of convent school, she joined a rock and blues band and toured Asia, before returning home to Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Arts.

With stage experience (she appeared as Juliet to Mel Gibson's Romeo) and a one-line role in 1977's "High Rolling", she auditioned for My Brilliant Career.

She went on to utterly convince as a desperate prostitute seeking a way out of her life in The Winter of Our Dreams and as an anarchist in Heatwave.

Davis proved stunning as the young incarnation of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in an Emmy-nominated turn in the syndicated 1982 TV series A Woman Called Golda.

However, judgement deserted her when she starred opposite Lewis Collins as a terrorist in the absymal Who Dares Wins.

Still resisting Hollywood, she did accept the leading role of the genteel cultural adventuress Adela Quested in A Passage to India.

There were reports of conflict with aged director David Lean, but a performance of grace and skill earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination.

Davis returned to Australia to co-star with her husband, actor Colin Friels, in Kangaroo.

She then delivered what is arguably her best leading performance as a footloose singer who reconnects with the daughter she abandoned years earlier in High Tide.

Beginning in the 90s, she inaugurated a relationship with Woody Allen with a small role in Alice.

Davis received a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Husbands and Wives and she also starred in Deconstructing Harry and Celebrity.

(she once said she'd always wanted to act alongside Deconstructing Harry co-star Robin Williams - but they never shared a scene).

The Coen brothers tapped her to play the lover of a William Faulkner-like author in their study of Hollywood Barton Fink.

David Cronenberg cast her as the bug-spray addicted wife of William Burroughs in the film adaptation of Naked Lunch.

Davis demonstrated her formidable comic capabilities with a deft turn as Kevin Spacey's embittered, shrewish wife in the black comedy The Ref.

The actress returned to Australia to star as a Stalinist with more than a passing acquaintance with the Russian leader in the farcical comedy Children of the Revolution.

Davis played a presidential chief of staff in the Clint Eastwood vehicle Absolute Power and portrayed Jack Nicholson's ex-wife in the uneven Blood & Wine.

Preoccupying herself with TV work, she was back on the big screen in 2001 in the Australian feature The Man Who Sued God opposite her husband Colin Friels.

Recent work includes the drama Swimming Upstream about Australian swimming champion Anthony Fingleton.