Miranda Tapsell

Miranda Tapsell (born 11 December 1987) is a Larrakia Aboriginal Australian actress of both stage and screen, best known for her role as Cynthia in the Wayne Blair film The Sapphires and her 2015 performance as Martha Tennant in the Nine Network drama series Love Child. In 2016, she portrayed Fatima in the Stan series Wolf Creek. Early life Tapsell was born in Darwin, Northern Territory, on 11 December 1987 to Tony and Barbara Tapsell. When she was five the family moved to Jabiru in West Arnhem Land, where she grew up around Kakadu National Park. In 2004, when she was 16, Tapsell won the Bell Shakespeare Company regional performance scholarship. After finishing school she moved to Sydney to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) from where she graduated in 2008. Career Miranda's first stage appearance was at the Jabiru Wind Festival in September, 1999. She sang as a student with the Jabiru Area School Choir. Tapsell has been active both on stage and screen, starting with her 2008 performance in Dallas Winmar's play Yibiyung at the Belvoir Theatre, where she had the title role. In June 2010 she performed in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Old Town Hall Ruins, Darwin. Later in that year she appeared as Ngala in Kamarra Bell-Wykes' Mother's Tongue at the Yirra Yaakin Theatre in Perth, a play about a young woman's connection to her Indigenous heritage. 2012 saw Tapsell as Bonita in the mini-series Mabo and then in the breakthrough role of Cynthia McRae, one of The Sapphires, Wayne Blair's film about a group of four Indigenous singers during the Vietnam War era. Tapsell topped the year off with her appearance as Teneka in the second episode of the ABC's Redfern Now.