Magda Szubanski

In 2003 and 2004 surveys, she polled as the most recognised and well-liked Australian television personality. Szubanski has spoken openly about her struggles with intergenerational trauma, anxiety and suicidal ideation in her teens. She became an activist for LGBT rights and, in 2017, advocated for same-sex marriage in Australia. In 2015, Szubanski released her memoir, Reckoning.

• Born — 12 April 1961 • Birth Name — Magdalene Mary Therese Szubanski • Birthplace — Liverpool, England • Occupation — * Actor • author • comedian • LGBT rights advocate • Years Active — 1986–present • Education — Siena College • Alma Mater — University of Melbourne • Notable Works — Esme Cordelia Hoggett in Babe (1995) and its 1998 sequel

Szubanski was born on 12 April 1961, in Liverpool, England and moved to Melbourne, Australia when she was four. Her mother Margaret (née McCarthy) is Scottish-Irish and came from a poor family. Her father, Zbigniew Szubański, came from a well-off Polish family and was an assassin in a counter-intelligence branch of the Polish resistance movement in World War II. She is a cousin of Polish actor Magdalena Zawadzka. Szubanski attended Siena College, Melbourne. In 1976, as a Year 10 student, she captained a team on the television quiz show It's Academic. Szubanski studied fine arts and philosophy at the University of Melbourne where she attained a Bachelor of Arts.

• Illustration — Szubanski in character at the Kath & Kimderella film premiere, August 2012 Szubanski was a writer and performer of sketch comedy. In 1985, while performing in a University of Melbourne revue of Too Cool for Sandals, Szubanski, Michael Veitch, Tom Gleisner and others were talent-spotted by Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) producers, which led to The D-Generation television sketch comedy show. Szubanski was one of the creators and performers of the Fast Forward television sketch comedy for the Seven Network, in which she played various characters, including Pixie-Anne Wheatley, Chenille from the Institute de Beauté, Wee Mary MacGregor, Joan Kirner, Michelle Grogan. The character of Lynne Postlethwaite was first performed on the ABC's The D-Generation. It was originally written by John Allsop and Andrew Knight, but from Fast Forward on Szubanski co-wrote the sketches, and created and co-wrote her characters. In 1995, she and friends Gina Riley and Jane Turner wrote, performed and produced the first all-female Australian sketch comedy television program; Big Girl's Blouse. When Riley and Turner developed sketch-characters they had created into the sitcom Kath & Kim, Szubanski joined them to play Sharon Strzelecki, a character she had previously created. That same year, Szubanski hosted the 37th Australian Film Institute Awards. In 1999, Szubanski created, wrote, co-produced and played Margaret O'Halloran in the Dogwoman series of TV films, a detective style show based on the idea an expert "dog-whisperer" who, by treating problem dogs, inadvertently stumbles upon and solves human crimes. • Illustration — Sharon Strzelecki is one of Szubanski's most developed characters In 2009, she appeared on Who Do You Think You Are? where she explored her father's Polish Resistance activities as well as the story of her shell-shocked Irish grandfather and her sculptor ancestor Luigi Isepponi who assisted in making the death mask for William Burke, half of the duo Burke and Hare, notorious grave robbers and serial killers. From 3 September 2018, Szubanski recurred as Jemima Davies-Smythe on Neighbours. Her character officiated the first same-sex wedding on Australian television. On 8 April 2019, she appeared as "Guest Announcer" on Chris & Julia's Sunday Night Takeaways season finale where she participated in a number of roles. On 9 March 2021, Szubanski was announced as the host of the Nine Network's revival of The Weakest Link. Initially due to premiere on 4 May 2021, it instead premiered on 25 May following a tight production schedule.

In 2007, Szubanski ventured into musical comedy, taking on the role of William Barfee in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of the hit Broadway musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Variety described her performance as "sensationally good". Australian Stage said, "Magda Szubanski as the Eric Cartman-esque William Barfee steals the show." In 2008, she again participated in some gender-blind casting, taking on the role of pint-sized gangster Big Jule in a major stage production of Guys and Dolls. In 2010, she appeared in the first Indigenous musical film Bran Nue Dae as Roadhouse Betty alongside Geoffrey Rush, Ernie Dingo, Missy Higgins and Deborah Mailman. The film was directed by Rachel Perkins, daughter of the Aboriginal activist Charlie Perkins. In 2012, she again teamed with Rush to appear in the Stephen Sondheim musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

In 2020, Szubanski was the painted subject of Wendy Sharpe's Archibald Prize entry, a portrait painting competition held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In Sharpe's painting, Comedy and Tragedy, Szubanski is depicted as Sharon Strzelecki, standing amongst flaming buildings during an air raid. The painting achieved finalist status in the competition; and in an interview with AGNSW, Sharpe commented: After an intense conversation with Magda in my Sydney studio, I decided to change my original concept for the portrait and painted her as a despairing version of her comic character/alter ego Sharon. Magda is haunted by her father's traumatic experiences in World War II in the Polish resistance, and by current world events.'

In 2004, Szubanski advertised the airline Jetstar. Szubanski became a spokesperson for the dieting company Jenny Craig in November 2008. Szubanski joined Jenny Craig weighing 110 kg and had been diagnosed with sleep apnoea. By July 2009, she had lost 36 kg to weigh 85 kg. She later regained weight, then was dropped as a spokesperson for Jenny Craig. However, subsequent weight loss led to her being re-signed as their spokesperson. She was later again dropped from Jenny Craig. She was also featured in commercials for Telstra in 2014. In 2019, she appeared in an Uber Eats ad in her Sharon Strzelecki character with a "Kim", referencing fellow Kath & Kim character Kim Craig, but who turns out to be Kim Kardashian.

In 2015, Szubanski released a memoir, Reckoning, in large part about her father, Zbigniew Szubanski who was a World War 2 Polish Resistance assassin, and dealing with themes of intergenerational trauma, possible genetic inheritance of traumatic memory and Szubanski's struggles with her own sexuality. The book won the TBA and $40,000 Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction and "Book of the Year" and "Biography of the Year" at the Australian Book Industry Awards. Reviewer Peter Craven, in The Australian, said it would "dazzle every kind of reader" and described it as "a riveting, overwhelmingly poignant autobiography by a woman of genius. It is a book about how someone might live with the idea of killing the thing they love. It is a story of love and death and redemption and a daughter's love for her father. It is an extraordinary hymn to the tragic heroism at the heart of ordinary life and the soaring moral scrutiny of womankind. Every library should have it, every school should teach it." Richard Ferguson in The Sydney Morning Herald wrote, "This is documentary writing of the highest order and Szubanski has given life to an incredible war story...Reckoning, this tale of war and suburbia, sexuality and comedy" and referred to Szubanski as an A-grade non-fiction writer. Actor and friend Geoffrey Rush launched her book and wrote in The Guardian: "I was absorbed in preparing for King Lear when I read the book. The classical stature of that particular father-daughter relationship didn't go unnoticed. Magda grew up in the shadow of a difficult reckoning — the summation, the questioning, the Elizabethan sense of settling the bill with one's parents. As she phrases it: her father needed to forget— she needed to remember. The only way forward was back. Her book riffs a major life in a reflective minor key. I've got lost in Joyce's Dublin, Woolf's Bloomsbury, the Bronte Sisters' Yorkshire moors. Now I'm enthralled with Magda Szubanski's Croydon, Australia's own collective sub-conscious suburb, the architecture of which she deftly anoints as Bauhaus's "bastard child"...Reckoning is really a non-fiction novel – and its invitation into Magda's story is infectious." The New South Wales Premier's Award judges described Reckoning as 'warm, clear, wise, funny and deeply intelligent. The amplitude of Szubanski's writing is particularly impressive. Her voice has a light surety, while constantly giving narrative and moral weight to the larger themes of grief, family, migration and finding one's place in the world'."

In 2019, Szubanski was appointed an officer in the general division of the Order of Australia (AO) "for distinguished service to the performing arts as an actor, comedian and writer, and as a campaigner for marriage equality." In 2025, she was inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame, for her contribution to comedy, literature and activism. She is the fifth female inductee to enter into the Logies Hall of Fame.

Szubanski has been a vocal campaigner for LGBT rights and for same-sex marriage since coming out publicly in 2012. She is patron of the LGBT group, Twenty/10. During the same-sex Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, Szubanski was interviewed on several TV shows advocating for a "Yes" result. The co-chair of Australian Marriage Equality (Alex Greenwich) rated her efforts as "crucial" in the success of the "Yes" campaign.

In 2020, Szubanski and Will "Egg Boy" Connolly raised $190,000 for bushfire affected communities and together with trauma experts co-founded "Regeneration", a creative arts project to provide mental-health support. In 2013, Szubanski became the Patron of "Twenty10".

In the 1990s Szubanski did blackface for a television show which aired on the Seven Network. She has since acknowledged this was a mistake. “We didn’t know, and that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook”. In 2019, Szubanski was involved in a campaign targeting Christian preacher and rugby league football player Israel Folau after he called on homosexuals to "repent of their sins and turn to God". Szubanski prominently launched an appeal to fund opposition to Folau. After Szubanski was criticised, Folau called for an end to online attacks on Szubanski. In 2020, the Commissioner for eSafety, Julie Inman Grant, told Senate Estimates that Szubanski had been the target of "Volumetric...co-ordinated right-wing extremist attacks" after she appeared in a COVID safety ad. In April 2021 Szubanski faced criticism and calls for her to hand back the award which had appointed her officer in the Order of Australia (AO) after she criticised the appearance of Jenny Morrison, wife of the then Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. Commenting on the Morrisons in a photograph of the Prime Minister signing a condolence book after the death of Prince Philip, Szubanski compared the Prime Minister's wife's appearance to a character in a fictional religious extremist society of sex slaves from the series The Handmaid's Tale.

On 14 February 2012, Szubanski came out in a statement supporting same-sex marriage and stated that she "absolutely identifies as gay" in an interview on Australian TV current affairs program The Project. Szubanski has described herself as "culturally Catholic". In May 2025, Szubanski announced that she had been diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, a rare form of cancer, and that it had progressed to stage 4.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1986–1987 — data-sort-value="D-Generation, The" | The D-Generation — Various characters • 1988 — data-sort-value="D-Generation Goes Commercial, The" | The D-Generation Goes Commercial — Various characters • 1989–1992 — Fast Forward — Pixie-Anne Wheatley, Chenille, Joan Kirner, Mary McGregor, Maggie T & Satan's Brides • 1992 — Bligh — Betsy Bligh • 1993 — Full Frontal — Various characters • data-sort-value="Making of Nothing, The" | The Making of Nothing — Judith Gates/Kim Borrodale • data-sort-value="Royal Commission into the Australian Economy, A" | A Royal Commission into the Australian Economy — Mr Cardigan, Mr Trouser, Bill Kelty • 1994 — Big Girl's Blouse — Herself, Sharon Karen Strzelecki, Lynne Postlethwaite • 1995 — data-sort-value="Search for Christmas, The" | The Search for Christmas — Herself • 1996 — data-sort-value="Genie from Down Under, The" | The Genie from Down Under — Doris • 1997 — Good Guys, Bad Guys — Bella Bouvier • 1998 — Something Stupid — Various characters • 1999–2001 — Farscape — Furlow • 2000–2001 — Dogwoman — Margaret O'Halloran • 2002–2007 — Kath & Kim — Sharon Karen Strzelecki, Lorraine Craig • 2006 — Magda's Funny Bits — Mary McGregor, Chenille, Sharon Karen Strzelecki, Lynne Postlethwaite • 2009 — data-sort-value="Spearman Experiment, The" | The Spearman Experiment — Host • 2010 — Who Do You Think You Are? — Herself • 2014 — Rake — Helen • Legit — Anne Jefferies • It's a Date — Mary-Angela • 2015 — Open Slather — Various characters • Stop Laughing... This Is Serious — Herself • 2016 — Anh's Brush with Fame — Herself — Series 1 Episode 1 • Q&A — Herself — (19 September 2016) • 2017 — Q&A — Herself — 23 October • 2018 — Neighbours — Jemima Davies-Smythe — 11 episodes • 2019 — Chris & Julia's Sunday Night Takeaway — Herself: Guest Announcer — Season Finale: 14 April • 2019 — My Life Is Murder — Miranda Lee — Episode: "Old School"; Series 1 Episode 7 • 2021–2022 — Weakest Link (Australia) — Herself • 2022 — After the Verdict — Margie • 2022 — God's Favorite Idiot — Bathroom God • 2022 — Magda's Big National Health Check — Herself — Documentary

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1985 — Too Cool for Sandals — various • 1993 — data-sort-value="Rise and Fall of Little Voice, The" | The Rise and Fall of Little Voice — Sadie • 2005 — Grease: The Arena Spectacular (National Australia Tour) — Miss Lynch • 2007 — data-sort-value="Madwoman of Chaillot, The" | The Madwoman of Chaillot — Countess Aurelia • 2008 — Guys and Dolls — Big Jule • 2012 — data-sort-value="Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A" | A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum — Domina

Magda Szubanski was born on 12 April 1961 in Liverpool. Szubanski held the nationality of Australia and United Kingdom. Szubanski was educated at University of Melbourne and Siena College. Szubanski worked as comedian, film actor, screenwriter and film director, and the authority record catalogues a further 1 occupations under the same name, among them author. Szubanski was active from 1986. Szubanski worked in English.

Szubanski performed in the 1995 film Babe as Esme Hoggett. She reprised her role in the 1998 sequel, Babe: Pig in the City. She then teamed up again with director/producer George Miller to voice the role of Miss Viola in the animated films Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two. In 2007, she had a minor role as Mrs Lonsdale, the housemaid in The Golden Compass to Lyra Belacqua.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1995 — Babe — Esme Cordelia Hoggett • 1998 — Babe: Pig in the City • 2002 — data-sort-value="Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, The" | The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course — Brozzie Drewitt • 2005 — Son of the Mask — Neighbour Betty • 2006 — Happy Feet — Miss Viola — Voice • 2007 — Dr Plonk — Mrs. Plonk • Goodnight, Vagina — Mrs. March — Short • Little Deaths — Iris • data-sort-value="Golden Compass, The" | The Golden Compass — Mrs. Lonsdale • 2010 — Bran Nue Dae — Roadhouse Betty • Santa's Apprentice — Beatrice — Voice • 2011 — Happy Feet Two — Miss Viola • 2012 — Kath & Kimderella — Sharon Karen Strzelecki • 2013 — Goddess — Cassandra Wolfe • 2017 — Three Summers — Queenie • 2018 — data-sort-value="BBQ, The" | The BBQ — The Butcher • 2019 — Ride Like a Girl — Sister Dominique • 2020 — 100% Wolf — Mrs. Mutton — Voice • 2024 — Memoir of a Snail — Ruth

Acting • Won the 'Most Popular Comedy Personality' award at the 1991, 1992 and 1996 Logie awards • Won the Australian Film Institute's award 'Best Actress in a Supporting or Guest Role in a Television Drama' award in 2002 • Nominated 'Best Family Actress' OFTA Film Awards 1999 • Nominated for the 'Most Popular Actress' award at the 2005 Logie Awards, for her role in Kath & Kim • Nominated for 'Best Actress in a Supporting or Guest Role in a Television Drama or Comedy' award in 2003 at the AFI Awards • Nominated for 'Best Actress in a Supporting or Guest Role in a Television Drama or Comedy' award in 2004 at the AFI Awards • Nominated for 'Best Female actor in a Musical' at the 2006 Helpmann Awards for her role in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee • Nominated for 'Female Actor in a Featured Role' at the 2006 Green Room Awards for her role in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee • Nominated Silver Logie 'Most Popular Actress' in Kath & Kim 2008 • Nominated for 'Best Actress Supporting Role' Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards 2014 for Goddess Writing • Winner – Awgie Award for sketch comedy Big Girl's Blouse • Winner – Awgie Award Fast Forward Writing team best Comedy/Revue/Sketch, 1990, 1991 • Winner, Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice Award, 2016 award • Winner, Book of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards, 2016 award • Winner, Biography of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards, 2016 award • Winner, Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, 2016 award • Winner, Indie Award for Non-Fiction, 2016 award • Winner, Victorian Community History Award Judges' Special Prize, 2016 award • Shortlisted, Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards, 2016 award • Shortlisted, Dobbie Literary Award, 2016 award • Shortlisted, National Biography Award, 2016 Other • Winner, Liberty Voltaire Award for Free Speech, 2018 • Winner, Excellence in Women's Leadership Victoria, 2018 • Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), 2019 • Nominated, Victorian Australian of the year, 2017 • Australia Post, Australian Legends of Comedy stamp series, 2020