Gus Mercurio
Boxing came first. Gus Mercurio was American by birth and Australian by career, and he arrived at acting sideways: he trained and worked as a chiropractor, and he spent decades inside boxing as a referee and a judge. That is the world that made him a public face, along with a long run as a commentator on the Seven Network's World of Sport between 1976 and 1987. The Sydney Morning Herald called him one of the most recognised and loved faces in Australian television.
The screen work fits a man who spent his working life around fighters. He was cast as officers, mates, sergeants and heavies, physically credible in a period when Australian cinema wanted exactly that: Frew in The Man from Snowy River, Red in the ugly and effective Turkey Shoot, Frank in Crocodile Dundee II. He appears in both Blue Lagoon films, eleven years apart, first as an officer and then as a first mate, which is a neat accident of casting.
Television kept him busy on both sides of the Pacific. He was Bob Connors in the Australian-shot revival of Mission: Impossible and Cap Daulton in the 1990s Flipper, and he had a run on the colonial-era series Five Mile Creek. He was never a lead. He was the reliable large presence a scene could be built against, which is a different and scarcer thing.
Movies (5)
TV (3)
Where to start with Gus Mercurio
The Man from Snowy River is the right first stop, partly because it is the best film on this list and partly because Mercurio's Frew belongs to the kind of ensemble the picture depends on, a mountain community drawn in broad, confident strokes.
Then take Turkey Shoot, which is nastier and cheaper and considerably more interesting than its reputation, a piece of Ozploitation where his Red is genuinely unpleasant rather than cartoonish. Crocodile Dundee II is the mainstream option and the one most people will already have seen. The pair of The Blue Lagoon and Return to the Blue Lagoon is a curiosity more than a recommendation. On television, Mission: Impossible is worth trying, an Australian-produced revival that is stranger and stiffer than the original series, and Five Mile Creek is the gentle period option.