Deborah Mailman wins Best Actress at the 1998 AFI Awards

In this excerpt from the 1998 AFI Awards ceremony, held at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre on 7 November 1998, actors Guy Pearce and Greta Scacchi present the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.

The award goes to Deborah Mailman for her portrayal of Nona in Radiance (Rachel Perkins, 1998), about 3 sisters who have reunited following the death of their mother.

Mailman was not at the ceremony that night. Instead, she accepted her award and gave a speech in a live cross to the Sydney Opera House, where she was playing Cordelia in the Bell Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear.

Genuinely happy and surprised to win, Mailman's speech is interrupted first by the sound of a boat on the harbour and then a lightning display as it starts to rain!

At age 26, Mailman already had an impressive list of theatre credits to her name, including the stage production of Radiance and the one-woman show The Seven Stages of Grieving. However, the film adaptation of Radiance was Mailman’s first role in feature films or television.

Mailman is the first Aboriginal woman to win the Best Actress AFI award. To date, she has won 5 additional AFI/AACTA Awards for her film and TV work, in Bran Nue Dae (Best Supporting Actress, 2010), Offspring (Guest or Supporting Actress in a TV Drama, 2010), The Sapphires (Actress, 2013), Mystery Road (Guest or Supporting Actress in a TV Drama, 2018) and Total Control (Lead Actress in a TV Drama, 2019).