Tim Minchin is an Australian musician, composer, songwriter, actor, comedian and writer.
Originally from Perth, he completed a Bachelor of Arts in English and Theatre at the University of Western Australia in 1995, then an Advanced Diploma in Contemporary Music at the Conservatorium of WA – part of the WA Academy of Performing Arts – in 1998.
In 2002, he moved to Melbourne, where he began to develop the solo comedy shows which have gained him public and critical acclaim. He developed his unique style during an 18-month period when he played regularly in the famous 40-seat cabaret room of The Butterfly Club in South Melbourne, before producing his break out show, Dark Side, at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2005. This show won the inaugural Festival Directors’ Award and was picked up by legendary Edinburgh producer, Karen Koren, matriarch of the Gilded Balloon.
At the Edinburgh Fringe, Tim became one of the most successful ever debut acts, selling out the 300-seat Debating Hall and winning the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer. He subsequently went on to perform Dark Side at the Soho Theare and the Lyric Theatre in London’s West End, and also appeared on a bill with Mariah Carey and Westlife for the Tickled Pink Breast Cancer Fundraiser at the Royal Albert Hall (RAH), London.
Rock n Roll Nerd, a documentary about Tim’s life as he rose from obscurity to celebrity, between 2005 and 2006, was written, directed and filmed by Rhian Skirving. It premièred at the Melbourne International Film Festival in July 2008 and was released on DVD by Madman Entertainment in May 2009. It was shown at the Australian Film Festival at the Barbican, London in 2009.
Tim appeared at the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival in 2006 and the HBO US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado in January 2007, where he won the award for Best Alternative Comedian. In November that year, he performed at the HBO Comedy Festival in Las Vegas and sold out short seasons at Ars Nova in New York and the ACME Comedy Theatre in LA. He returned to the Just For Laughs Festival in 2010.
He performed for a six-week run at the New World Stages in New York in March 2008 and he was onstage again at the Royal Albert Hall (RAH), London, for The Secret Policeman’s Ball in October 2008, for Amnesty. He is regularly in demand to join line ups at various benefit gigs including WSPA, OrangAid and Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People in 2009; Libel Reform and Reprieve in 2010; Teenage Cancer Trust at the RAH, Friends of the Earth’s ‘Laugh or the Polar Bear Gets It’ and Crisis: Stand Up and Rock in 2011 and the Princes Gala Trust and War On Want in 2012. He has also performed at both TAM London events to date.
In Australia, he has performed sellout shows at the Sydney Opera House, the Brisbane Powerhouse and His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth, and has performed at the Adelaide Fringe, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Big Laugh Festival in Sydney.
He has become a favourite at various UK festivals and outdoor events including Latitude, The Big Chill, Reading and Leeds Weekends, Camp Bestival, Sonosphere, V, Hay, the Eden Sessions, Kew The Music, E4’s Udderbelly and Somerset House. In the US he performed at the 2011 Sasquatch Festival and the 2012 Reason Rally. He’ll perform at Homebake Music, Film & Arts Festival 2012: The Global edition, Sydney Australia in December 2012.
Tim’s show Ready For This? toured the UK, Australia and New Zealand to sell-out audiences in 2009 and 2010.
Tim embarked on his first Arena tour of the UK, in December 2010, joined by the 55-piece Heritage Orchestra and a band, including a performance at the O2, London. He then took the show to Australia, in early 2011, performing to packed houses with the state symphony orchestras all over the country, including four sold out dates at the Sydney Opera House, the fourth of which was recorded and broadcast live on Australian TV by ABC2. He then returned to the UK for some more arena dates, reunited with the Heritage Orchestra in Scotland and England, in April and May 2011, including two performances at The Royal Albert Hall. He toured Australia again in early 2012, performing once again with the various state symphony orchestras with Tim Minchin vs The Orchestras – Round II.
Tim has released four live comedy albums: Dark Side (2005), So Rock (2006) and Ready For This? (2009) which was recorded with a band at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Tim Minchin & the Heritage Orchestra was recorded at the Manchester Arena in December 2010.
To date he has released five DVDs, the first two shows were recorded and released separately in Australia and the UK. His debut DVD, So Live, was recorded at the Sydney Opera House in May 2007 and was released by Madman Entertainment in November that year. This show was recorded again, for a UK DVD, at The Bloomsbury Theatre, London in May 2008 and released by Universal as So Fucking Rock (2008); it has been shown many times now, on E4 and Channel 4 in the UK. His show, Ready For This? was filmed for DVD at the legendary Enmore Theatre in Sydney and released by Madman Entertainment, in the autumn of 2009. The filming for the UK DVD Ready For This? (released by Universal, November 2010) took place at the HMV Hammersmith Apollo, London in October 2009. Tim Minchin And The Heritage Orchestra Live At The Royal Albert Hall, was filmed, for DVD, in April 2011 and released later that year.
Television credits in the UK include the Royal Variety Performance (ITV1), Comedy Shuffle (BBC), appearing on and guest hosting Never Mind The Buzzcocks (BBC), Genius (BBC), 8 Out of 10 Cats (Channel 4), The World Stands Up (Paramount Comedy), Comedy Cuts (ITV), The Graham Norton Show (BBC) and he performed original songs on two appearances on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (BBC) and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2009 (Channel 4) in 2010. In Australia: Spicks and Specks (ABC), The Sideshow (ABC), Good News Week (Network Ten), Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight (ABC1), and he performed a new song ‘Lullaby’ with part of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on Ben Elton’s Live from Planet Earth (Channel 9). In the US: Conan (11/10c on tbs) three times and The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS).
Radio appearances include featuring in the first series of Mark Watson Makes the World Substantially Better. Tim has recorded two specials for BBC Radio 2: Tim Minchin and Friends and Tim Minchin’s Loving and Peaceful Yuletide Half Hour. Tim wrote and starred as Jonny, the insecure lead singer of rock band Perspex, in Strings a brand new comedy for BBC Radio 2. The sitcom pilot aired in May 2010 and also starred Peter Serafinowicz, Emily Watson Howes, Dan Antopolski and Lizzie Roper. He joined the regulars for episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage on BBC Radio 4 in both 2010 and 2011 Also for BBC Radio 4, Tim selected his favourite castaway tunes for Desert Island Discs and was both interviewer and interviewee for Chain Reaction.
As a stage actor, Tim has played the title roles in Hamlet and Amadeus (Perth Theatre Co), Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar and the writer in Reg Cribb’s The Return. In November 2009, he was a guest performer in Tim Crouch’s two-handed comic play, An Oak Tree, whilst in Perth, Australia. In September 2012 Tim will be touring with the first ever UK arena tour of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s legendary rock classic Jesus Christ Superstar, cast in his dream role of Judas Iscariot. In 2013 Tim made his Sydney Theatre Company (STC) debut, performing with Toby Schmitz, in Tom Stoppard’s absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, directed by Simon Phillips.
In late 2007 he made his feature film debut in Two Fists, One Heart, a drama filmed and set in Perth, WA. He also contributed to the script and soundtrack of the film. In the UK it was shown at the 16th Australian Film Festival, at the Barbican, London in 2010. In the summer of 2012 Tim was offered and filmed a major recurring role the in the sixth season of Showtime’s hit US TV comedy drama Californication. He played “coked-up rockstar” Atticus Fetch whose been drafted in to work with David Duchovny’s focal character, troubled writer Hank Moody, on a musical. The series is set to air early 2013 in the US and later in the UK and Australia.
He wrote a musical play, Pop – a Tragically Musical Romantic Black Comedy, and in 2001 recorded an album, Sit, with his band, Timmy the Dog. He has composed and written songs for theatre and documentary, including This Blasted Earth (Tamarama Rock Surfers), Somewhere (Q Theatre) and most recently the soundtrack for The Kindness of Strangers (Prospero) – an award-winning documentary by Rhian Skirving.
Tim has written the music and lyrics for Matilda The Musical for the Royal Shakespeare Company: an adaptation of the Roald Dahl children’s story about a very bright and rebellious little girl, with special powers. Mathew Warchus is directing, with the book by Dennis Kelly. The show previewed in November 2010, at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, opened on the 9th December and ran until January 30th 2011. In January 2011, Tim hosted A Conversation With Tim Minchin, at the Courtyard Theatre where he talked about the creative process and performed songs from the show. Matilda The Musical transferred to the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End in October 18th 2011 and has since received great critical acclaim and won many awards, including a world record breaking seven Laurence Olivier awards. Tim won The Whatsonstage London Newcomer of the Year Award for his work on the music and lyrics for Matilda. Matilda opens in Broadway’s Shubert Theatre, April 2013.
Tim’s celebrated 9-minute beat poem, Storm, has been animated and premièred at TAM London in October 2010. The animated movie was made available to all, on YouTube, in 2011, following some film festival screenings. It is now approaching two million views and he recently rejoined the ‘Storm team’ to narrate The Story of You: ENCODE and the human genome. In 2010 Tim narrated Shaun Tan’s Oscar winning film The Lost Thing, an animated 15 minute short, based on the children’s book of the same name.
Currently, Tim is in the process of developing a feature film for DreamWorks Animation.
Tim is an Ambassador for The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts and ran a Half Marathon in 2010 on their behalf, Patron of the WA Youth Theatre and Kings Place Artist-In- Residence.
Tim currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two young children.
