Tommy Dysart Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Tommy Dysart
Acting
Biography
Tommy Dysart (24 December 1935 - 7 June 2022) was a Scottish-born actor, currently resident in Australia. Dysart has been a regular fixture on Australian television for several decades, frequently appearing in guest-starring roles in drama series and comedies, and in character roles in films and miniseries. High-profile early roles included appearances in Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Phoenix Five, and several roles in the Crawford Productions police drama series Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police. In the early 1980s he played what is perhaps his best-known acting role, that of vicious and corrupt prison officer Jock Stewart in Prisoner. In the storyline, after being fired from the prison service Stewart admitted to prisoner Judy Bryant that he was the one responsible for murdering her lesbian lover, fellow prisoner Sharon Gilmour. This revelation brought to a close a murder-mystery storyline in the series but launched a long-running story-arc where Bryant repeatedly escaped from prison in a succession of attempts to exact her revenge on Stewart. After this Dysart continued in guest-starring television roles in drama series and situation comedies, and appeared in many feature films. His films included The Man from Snowy River (1982), Bliss (1985), Garbo (1992), and Flynn (1996). Television roles of the 1990s included appearances in All Together Now, The Games, State Coroner, Blue Heelers, Something in the Air and Neighbours. He also provided the voice for Captain Griswald in Anthony Lucas' animated short film The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (2005). Starting in the 1990s he appeared in a series of well remembered advertisements for the Yellow Pages where he calls a series of mechanics about his problematic Goggomobil. He was also known for playing a recurring character of a Mafia-boss like butcher in advertisements for Don's Smallgoods. In the early 2000s he continued his Goggomobil persona advertising Shannons Insurance. The concept played on the role of a person searching for the car parts as any car enthusiast would. Telstra challenged this in the Supreme Court and Shannons withdrew the advertisements, but continued with Dysart and the accent (which Dysart insisted was his own and could not change). The adverts continue and Shannons Insurance also owns several of the Goggomobil cars which feature regularly in their shows. Tommy has enjoyed a long friendship and working relationship with director/writer Frank Howson in the movies Backstage, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, What The Moon Saw, Flynn, Crime Time, The Final Stage, The Lucky Country, and their most recent collaboration is the award winning film Remembering Nigel, which also stars Tommy's wife Joan and son Kole. He was married to Australian actress Joan Brockenshire.
Filmography Movies
Acting
The Man from Snowy River
Jim Craig has lived his first 18 years in the mountains of Australia on his father's farm. The death of his father forces him to go to the lowlands to earn enough money to get the farm back on its feet.
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers, this gothic horror mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself.
Sky Pirates
Air force Lieutenant Harris starts for a flight to Boa Boa, on board Reverend Mitchell with a box containing a part of a top-secret extraterrestrial key. They get lost in a supernatural storm and find themselves after an emergency landing in kind of a Bermuda triangle, 5,000 miles off their course. Home again, no one believes Harris' story, and his crew suspiciously denies it too. Harris is thrown in jail, but manages to escape. Together with Mitchell's daughter he seeks the lost part of the key and its secret.
Four Jacks
Four guys plot revenge on the businessman who ripped them off.
I Live With Me Dad
Peter Hehir plays full-time loser Sid McCall, professional vagrant and alcoholic on the skids. Haydon Samuels is his young son Christopher who lives with him. At the insistence of those who seek to help, child welfare workers are called-in to retrieve the lad from what authorities classify as "inappropriate living conditions." Someone seems to have overlooked the fact that Christopher does not consider his plight as distressing however and with each visit to the home, all the social workers can get in the way of co-operation, is Christopher's stock-standard reply to their questions..."I live with me dad!"
What the Moon Saw
Steven Wilson is sent to Melbourne from the outback to spend his holidays with his Grandmother, an old time Tivoli showgirl/dancer. He becomes drawn into the world of the theatre, where the illusion is everything and grease-paint covers up reality. While watching a pantomime of Sinbad, Steven succumbs to the magic of the story and actually becomes the sailor on his greatest adventure ever.
River Street
Ben, an arrogant, hustling property developer is wrongly arrested and things from bad to worse when he accidentally punches a policeman at the station. Sentenced to community service at a local day centre, Ben's influence with a young tearaway forces him to question his values and he learns to see life from a different angle when he falls in love with Wendy, the centre's formidable and devoted manager...
The Big Killing
Peter Ashbury is a young man who lives on Palm Beach, Sydney, with an expensive wife Mary and house he cannot afford. Their neighbours and close friends are Liz and Charles Barcher. He makes a £25,000 bet to murder Liz, the wife of the wealthy Charles. When the wife dies, blame attaches to Peter and then to his wife Mary.
Next of Kin
After Linda inherits a retirement home, she witnesses a series of strange events which seem connected to a dark and unspeakable evil.
Metal Skin
Psycho Joe loves one thing: fast cars! When he gets a job at a local supermarket, Joe meets fellow "petrol head" Dazey, who quickly becomes his idol and best friend. Soon after, Joe falls for Savina, a goth girl who practices black magic. But Savina has already fallen for Dazey and will do anything to get him -- including using Joe's feelings for her. In true Shakespearean fashion, this trio race down the road to tragedy.
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