Noah George Taylor was born in London in 1969, somewhere between September 1 and September 7 (Noah told Italian magazine Tempi Moderni that he'd turned 27 during the 1997 Venice Film Festival - that's how I discovered this silly piece of information. When it's Noah's birthday, we can just have a week-long Mardi Gras)* to former Melbourne journalists Maggie and Paul Taylor (in the early '80s, his father went into copywriting and his mother became a book editor). He was named not for the biblical character, but rather for a Dennis Hopper character in a western his father had seen.

(Click for an astrological profile of Noah - drawn up for fun.)

After living in London and New Zealand, the family returned to Australia when Noah was five, his parents divorced when was 14 and his father married theater publicist Suzie Howie. He has a younger brother, Jack, with whom he's tight and who's also a journalist for the Melbourne Herald Sun.

Noah grew up in the St. Kilda area of Melbourne (but not, says the Sydney Morning Herald, on the seamy side), fantasizing of being a spy or a commando (a common fantasy in Melbourne, Noah tells British GQ). Noah tried to join the SAS when he was only 15 despite being a pacifist, and has joked that he would love to team up with Arnold Schwarzeneggar in a "Twins, buddy type movie."

Noah attended University High School in Melbourne. He left home and school at 16 and began his acting career at the St. Martin's Youth Theater in the South Yarra area when someone suggested that he could "go to a theatre as something to do on the weekends, like a hobby." He remembers his work there as probably his most enjoyable period of acting. "It was a lot more adventurous than mainstream theatre or film-making." (Incidentally, Noah didn't make his professional stage debut until March, 1997 when he played the role of Konstantine Gavrilovich Treplev in Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull.") His work at St. Martin's led to his being cast, at 17, as Danny Embling in "The Year My Voice Broke," the first of a proposed trilogy written and directed by John Duigan which includes "Flirting."

Noah is described by director Bob Ellis ("The Nostradamus Kid") as "possibly the most accomplished screen actor in the country," and is especially known for playing what "Shine" director Scott Hicks calls "male rites-of-passage characters with consummate skill." He is relieved, however, that his extended screen teenagehood is "definitely over."

He was hesitant to take the role of the tortured adolescent David Helfgott because he would once again be playing the "young, sensitive, serious type." Ultimately, he couldn't resist the role, which takes the character from his teenage years to his early twenties.

Noah would like to play more comic roles in the future, saying "goofy comedy" comes more easily to him than the dramatic roles for which he is famous. Director Ellis says that Noah could do "any romantic comedy, anything with women in it, he would be great. They all think he is terrific." Noah, however, admits to a discomfort with romantic roles because his own love life is "so depressing."

In 1996, Noah told Interview that he would love to work in American independent cinema, and he finished filming "There's No Fish Food in Heaven" in Los Angeles in September 1997.

Noah often says that he fell into acting "by accident." This is not to say he doesn't admire the actor's craft, but rather he's "not particularly career-driven. I am finding more and more in life, the things that are important to me have very little to do with career. I am quite happy to work as an actor so I can afford not to work for six months out of the year and go exploring in the country." His travels have taken him literally around the world, and, within Australia, to the Nullabor Desert and Kangaroo Island.

Among Noah's other pursuits are drawing, painting and writing and playing music. Around 1994, Noah was in a band called The Honky Tonk Angels. Included in the Honky Tonk Angels line-up were Noah's "Year My Voice Broke" co-star Loene Carmen and "Flirting" co-star Kym Wilson.

For the role in "Shine," Noah tells Time Out that musically, he had to "mimic roughly where the hands are supposed to be on a piece - I muck around with a guitar in bad, horrible, noisy bands, but I don't read music." He has sung and played guitar for many of his own bands including Cardboard Box Man, Flipper & Humphrey and most recently, The Thirteens.

The Thirteens was a country-western rock band Noah describes as a cross between Hank Williams and Social Distortion, which "started off as three manic depressives playing sad angst and western music for sad people. But we got happy in the process, so it worked out fine." The band is a great release for him, and he's said he'd like to record a CD. (If anyone in Australia has ever seen this band, please email me!) In all, Noah has played the piano by ear as well as the guitar, viola and French horn and he counts Johnny Cash and Lou Reed among artists he's admired.

Noah is also credited for "soap acting," along with actress Miranda Otto, on Australian experimental musician Jon Rose's 1994 CD "Violin Music for Supermarkets." Whether or not Noah pursues music as a profession, however, remains to be seen: "I prefer to keep music untainted by career considerations because whenever commerce and art get involved, the commerce invariably crushes the art."

And if you're wondering about the tattoos, click here for close-ups. ;->

* Actually, his birthday is September 4. I just like the Mardi Gras idea. ;->

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