Michael Beckley

In 2019, Beckley appeared in the Opera Australia/Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour production of West Side Story as Officer Krupke ... the titular character of that show's famous comedy number 'Gee, Officer Krupke'. The production was directed by multi-award-winning director Francesca Zambello. Her assistant and choreographer was Julio Monge. It was Beckley's first appearance with Opera Australia.

Beckley decided on an acting career just before completing his senior high school studies. Despite protests from teachers he left school one week before his final exams, apparently to force himself onto a certain path. A week later – at 17 years of age – he had landed a permanent position on the Entertainment Staff at Old Sydney Town, an historical theme park near his home town of Gosford, NSW. This was a recreation of Sydney around the year 1800. Here he earned his Actors Equity of Australia card and officially became a working actor. Within two years he took over the role of Town Crier, the leading player for the park.

With just one week to go – echoing his departure from high school – Beckley was approached by Wayne Harrison, then artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company, to appear as Frid in that company's production of Sondheim's A Little Night Music. (He appeared opposite a then unknown Toni Collette as Petra.) With the school's blessing, Beckley began his post-student career a week earlier than expected and graduated with his class at the official ceremony in early 1991.

Beckley continued to enjoy a run of successful and critical theatre roles. He returned to the West End for nearly a year to play Ernst Ludwig in Rufus Norris' wildly successful Cabaret at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. He played leading man Matt Holden in Chris England's play Breakfast With Jonny Wilkinson for the (then newly successful) Menier Chocolate Factory and would reprise the role in the film version in 2012.

Kelly and Beckley would work together again in the 5-star hit production of Chekhov's The Seagull for Southward Playhouse in London in 2012. (Beckley credits a student production of this play at NIDA, seen in 1979, as being his catalyst for thinking about acting as a career.) The Southwark Playhouse production also featured a then-unknown Lily James as Nina. (Lily went on to play Cinderella in the 2015 Disney live-action film version of Cinderella). The season was a sell-out.

Beckley also spent three years (2009, 2014, 2015) travelling to 30 countries in the role of Bill Austin in the world-wide hit musical 'Mamma Mia!'. It was at the end of his last year with that show that he decided to return to Australia, where he has been since early 2016.

He moved to London in 2005, where he was based until 2016, appearing on the West End and with major UK theatre companies. He now resides in Sydney, Australia.

Upon leaving Home and Away Beckley returned to England in 2005. Signing with a London agent, he booked his first audition, which found him playing Capt. Roger Wittaker at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on London's West End. The play starred Rob Lowe in the role made famous by Tom Cruise in the film version, which was also written by Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin was very much involved in the casting process. The play ran for several months and was a major success in that year's West End calendar.

Michael Beckley is an Australian actor. He has worked with major theatre companies in both Australia and the United Kingdom, and appeared on London's West End in A Few Good Men (starring Rob Lowe) and Cabaret (directed by award-winning director Rufus Norris). He is probably best known for playing Rhys Sutherland, the patriarch of a new family that arrived in the fictional town of Summer Bay in the internationally televised series Home and Away (2000 - 2004).

It was shortly after this that Beckley was cast as Rhys Sutherland in the long-running television program Home and Away, where he stayed for just over four years (2000–2004). His character arrived with a wife and three daughters. The Sutherlands went on to be one of the most popular families to ever appear on the program. While on the show, the production company made two specials for release on DVD: Hearts Divided and Secrets and the City, the latter film concerning Rhys's disappearance after the revelation of a previous affair. Each special contained not-to-be-televised footage, a new concept that proved a success.

Michael Beckley was resident director on The Rocky Horror Show for Australian and New Zealand tours during the 1990s. He began in the chorus as a Phantom and then became Dance Captain. After the first one-year tour, director Nigel Triffitt offered Beckley the position of Assistant Director for the show's New Zealand tour. This position was changed to Resident Director when the show began a new Australian tour starring Jason Donovan in Perth.

Triffitt also used Beckley as his assistant for a revival of his 1990 Melbourne International Arts Festival hit production of Moby Dick for Sydney Theatre Company in 1998.

Beckley continued to direct through the late 1990s on shows such as The Seventh Knob (Belvoir St Theatre, downstairs), Leader of the Pack (Laycock St Theatre, Gosford, 1996, return season 1997), Damn Yankees (full charity fund-raiser production, 1999) and assisted Jeremy Sims on the hugely successful Pork Chop production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Belvoir St Theatre, upstairs) and then again on the same company's production of Hamlet, again at Belvoir St Theatre. Beckley also directed The Players for Pork Chop Productions at The Stables Theatre in Sydney.

On returning to Australia in late 1986 he auditioned for Australia's leading drama school NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) but was not accepted. He went and studied part-time under Gillian Owen, a RADA-trained actor, who ran The Sydney Acting School, and then auditioned for NIDA again in late 1987. He was accepted.

Beckley made his first permanent move to the UK in 1984. He appeared on the London Fringe in All The Way Home and attended dozens of plays in and around London, including many on the West End starring actors such as Anthony Hopkins (Pravda) and Glenda Jackson (Phaedra) and many leading actors of the day. He also took drop-in acting classes at the London Actors' Centre studying Chekhov, Shakespeare, comedy, voice and movement. It was during this time in London that he decided to commit to his decision to be an actor.