Pamela Rabe

In late 2017 Rabe played the roles of Helene Alving in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts for Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre, Mrs. Higgins in the Julie Andrews directed revival of My Fair Lady (replacing Robyn Nevin), and the role of Mary in Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary, at The Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne. In 2018, Rabe starred in Lucy Kirkwood's play The Children at the Melbourne Theatre Company.

In 2017, Rabe played the role of Maude in the 6-part TV series Fucking Adelaide, which premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2017.

In September 2013 it was announced that Rabe would be cast in the Australian prison drama series, Wentworth, a reimagining of the classic Network Ten soap opera Prisoner. She joined Wentworth in Season Two as sadistic prison governor Joan "The Freak" Ferguson, a role originally played by Maggie Kirkpatrick in Prisoner. Rabe as Ferguson is seen as intimidating and evil and often uses a clever, non-physical approach in a way to control and manipulate the prisoners and officers alike, with little need for violence, unlike Kirkpatrick's character, who mainly resorted to violence. Rabe appeared in both Season Two and Season Three in a leading role, as it was finally discovered that Ferguson is unstable and her crimes are revealed. Rabe returned as Ferguson in the fourth season in 2016, in which she becomes a prisoner at Wentworth and uses strategies to get herself out of prison for good. Rabe reprised her role for the fifth season of Wentworth in 2017, in which Ferguson remains incarcerated for killing inmate Bea Smith (Danielle Cormack) at the end of the previous season. At the end of the fifth season, Ferguson was buried alive and her fate was left unknown. It was previously unknown if Rabe would reprise her role as Joan Ferguson for the sixth season; however, she began appearing from episode seven of the twelve-part season, as a figment of character Will Jackson's imagination. Although the character was presumed dead, it is finally revealed in the season seven finale that she is alive and will return for the eighth season in 2020.

In 2012 Rabe received a Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a Musical for her performance in Grey Gardens for The Production Company. In July 2015 she won a second Helpmann Award, this time for Best Female Actor in a Play, for her performance in The Glass Menagerie.

In 2010 she starred in the Melbourne stage production of David Mamet's play Boston Marriage.

Rabe turned her hand to theatre directing in 2009, and has directed several high-profile plays for Australian theatre companies, including the Australian premiere of In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), and Elling for the Melbourne Theatre Company. Rabe was nominated for a Green Room Award for best direction on both occasions. In 2012 Rabe was invited to be a member of the guest triumvirate who programmed the Melbourne Theatre Company season for that year.

In 2005 she performed a challenging experimental Croatian play called Woman-Bomb. where she inhabited the body and mind of a suicide bomber. Rabe was the sole performer in a production that lasted eight hours.

Rabe served on the board of the Australian Film Institute from 1999–2002 and is a former member of the Board of Directors of NIDA.

Rabe has appeared on several Australian television series throughout her career. Her first was in 1990, when she received a guest role in the soap opera A Country Practice. Then she featured in a number of recurring roles including the family series Ocean Girl and The Secret Life of Us and a lead role in the short lived series Mercury.

In 1989, Rabe made her film debut with a minor role in Against the Innocent. Her second role came in 1993 when she was cast in John Duigan's romantic comedy, Sirens with Hugh Grant and Sam Neill. Rabe's first leading role was in the 1995 film Vacant Possession. Following this, she appeared in Così with Toni Collette, Lust and Revenge directed by Paul Cox, and Paradise Road, a film starring Glenn Close set during World War II. In 1997, Rabe was cast in the leading role of Hester in “The Well (1997 film)”, an adaptation of Elizabeth Jolley's novel The Well, for which she received an [Australian Film Institute Awards|Australian Film Institute Award]] for Best Actress. More recently she appeared in the Jasmila Žbanić drama film For Those Who Can Tell No Tales and she narrated the upcoming 2015 film, Symphony of the Wild.

Rabe relocated to Australia in 1983 with Australian director, Roger Hodgman. They were married in 1984.

Pamela Rabe (born Pamela June Koropatnick, 30 April 1959) is a Canadian–Australian actress and theatre director. A graduate of the Playhouse Acting School in Vancouver, Rabe is best known for her appearances in the Australian films Sirens, Cosi, Paradise Road and for starring as Joan Ferguson in the television prison drama series Wentworth.

Rabe was born in Oakville, Ontario, Canada in 1959. The seventh of eight children, she graduated from the Playhouse Acting School in Vancouver.