
Joy Smithers
Acting
Biography
Joy Smithers (born 15 July 1963) is an Australian actress, best known for her acting performances on television, and her role as a television news presenter, such as with MTV Australia in the late 1980s. Her credits include: All The Way, Bangkok Hilton, The Flying Doctors, Home and Away, Lorca and the Outlaws, Wildside and All Saints. For a short time she was co-host of Good Morning Australia. In September 2008 Smithers made a return to acting, as Bridget Simmons in Home and Away. Smithers appeared in the 2008 Australian surfing film Newcastle, as well as the 2015 action film Mad Max: Fury Road. At the age of 15, Smithers was offered the role of Max Rockatansky's wife, Jessie, in the original 1979 Mad Max, but was forced to decline after her parents would not let her travel to Adelaide for production.
Known For

An Australian television soap opera, set in a tough fictional inner-city district called Westside. The stories revolve around the local community there. Created by Forrest Redlich and produced by Network Ten from 24 January 1989 to 13 May 1993.
E Street

The Flying Doctors is an Australian drama series produced by Crawford Productions that revolved around the everyday lifesaving efforts of the real Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. It was initially a 1985 mini-series based in the fictional outback town of Cooper's Crossing starring Andrew McFarlane as the newly arrived Dr. Tom Callaghan. The success of the mini series led to its return the following year as an on-going series with McFarlane being joined by a new doctor, Chris Randall, played by Liz Burch. McFarlane left during the first season and actor Robert Grubb came in as new doctor Geoff Standish. The series' episodes were mostly self-contained but also featured ongoing storylines, such as Dr. Standish's romance with Sister Kate Wellings. Other major characters included pilot Sam Patterson, mechanic Emma Plimpton, local policeman Sgt. Jack Carruthers and Vic and Nancy Buckley, who ran the local pub/hotel, The Majestic. Andrew McFarlane also later returned to the series, resuming his role as Dr. Callaghan. The popular series ran for nine seasons and was successfully screened internationally.
The Flying Doctors

Water Rats is an Australian TV police procedural broadcast on the Nine Network from 1996 to 2001.
Water Rats

Medical drama focusing on the working and personal lives of the doctors and nurses working on the front line of a busy inner city Emergency Department at All Saints Hospital.
All Saints

An apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and most everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order.
Mad Max: Fury Road

The ins and outs of the classroom lives of a group of students who attend the fictional Hartley High School in Sydney.
Heartbreak High

Wildside is an Australian police procedural television series broadcast on the ABC from 1997 to 1999. The show consisted of a one hour format that followed police interactions in inner Sydney. It starred Rachael Blake, Tony Martin, Richard Carter and Alex Dimitriades. Mary Coustas joined the series in a regular role late in its run, appearing in the last ten episodes. The series was filmed in Sydney. It was characterised by its use of ad lib dialogue and hand held camera work. It won several Logie Awards, including Silver Logies for outstanding work by Rachael Blake and Tony Martin for acting, as well as the Most Outstanding Miniseries Logie in 1998. It was also nominated for several Australian Film Institute Awards. A rerun of the series began in Australia on ABC1 in the early hours of Friday mornings, starting in September 2008.
Wildside

Big Sky is an Australian television drama series produced by John Edwards that ran for two seasons on Network Ten from 1997 to 1999. The show centred on the adventures of the pilots of a small aviation company in Australia called "Big Sky Aviation" and the battles of the owner to keep the company running. Chief pilot Chris Manning is determined to look after his team, even if that conflicts with the new boss, Lauren Allen, who has inherited the company following the death of her father.
Big Sky

This classic Australian mini series was originally broadcast in 1989 as three 90 minute episodes and tells the story of a young woman who goes in search of the father she has never known. Her search takes her from Australia to England and then on to Bangkok. There she meets up with a charming young man, Arkie Regan, who plants drugs in her luggage and leaves her to her fate when the authorities find them during a routine search at the airport. Following her imprisonment in the notorious Bangkok Hilton prison she awaits the decision of the authorities on whether she should face the death penalty.
Bangkok Hilton

The series centres on midwife Grace and her passionate colleagues at an unconventional birth centre attached to a major city hospital. A fierce advocate for her pregnant mothers-to- be, Grace's dubious work/life balance is about to get even more chaotic when a new arrival at the birth centre changes her life forever.
Amazing Grace

Set in the 1970s and 1980s in Sydney, the miniseries concerns the relationship between controversial former Detective Roger "the Dodger" Rogerson and notorious criminal Arthur "Neddy" Smith. Rogerson and his colleagues were accused of giving Smith a "green light" to commit crimes without Police interference, with the relationship fraying when Rogerson orders hitman Christopher "Mr. Rent-a-Kill" Flannery to murder Police Officer Michael Drury.
Blue Murder
Bodysurfer charts the odyssey of David Lang. Searching beyond mid-life crisis, David finds unanswered questions of his childhood can lead him toward a state of maturity. He realises it is his last hope for reconstructing his fractured family
Bodysurfer

This drama is set in World War II Australia, where an American Marine, Rebel is recuperating from wounds suffered in battle. He is weary of war and is intent on going AWOL and escaping from Australia. He becomes infatuated with a local singer, Kathy and pursues her. Kathy is married and initially is not interested in him, but later begins to love Rebel. Kathy receives a letter advising her that her husband was killed in battle. The local police and the U.S. Military are searching for Rebel as an AWOL soldier. Rebel arranges to escape Austalia by a cargo ship, but eventually allows himself to be arrested in order to keep the local police from arresting Kathy for harboring him
Rebel

Detective James Quinlan has left his alcoholic wife, sprouting a bloom of insecurity, anger and self-motivation within him to expose the corrupt police force that surrounds him. He abandons his straight life to join his partner Detective Church in order to get on the inside of the circle of double-agents. He secretly sides with a reporter and an Internal Affairs lawyer to expose them to the press.
The Custodian

Jowitt, a mercenary without recluse institutes a totalitarian regime in a small mining city of an arid planet, Ordessa, helped in that by androids incapable of any emotion. The young Lorca and his android professor, Kid, are both in this tended situation. To find the liberty, they must at any costs seize a spaceship, the "Red Star", but they quickly have to face an android killer...
Lorca and the Outlaws

17-year old Jesse lives in the shadow of his older brother Victor's failure to become surfing's Next Big Thing. Even when he's in his natural habitat of magnificent surf breaks, his blue-collar future is brought home by the coal barges that constantly line his horizon. Jesse has the natural skills to surf his way out of this reality and onto the international circuit but can he overcome his equally natural ability to sabotage himself? A momentous weekend away with his mates that includes first love and tragedy leads him to discover what's really important, and also to the performance of a lifetime.
Newcastle

While fighting a petrol tanker blaze, troubled firefighter Max Tucker discovers a young girl trapped under its wheels and finds that it is up to him to save her.
Heart of Fire

An actor takes a temporary job working as a secretary at a law firm, and is attracted to a female attorney. She is reluctant to start a relationship out of fear of her fellow attorneys believing that she is dating below her position.
Love in the First Degree

Some people say love is sex, sex is love. While others say sex is a four letter word. Sylvia is a love columnist who is writing a book on love stories. On a warm summer night she has invited six friends to tell true stories of their intimate love and sexual experiences. During the course of the evening the boundaries between love, sex and friendship narrow. People are exposed, fears are shared, friendships tested and relationships are destroyed and new ones formed. SEX IS A FOUR LETTER WORD is a contemporary film about love in the 1990s.
Sex Is a Four Letter Word

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...