As long-time friend Jack Thompson has said, there was only Robert Tudawali in the 1955 film Jedda before him.ĭalaithngu in Rolf De Heer’s film The Tracker (2002).

While Dalaithngu was also a dancer, singer and painter, his acting career brought many accolades, including best actor for The Tracker at the Australian Film Institute Awards and best actor for Charlie’s Country at the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, Australian Cinema and Television Arts Awards and Asia Pacific Screen Awards.īut Dalaithngu’s impact was the profound sense of culture and connection to Country that he brought to his performances and the way he blazed a trail for other Indigenous actors and filmmakers. His notable television roles include The Timeless Land (1980) and The Leftovers (2017), and he has been the subject of more documentaries than probably anyone in the country, including Gulpilil: Man of Two Worlds (1979), Walkabout To Hollywood (1980), Gulpilil: One Red Blood (2002), Another Country (2015) and My Name Is Gulpilil (2021). On stage, he shone in the autobiographical one-man stage show Gulpilil, which was directed by Neil Armfield and premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 2004. And he reached new heights when cast in lead roles for the first time in his 40s by director Rolf de Heer, playing a conflicted tracker in The Tracker (2002), narrating the comic drama Ten Canoes (2006) then playing an Aboriginal elder whose life falls apart in Charlie’s Country (2013).

He was compelling as the wise Fingerbone Bill in Storm Boy (1976) and as tracker Moodoo in Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002).

David gulpilil dancing in storm boy