Bruno Lawrence - Biography

Biography

Born David Charles Lawrence in Worthing, West Sussex, England, his family migrated to New Zealand in 1946, settling in New Plymouth before moving to Wellington in 1948. He spent most of his life in New Zealand but also worked extensively in Australia. Bruno was a renowned jazz and rock drummer, playing drums in many bands, including Max Merritt & The Meteors, Quincy Conserve, Blerta, and The Crocodiles. His last recording was with Bernie McGann, Larry Gales and Jonathan Crayford on "Jazz at the St. James" in 1989.

In the 1970s, Lawrence founded Blerta ("Bruno Lawrence's Electric Revelation and Travelling Apparition"), a musical and theatrical co-operative active. There he performed with many of those he would work with later as an actor, including future film director Geoff Murphy and actor Ian Watkin.

Lawrence gradually moved into TV and film, and by the late 1980s had become one of the most famous actors on his own soil. His films included feature drama Smash Palace (1981). Also that year he starred in the film Race for the Yankee Zephyr, Geoff Murphy's end of the world tale, The Quiet Earth (1985), Utu (1983), about the land wars of the 1860s, a cameo role in Murphy's Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), and Heart of the Stag (1984). He was a constant and much loved feature in almost every film made in New Zealand from 1981 to 1985.

Lawrence's last and, in Australia at least, best-known screen role was as the devious, golf-loving TV producer Brian Thompson in 1990s Australian satirical TV series Frontline. In 1995 during the filming of Australian feature Così, which was scheduled to be his next role, Lawrence was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and died in Wellington, New Zealand the same year.

A biography Bruno: The Bruno Lawrence Story by Roger Booth, a television documentary Numero Bruno (2000, directed by Steve La Hood), and a film documentary Blerta Revisited (2001, directed by Geoff Murphy) cover his life and work.