Craig McLachlan - Biography

Biography

Craig McLachlan first appeared on Australian television in a guest role on The Young Doctors, and went on to be cast as Henry Ramsay, brother of Kylie Minogue's character ‘Charlene’ in Channel 10's Neighbours. After appearing in more than 800 episodes and winning the Gold Logie Award for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television (1990) and Silver Logie, he was contracted to Seven Network's Home and Away playing schoolteacher Grant Mitchell.

A guitarist, Craig went on to have international success as a singer/songwriter, achieving Australian and UK hit singles with his remake of the Bo Diddley song "I Need You Baby (Mona)", as well as his self penned "Amanda", "One Reason Why" and "On My Own". His band Check 1-2 went on to tour the UK and Europe.

In 1993 McLachlan starred as Danny Zuko in the West End revival of the musical Grease alongside Deborah Gibson and Sonia Evans. Breaking existing box office records, the initial nine-month season completely sold out before the first week of previews concluded. It was the beginning of a run of musicals for McLachlan, starring as Frankenfurter in The Rocky Horror Show, Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Bob Wallace in White Christmas, culminating in his performance of Billy Flynn in Chicago.

In the mid '90s McLachlan starred in three series of the BBC hit television series Bugs and appeared in Catherine the Great alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones and Omar Sharif.

Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, McLachlan appeared in around 20 film and television projects, including the American movie Superfire, as Stuart Diver in the film Hero's Mountain, and Blackjack with Colin Friels. In 2004 he played Michael Chamberlain in Through My Eyes, an account of the Lindy Chamberlain story and in the same year began work in the recurring role of Kane Morgan in the popular show McLeod's Daughters. McLachlan echoed Buster Keaton as Jeff Kennard in the Australian film Hating Alison Ashley and worked alongside Benjamin Bratt and James Franco in The Great Raid. Most recently McLachlan starred with John Jarratt in Savages Crossing, for which he also composed the film's score.

He appeared regularly in the network Seven hit TV series Packed to the Rafters as aging rocker Steve Wilson and was cast in Rescue: Special Ops series 4 as the ultra competitive Hayden Bradley. He has also appeared as Steve, the handsome gay gardener in the award winning production At Home With Julia and is returning for a second season of the comedy Lowdown for the ABC. In 2011 McLachlan had a guest starring role for CBS television's NCIS Los Angeles, appearing with Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J.

In 2011, British group Rizzle Kicks sampled McLachlan's Mona for their single Mama Do The Hump, making #2 on the Singles Chart.

Craig McLachlan returned to Australia in 2012 to commence filming on series 1 of The Doctor Blake Mysteries, playing the title role of Lucien Blake for ABC Australia/ITV UK, a period drama set in 1958 Ballarat.