One of Australia’s busiest actors is Peter Phelps. Over the course of a five-decade career, Phelps has starred in a range of legendary TV dramas and films in both Australia and America. As Trevor Cole, he was one of the original stars of Baywatch, one of the most iconic TV shows of the 20th century. He has both starred in and directed long-running soap opera Home & Away, and acted alongside Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves in cult Hollywood action film Point Break.

Phelps’s first major TV role came during the early 1980s, when he appeared in The Restless Years, a drama following the lives of a group of Sydney teenagers as they leave school and enter the adult world. He followed this with the role of John Palmer in Sons & Daughters, an award-winning soap opera that was syndicated around the world, including the UK and Spain. From 1998 to 2004, he played the leading role of Senior Constable Peter Church in almost 200 episodes of Stingers, a Nine Network police drama that was broadcast in 65 countries. On the big screen, his biggest success to date has been as Patrick Phelan in Lantana, an Australian drama that won more than 30 awards at ceremonies and festivals around the world—and was nominated for many more.

Phelps career saw him spend four years in Hollywood, a period he wryly recounted in his bestselling book, Sex without Madonna: True Confessions of a Hired Gun in Tinseltown. He has won two awards for his acting (so far), including a Best Male Actor Logie for Stingers.