The Cast

ROBYN MALCOLM (plays Cheryl West)

Robyn Malcolm is one of New Zealand’s best-loved performers having appeared in some of this country’s most popular television shows and toured nationally with a number of hugely successful theatre productions.

2007 was a stellar year for Robyn who was named Best Actress at the Qantas Television Awards and won the award for Performance by an Actress at the Air New Zealand Screen Awards – both for her role as Cheryl West in OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE. In the same year, Robyn was voted Favourite Female Personality in the Woman’s Day Readers’ Choice Awards and readers of the TV Guide voted her Best Actress (for the third consecutive year) as well as New Zealand’s Sexiest Woman in the annual TV Guide Best on the Box People’s Choice Awards. She also won the TV3 and C4 Success in NZ Television Award at the WIFT NZ Awards 2007.

In late 2007, shortly after finishing production on series 3 of OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, Robyn returned to the stage playing one of the leads in the SiLo Theatre’s production of The Cut, alongside fellow OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE cast member Frank Whitten (who plays Grandpa Ted West).

New Zealanders came to adore Robyn when she played Nurse Ellen Crozier on Shortland Street – a role she held for six years and which earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the 1998 TV Guide Television Awards.

In 2000, Robyn played the lead role in Clare, a television feature based on the true story of a woman who took on the New Zealand medical establishment. The role earned Robyn a nomination for Best Actress at the 2002 TV Guide Television Awards.

Around the same time, Robyn returned to her theatrical roots and in 2000, she was one of the founding members of the New Zealand Actors’ Company along with Tim Balme (who now storylines and writes scripts for OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE), Katie Wolfe and Simon Bennett. Between 2000-2002, the company produced and toured a number of vibrant and successful stage productions including A Midsummer Night’s Dream (in which Robyn played Titania); Roger Hall’s A Way of Life (in which she played Jenny); and Leah which was featured in the 2002 International Festival of the Arts.

Since then, Robyn has appeared in a number of other successful television series including the satirical comedy Serial Killers for which she was the winner of Best Performance by an Actress at the New Zealand Screen Awards in 2005. She has also starred as herself as a panellist in How’s Life and as a host in Intrepid Journeys, a travel documentary series which took her to Vietnam.

In 2005 Robyn traveled to France to front a TV One documentary Our Lost War: Passchendaele about the World War I battle in which her great uncle lost his life.

Robyn graduated from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School in 1987 and started out in theatre productions. Since 1988 she has worked at many of New Zealand’s top theatres and alongside many accomplished local directors. Her extensive theatre credits include: The Threepenny Opera, Macbeth, The Importance of Being Earnest and, more recently, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with director Colin McColl at Downstage Theatre; Twelfth Night, Conquest of the South Pole and Hamlet, all of which were directed by Simon Bennett at Bats Theatre; Via Satellite, Two Weeks with the Queen and Lettice and Lovage at Circa Theatre; Othello with director Michael Hurst at Auckland’s Watershed Theatre; and Much Ado About Nothing directed by Miranda Harcourt at Downstage Theatre.

In addition to her television and stage roles, Robyn has several feature film credits to her name, including: Absent without Leave directed by OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE producer John Laing, The Last Tattoo directed by John Reid, Gaylene Preston’s Perfect Strangers, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers directed by Peter Jackson and Christine Jeff’s Sylvia. In 2008 she also appears in a guest role in Peter Jackson’s latest feature The Lovely Bones, based on the international best-selling novel by Alice Seabold.

Robyn lives in Auckland with two sons – Charlie (born February 2004) and Peter (born December 2005