Matt Day

Day was born in Melbourne, Victoria.^[2] When he was 11 years old, he went to live in the United States with his father, a newspaper correspondent, where he became interested in acting.^[1] On his return to Australia, he attended Princes Hill Secondary College, in Carlton North and joined St Martins Youth Arts Centre in South Yarra.^[1]

Day was spotted by an agent^[1] at the age of 14 and was soon cast in his first role in the ABC television series c/o The Bartons. At 17, he left his home in Carlton and relocated to Sydney for the role in the television series A Country Practice that was to be his first big break.^[3]

He has since gone on to establish a reputation as one of Australia's leading film, television and theatre actors, appearing in numerous Australian television series including Rake opposite Richard Roxburgh^[4] and Tangle alongside Ben Mendelsohn. He starred in the made for television films Hell Has Harbour Views (2005)^[5] and My Brother Jack (2001), and the two-part miniseries Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (2011).

His feature credits include Muriel's Wedding (1994), Love and Other Catastrophes (1996) alongside Radha Mitchell and Frances O'Connor, Kiss or Kill (1997) reuniting again with O'Connor. For his role in the latter, he received nominations for a Film Critics Circle Award and an AFI Award for Best Actor. He also starred in Woody Allen's Scoop (2006) alongside Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson and My Year Without Sex (2009) and Touch (2014).

His international television credits include Shackleton with Kenneth Branagh, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Commander, Spooks, Hotel Babylon, Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Bruce Beresford's And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself.

Short films as writer/director include Beat (2011 St Kilda Film Festival) My Everything (2003 Toronto Short Film Festival) and Wish (Turner Classic Shorts 2008 Winner - Special Mention, London Film Festival, Encounters Short Film Festival, Foyle Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival).

In 2017 he won the 25th Tropfest short film festival for his comic short film The Mother Situation, which he both directed and acted in.^[6]

In 2022 Day was announced as part of the cast for Channel 9 drama Human Error.^[7] In 2023 he was named for ABC musical drama In Our Blood.^[8] Day returned for the second season of Strife.^[9]

Day's parents divorced when he was young. His mother, an English teacher, took him around Europe for six months when he was 7 and his brother Michael was 9.^[1] He said later that "the whole experience went definitely some way to influencing my wanderlust".^[1]

Day met his wife, journalist Kirsty Thomson when he was living in Melbourne and she lived in Sydney. They initially conducted a long distance relationship, as Day was working on films and Thomson moved to Bathurst to do her master’s degree in journalism. Their first date was at a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds concert. After meeting up regularly in Bowral, halfway between Sydney and Canberra, Day proposed. They were married in 2000, in a low-key wedding in Thomson's mother’s backyard in Balmain, and then moved to London together. They had their first child, a son, Jackson in the UK. They returned to Australia in 2007 and their second son Rufus was born two years later.^[10] The couple currently reside in Sydney.

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