Terry McDermott (actor)

McDermott was born in Sydney, Australia and his family later moved to Adelaide.^[2]

McDermott's began his career performing in the theatre, appearing in plays for the Adelaide Repertory Theatre and University Theatre Guild.^[3]

In Sydney, McDermott was a regular in the ABC radio serial Blue Hills, and also appeared in revues at Phillip Street Theatre.^[4] In 1963, McDermott founded Sydney's Q Theatre alongside fellow performers Doreen Warburton, Ben Gabriel, Edward Hepple, Robert McDarra and Walter Sullivan. They contributed five pounds each to establish the company, enabling them to launch the Q Theatre Group’s Lunch Hour Theatre at the AMP Theatrette.^[5]

It was in television however, that McDermott made his breakthrough, playing the role of Detective Sergeant Frank Bronson, one of three main characters, in the Crawford Productions police series Homicide from its 1964 debut until 1966. He left the show due to a disagreement over contracts and concerns about performing his own stunts. His character was one of the first detectives killed off by an unknown Gerard Kennedy playing a Ronald Ryan-type escapee in Episode 58 entitled "Vendetta".^[6]

After a 1966 return to the stage as Bill Sikes in Oliver! and a 12 month stint in the stage production Man of La Mancha, McDermott joined the cast of the rural soap opera Bellbird as Max Pearson in 1969, remaining with the series until 1973. McDermott and fellow cast member Gary Gray produced Country Town, a feature film based on the series, with their newly formed company AVARGO ('have a go').^[7]

He had further television roles in Adventures of the Seaspray, Skippy, Division 4, Matlock Police, Bluey, Young Ramsay, Whiplash, The Sullivans, Skyways, Prisoner, Barrier Reef, Anzacs, Neighbours and Cop Shop. He also made a guest appearance in the Australian-filmed late-1980s reboot of Mission: Impossible, reuniting him with American actor Peter Graves, with whom he had worked on Whiplash 30 years earlier.^[8]

McDermott also continued to work extensively in theatre, in both plays and musicals. He toured nationally with J. C. Williamson's productions of Cactus Flower, The Amorous Prawn, The Constant Wife and Man of La Mancha. He was also involved numerous productions with Melbourne Theatre Company including London Assurance, The Doctor's Dilemma, Desire Under the Elms, The Play's the Thing, Freeway, Cyrano de Bergerac, Shindig, The Misanthrope and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He was also in a revival of Guys and Dolls and performed in the comedy Flexitime, which toured Australia for almost two years.

McDermott met his wife, teacher Nathalie Kavanagh in 1956, who was working on a production of The Glass Menagerie that he was performing in. They were married the same year. The couple had five children – Amanda, Bernadette, Guy, Michael and Tara. They lived between Sydney and Adelaide, before eventually settling in Upwey, an outer eastern of Melbourne. The family were churchgoers, attending Catholic Church of St Thomas More in Belgrave.^[9]

McDermott was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in his late 70s and died from the disease on 14 December 2018, at the age of 90.^[10] At the time of his passing, he had 15 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.^[11]