A Sydney Harbour Bridge rigger talked his way onto TV and became Crocodile Dundee
Paul Hogan was working high on the Sydney Harbour Bridge when he decided a talent show's sneering judges needed a taste of their own medicine. Billed as a tap-dancing knife-thrower, he walked on in his work boots and roasted them instead. Fifteen years later he was collecting a Golden Globe as Mick Dundee.
Hogan was born in Parramatta on 8 October 1939, though early in his career he claimed the opal town of Lightning Ridge to sound more colourful. His 1971 appearance on New Faces ended with a clumsy shuffle and a clatter of prop knives on the floor, and viewers loved it so much he was invited back, once to play a pair of shovels. That led to The Paul Hogan Show, which he wrote and produced, running 60 episodes between 1973 and 1984 and finding fans in Britain and South Africa. It won him a Logie for best new talent.
Advertising made him a household name abroad. Foster's lager commercials cast him as a bemused Australian in London, gawping at ballet dancers without trousers or telling a tourist asking for Cockfosters to drink it warm. From 1984 a tourism campaign aired in the United States promising to throw a shrimp on the barbie.
Crocodile Dundee, which he co-wrote, was a huge hit in 1986. It earned him the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy and an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, and in 1987 he co-hosted the Academy Awards with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn. He liked that Mick was a hero who did not mow down dozens of people, and worried when audiences confused him with action stars. A sequel followed in 1988, co-written with his son Brett.
Hogan turned down Ghost to make Almost an Angel, later starred in a Flipper remake and returned for Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles in 2001. His comedy Strange Bedfellows was Australia's top-grossing local film of 2004. Accepting the Longford Lyell Award in 2016, he joked that he was a one-hit wonder, and in 2020 he played an ageing version of himself in The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee.
Source: Paul Hogan
