Tania Lacy

Early life and education

Originally from Toowoomba, Queensland, Lacy spent many of her early years travelling with her family. Her father, then an officer in the army, was posted to Singapore (where Lacy was actually born) twice and Lacy spent a few years at Army schools.

Ballet and choreography

It was in Toowoomba that Lacy attended her first ballet class and very early on exhibited some degree of talent. It wasn't until the family had settled in Melbourne's outer eastern suburbs in the late 70's that Lacy was able to attend ballet classes again. She pursued the art vigorously and at the age of 12 was accepted into the Victorian College of the Arts School of Dance. Lacy decided not to attend instead opting to complete her education at a normal high school whilst pursuing her dance training after school hours. She completed her HSC in 1983 and was again accepted into the VCA for a full-time tertiary education. During her second year Lacy suffered a serious blow to her career plans when she sustained a severe knee injury in a dancing accident. After one year of rehabilitation Lacy found that her ballet career was effectively over.

Lacy then set out on a career as a choreographer. She choreographed many a fashion parades in and around Melbourne and many of today's top Australian designers such as Bettina Liano, Peter Alexander and Allanah Hill had Lacy choreograph their parades.

It was during a taping for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Lacy was spotted and asked to choreograph and appear in Kylie Minogue's first clip Locomotion in 1987.

Television

Later that same year whilst dancing on Countdown, Lacy was spotted by Molly Meldrum who asked Lacy to open the show - her performance led to a job on a new show, The Factory on which she appeared weekly as roving reporter. Under the guidance of producers Neill Wilson and James Lipscombe, Lacy began to develop her own characters and sketches some of which include Annette the Librarian, Carlos the Latin Lover, Pixie Snotley entertainment reporter and Belinda the yuppie. A very popular series of biscuit commercials featured all four of these characters.

In 1989 the ABC axed The Factory. At the same time the series Countdown was reworked as Countdown Revolution which was produced by Molly Meldrum. In 1990 Lacy was made a host of the show with comedian Mark Little and the show finally began to find its feet. Later that year Mark and Tania were fired from the show when they staged a mock strike.

Lacy went on to make appearances on Steve Vizard's Tonight Live but eventually found a home at Channel 9 where she initially starred on a show called Saturday at Ricks. When that show ended Lacy made many humorous appearance on shows like Midday where she famously asked John Hewson (leader of the Liberal party at the time) whether he had an extra 2%.

In 2006 and 2007, Lacy starred in the internet/mobile web series created by ish media called "Girl Friday" where she plays Miss Mann.

From 29 to 31 October 2007, Lacy appeared as a sexy Barrister Catherine Michael on Neighbours.

The stage

After a period at Nine, Lacy left to pursue her own projects. She staged a one-woman, sell-out show entitled All of Me which was premiered at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and then toured it to Sydney and Brisbane. Later the show went to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival where Tania was nominated for a Best Newcomer Award and was shortlisted for the Perrier Award.

Short films

Lacy went on to star in a number of short films such as Titsiana Booberini which she co-wrote. The film received much international acclaim, scoring the director, Robert Luketic, a three-picture deal. She also wrote and starred in Pussy Got Your Tongue? which won her the Nicole Kidman Best Actress award at Tropfest in 1997. Later that year she starred with Ben Mendlesohn in Tangerine Dream, winning the Best Actress Award at the Watch My Shorts Festival.

In 2000, Lacy went to Los Angeles where she staged a one-woman show entitled Suburban Refugee - it did an extended run at Theatre Theater in Hollywood. It was during this time that Lacy met her now-husband, motion graphics designer Ole Sturm who was working on Mission: Impossible 2. They got married in the Hollywood Hills in November 2000.

Writing

Since returning to Australia in 2001, Lacy staged another one-woman show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival entitled Tania Lacy is Coo Coo Bananas but more recently Lacy has remained out of the spotlight, focusing instead on the development of various film and TV scripts for local production company, MoodyStreet Kids, amongst them her "Virtually Kitty" film and a TV series she has developed with Miho Suzuki Gollings.

Television

Film

Theatre

Personal life

Lacy lives in Berlin, Germany with her husband Ole Sturm and their son, who was born in December 2005.

Lacy came out about having a borderline personality in November 2014.