Australian multi-hyphenate Joel Edgerton will receive this year’s Actor Award at the 33rd Camerimage, the world’s largest film festival on the art of cinematography.
Edgerton will be at Camerimage, which runs November 15-22 in Toruń, Poland, with Clint Bentley’s film. Form dreams. Edgerton stars as an itinerant worker in the early 1900s in the Pacific Northwest in the adaptation of Denis Johnson’s short story, which premiered at Sundance. Netflix is giving the film a short bow in theaters this week before releasing it worldwide on the platform on November 21.
Born in Blacktown, New South Wales, Edgerton began his career on stage, performing with Shakespeare and playing modern roles with the Sydney Theater Company in the 1990s. He first gained national attention through an Australian television series Our secret lifewhich earned him the AACTA Award for Best Actor. George Lucas raised Edgerton’s international profile when he cast him as Owen Lars, Anakin Skywalker’s half-brother and future guardian of Luke Skywalker, in his film. Star Wars prequels.
But Edgerton’s real breakthrough came in 2010, in David Michôd’s crime drama. Animal Kingdom. Edgerton played Barry “Baz” Brown, the most level-headed and empathetic member of the gang, whose death early in the film sets off the chain of violence that drives the film. The role attracted international attention and positioned him among a new generation of Australian actors and filmmakers. The same year, he co-wrote The Squaredirected by his brother Nash Edgerton, establishing a parallel career as a screenwriter and producer.
In Hollywood, Edgerton became known for his complex, understated performances. He starred alongside Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte as schoolteacher-turned-MMA fighter Brendan Conlon in Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior (2011) and appeared as an American military agent in Kathryn Bigelow’s film. Zero Dark Thirty (2012). At Baz Luhrmann The Great Gatsby (2013), he plays Tom Buchanan, the rich and arrogant husband of Daisy Buchanan, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan.
Other roles include Hebrew leader Ramses opposite Christian Bale in Ridley Scott Exodus: gods and kings (2014) and a conflicted FBI agent in Scott Cooper’s film. Black mass (2015). His portrayal of Richard Loving in Jeff Nichols Affectionate (2016) – the real-life Virginian whose marriage to Mildred Loving (played in the film by Ruth Negga) – led to a landmark case before the United States Supreme Court – earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
Edgerton made his directorial debut with The gift (2015), a psychological thriller that he also wrote and starred in, which earned him a Directors Guild of America nomination for Outstanding Debut Feature Film. He followed with Boy erased (2018), based on the memoirs of Garrard Conley, nominated several times, notably at Camerimage. Michôd’s The king (2019), he co-wrote the screenplay and plays Sir John Falstaff, the dissolute mentor and confidant of Timothée Chalamet’s Henry V.
Recent works include Thomas M. Wright The stranger (2022), by Paul Schrader Master gardener (2022) and that of Charlie Polinger The plague (2025). Edgerton continues to balance acting, writing and directing, maintaining an active presence in Australian and international cinema.
