Dina Panozzo

Bio

Dina is an accomplished Australian actor with an extensive career across film, television and theatre.
A familiar face to Australian screen audiences, she has held series regular roles in A Place to Call Home, Packed to the Rafters, Bed of Roses, Carla Cametti, Richmond Hill and Wedlocked, with recent television credits including The Last Days of the Space Age (Disney) and Darby & Joan (ABC). Her screen credits also include Underbelly: The Golden Mile, Headland, Water Rats, White Collar Blue, Wildside, GP, Mission Impossible and A Country Practice.

Her feature film work spans a diverse range of acclaimed Australian and independent productions, including Tracey Moffatt’s classic Bedevil, Love’s Brother, The Man Who Sued God, Black & White & Sex, Fistful of Flies and Bloodshot Heart. For her performance in Monica Pellizzari’s Fistful of Flies, Dina won Best Actress at international film festivals in both Spain and Russia (alongside Tasma Walton) in 1997. The collaboration with and the lead role in Monica’s short film Just Desserts won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Her recent performance as Catherine in Bloodshot Heart was a finalist for Supporting Performance at the 2021 Nightmares Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio USA.

Dina has also maintained a substantial theatre career, with credits including The Gods of Strangers (STCSA), The Shifting Heart, Kimberly Akimbo (Ensemble Theatre), Love and Magic in Mamma’s Kitchen, A Little like Drowning (Belvoir Theatre), The Garden of Granddaughters (Playbox/Sydney Theatre Company). She was a Company member and performed in many plays for STCSA including Dreams in an Empty City directed by Neil Armfield.

Her performance in Kimberly Akimbo earned her the Glugs Norman Kessell Memorial Award for Best Actress for an Outstanding Performance, while A Touch of Silk earned her the South Australian Critics Award for Best Actress in 1992. A distinctive strand of Dina’s practice has been her engagement with cultural heritage, migration and experimental performance. She appeared in the acclaimed The Gods of Strangers (STCSA) and The Shifting Heart (Seymour Centre), works exploring the experiences and legacies of migration, and created and performed her one-woman work Varda Che Bruta…Poretta!, Look How Ugly She Is…..Poor Thing! – in collaboration with Open City for the Sydney Festival and toured it to Melbourne and Adelaide International Writer’s Festival. Her experimental collaborations have also included work with filmmaker Kriv Stenders and Set Piece (Performance Space), a live cinematic performance by Anna Breckon and Nat Randall presented at The Sydney Festival and as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival RISING.

Most recently, Dina delivered a striking double performance as estranged identical twins Mina and Caroline in the feature film Salt Along the Tongue, adding to a body of work characterised by versatility, cultural depth and a sustained commitment to adventurous Australian performance.