Vincent Martin Ball, OAM (born 4 December 1923) is an Australian retired actor of film, theatre and radio active in the industry for nearly 55 years (with a brief return) firstly in Britain starting in the late 1940s and then his native Australia. Ball, a Royal Air Force military veteran, has also authored a number of books.[2]
Ball is best known for film roles in British and Australian films and television films, including A Town Like Alice, Breaker Morant, Phar Lap, Muriel's Wedding and The Man Who Sued God.[1]
Ball appeared in numerous television roles, primarily in cameo guest roles, but had recurring roles in serials including the British serial Crossroads, Rush, The Young Doctors, A Country Practice and Home and Away.[1]
Ball cited film stars Virginia McKenna and Chips Rafferty and Australian actor Ray Meagher as among his favourite co-stars and friends in the entertainment industry.[1]
Ball also worked variously in theatre, including Shakespeare, with productions of Henry IV, Part 1 and Romeo and Juliet and a musical based on Charles Dickens famous novel Great Expectations.[3]
In 2003, Ball retired, but briefly returned to television in 2014.[1] He turned 100 in December 2023.[4]
Vincent Martin Ball was born in the town of Wee Waa, New South Wales, on 4 December 1923,[5] one of eight children[6] to a father who worked as a linesman on the New South Wales Government Railways. Ball said he wanted to be an actor from an early age, particularly a "cowboy in the movies", as he loved going to the movies as a youngster and seeing Western stars like Tom Mix.[6]
Ball married Sydney actress Doreen Harrop in 1949, she was also his elocution teacher and taught speech therapies. They had three children and reside at Chittaway Point, a suburb on the Central Coast of New South Wales.[5][7]
Ball left his job with the Australian division of the now defunct British firm General Electric Company after the Second World War broke out and, after military training in Canada, became a wireless air gunner with the Royal Australian Air Force, serving in Britain.[6]
After the war, he returned to Australia and his old job, To correct his accent, which had by then morphed into part Canadian, part Cockney and part Australian, he took lessons in elocution and became interested in amateur dramatics.
Ball then from Sydney was working as an accountant in 1949, but decided he wanted to enter showbiz, so he set out writing letters asking for auditions. One was to the film studio the Rank Organisation which, impressed with his enthusiasm, told him to come to England and they would give him a screen test for a part in the 1949 British film version of The Blue Lagoon. By the time he got to England, production was under way, but he got a job as stand-in for Donald Houston in an underwater fight with an octopus.[8][9][5] He was then cast as Jack Warner's son in Smiling Irish Eyes, (Talk of a Million).[10]
He was working as a bricklayer, when he then won a scholarship to study drama at Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.[11] Having moved to Stowting, Kent, he appeared in supporting and uncredited film roles in the UK for the next two and a half decades. He was a juvenile lead in the TV films Rain Before Seven, Barnet's Folly and Nitro, before moving into slightly larger parts in films such as A Town Like Alice, Robbery Under Arms, Sea of Sand, and Danger Within. In 1969, he played Cecil Carpenter in Where Eagles Dare, alongside Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.[12]
His television credits in Britain include Gym Teacher, Jenkins, Compact, Man in a Suitcase, The Troubleshooters, Dixon of Dock Green, and a recurring role on the long-running UK soap opera Crossroads.[13][14]
Ball who was then living in Canterbury, Kent,[6] returned to Australia in 1973.[15] He was soon very busy acting in films, theatre and television.[16]
Ball is best known for his work in Australian films and television series, including film roles in Breaker Morant, Phar Lap and Muriel's Wedding.[17] His credits in Australian television serials include Cop Shop, The Sullivans, The Young Doctors, The Flying Doctors, Grass Roots and All Saints.[1] His many roles in Australian mini-series or made-for-television films include Against the Wind, and the epic Anzacs.
In 2014, aged 91, he came out of retirement briefly to play a Second World War veteran named Tom Knight, in the Australian soap opera Home and Away, whom series regular Alf Stewart (played by Ray Meagher) meets in hospital. The scenes went to air during April 2015, just before Anzac Day.[18]
Ball was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2016 Australia Day Honours.[19]