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Bud Tingwell: Accidental star - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)Despite the stellar career veteran actor, director and writer Charles 'Bud' Tingwell developed, he always considered his success accidental.
Born in Sydney in 1923, Charles Tingwell was nicknamed 'Bud' before his birth.
The moniker resulted from a conversation his mother had at the Coogee surf club.
"'What's budding there?' was said on the front at Coogee when the pregnancy was becoming obvious with Mum," Tingwell once explained.
"Mum was very slim and slight and so I presume I was becoming quite apparent.
"So they called me 'The Bud' before I was born."
Tingwell became a radio actor while still in school but joined the RAAF in 1941, flying 75 combat missions as a photographic reconnaissance pilot.
"My most dangerous mission was a reconnaissance mission flying very low over Salonica which was occupied by the Nazis. We came in there, very low, perfect weather. It was great for the gunners but not so good for us and we came in over the hills expecting all hell to break loose, but nothing," he wrote on his website.
"So we took our first run at the cameras, turned around, did the second run with full coverage and nothing was fired at... that we could tell, anyway. All that and we were about 200-300 feet. Flew all the way back, exhilarated, such an amazing experience.
"We then found out that the German army had pulled out of that whole area one hour before we got there.
"Now, I reckon they must have seen us because they'd only be an hour down the road with slow-moving vehicles. Besides all that, they still didn't shoot at us. I then found out that Kurt Waldheim had been the Commander in that area. So when there was any controversy about Kurt Waldheim, I said, 'Oh no, he's a good bloke' He didn't shoot at us in 1944."
After leaving the service, he entered the film industry and landed his first speaking role in 1945 in the film Smithy, which was about aviator Charles Kingsford Smith.
In 1952, he was invited to Hollywood to work alongside Richard Burton on The Desert Rats.
In 1956, The Shiralee took him to London, where he formed his own theatre company.
"Suddenly I was working in London as an actor who'd also worked in Hollywood," Tingwell once said.
"They said 'wow' - it was an amazing chapter of very accidental things."
Wise choice
As he was preparing to head home, Tingwell was offered a choice of roles.
"There [were] three jobs on offer, one of which [was] the part of an Australian surgeon in an experimental series for six weeks, and that was the Emergency Ward 10 thing," he said of the time.
The show quickly went to number one.
Tingwell continued to work in London, adding West End shows to his repertoire, until 1972 when he returned to Australia.
He became a stalwart of the Australian industry, starring in a string of films, stage shows and television series and miniseries such as Homicide.
"Being on the set of Homicide was great. Crawfords was like a mini Hollywood studio system. Hundreds of people worked there. It had its own construction departments, studios and sound stages," he wrote.
"It was always busy and there was a great creative and team environment there. It was a nursery for every type of Australian skill. I felt we were doing excellent, classy movies, which were now all in colour. I found it wonderfully exciting to be working back home again."
Audrey
In 1996 the love of his life Audrey died.
The couple had met in Coogee in 1940 when Audrey was 16, and married in 1951.
He credits his role in the Castle as helping him come to terms with her death.
"I had said at the time that the crew from the Working Dog had saved me and I don't resile from that statement. It was great being offered roles, to get me out of the house, for a start," he wrote.
"In the week after Audrey died, a huge bunch of flowers arrived. They came with a lovely note from the people at Working Dog, who sent their deepest sympathy.
"The next day this glorious script turned up for a film called The Castle. And it turned out to be the greatest therapeutic experience for me.
"It was a very interesting part. He's the mysterious person who offers the unexpected help well into the story."
In 2004, Tingwell reprised the role of George Parker in The Carer, a play that loosely parallelled his own experiences caring for his wife of 45 years, Audrey, until her death.
Although that role was similar, Tingwell preferred to liken the experience of nursing his wife to that of a character in Innocence.
"There's a lovely line in Paul Cox's Innocence movie when he talks about having looked after his wife... when she became very ill, he loved her even more," he said.
"And I thought, 'Oh, my golly. That was me too.'"
Tingwell told George Negus Tonight in 2004 that Audrey remained a strong force in his life after her death.
"If I spilt the sugar in the kitchen after she died, that was 'Mum having fun'," he said.
"I had such an amazing run after she died - we did The Castle a month after her funeral, and so that was her, you see - she did that. And I've had the busiest seven years I've ever had in the business since then."
In 1999, he was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his services to the industry and to the community.
Tingwell also turned his hand to writing and direction, but continued to work in television and film up until his death.
His film roles included parts in Breaker Morant, Innocence, Jindabyne and Ned Kelly.
In television he worked on projects as diverse as All the Rivers Run, Flying Doctors, All Saints, and Changi.
Tingwell's final televised role was as Winston Churchill in the miniseries Menzies and Churchill at war.
He was also starring in the upcoming second season of Bed of Roses alongside Julia Blake and Kerry Armstrong.
Tingwell is survived by two children, Christopher and Virginia.
He died in Melbourne of prostate cancer on May 15 2009, aged 86.