Jill Perryman and Kevan Johnston honoured with Equity’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Actors Equity have announced that husband and wife powerhouse team Jill Perryman and Kevan Johnston are the joint recipients of the 2013 Equity Lifetime Achievement Award.

Launched in 2009 to honour the achievements of leading Australian performers, the Equity Lifetime Achievement Award is a peer nominated award. All members of Actors Equity Australia are invited to nominate an Australian performer who they feel should be honoured and winners are then selected by members of the National Performers Committee.

“Together Jill and Kevan have sung, danced and acted their way into our hearts for six decades” said Actors Equity president Simon Burke.

“They receive this prestigious award not only because of their remarkable careers in the Australian entertainment industry but for being inspiring friends, teachers and mentors to countless performers within our community.”

Jill and Kevan were nominated by many members of Actor's Equity including Todd McKenney, Lisa Sontag (Addams Family, The Producers) and Natalie Alexopoulos (Avenue Q, South Pacific).

McKenney quipped that Kevan taught him to 'dance like a bloke' and that working opposite Jill in The Boy From Oz “will always be one of the most wonderful memories for me”.

Lisa Sontag and Natalie Alexopoulos said their “care, wisdom and grace could not have been a better introduction” to the Australian theatre world. Lisa, a WAAPA graduate, worked with Jill on The Boy From Oz. Natalie was cast in her first professional role out of WAAPA as Kevan and Jill’s daughter in On Our Selection at Tranby House in Perth.

“Jill and Kevan first met during 1953 in a production of Call Me Madam at Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne. The profoundly touching and irresistible thing about this year's recipients is that we are honouring a partnership that has inspired us all offstage and on, for sixty wonderful years”, said Simon Burke.

This award exists with the generous support of Foxtel. Past recipients include Peter Carroll, Bob Hornery, Maggie Dence and Ron Haddrick.