Leah Maree Purcell AM (born 14 August 1970)] is an Indigenous Australian actress, director and writer. She is a Helpmann Award, AACTA Award and Asia Pacific Screen Awards Jury Grand Prize winner.

Works

Together with Scott Rankin, eleven years her senior, she co-wrote and acted in a play called Box the Pony, which played at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre, the Sydney Opera House, the 1999 Edinburgh Festival and in 2000 at the Barbican Theatre in London. She then wrote and directed the documentary Black Chicks Talking, which won a 2002 Inside Film award.  Purcell wrote and starred in the play The Drover's Wife (2016) and penned a novel subtitled The legend of Molly Johnson that was published in 2019] A film adaptation premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2021. All were based on the short story by Henry Lawson,which Purcell recalls her mother reading to her.