Tod’s shoes, tods.com; and Paspaley Round Pearl studs, Keshi Pearl studs, Keshi Eternity ring, and Classic Button Pearl ring, paspaley.com. Photographs by Manolo Campion at DLMAU. Styled by Gemma Keil. In late 2020, Charlee Fraser needed a break. The Australian modelling export had recently moved back home after a busy four-year stint in New York, and was shaping her schedule to take some well-earned time off.
As with many of life’s best-laid plans, the universe (or in Fraser’s case, the Academy Award-winning Australian filmmaker, writer and director George Miller) had other ideas. “My [modelling] agency got an email from a casting director who requested an audition from me,” she says. The role was for Miller’s latest blockbuster, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” — a prequel to his 2015 epic, “Mad Max: Fury Road”.
Fraser, an Awabakal woman from Newcastle, had no acting experience at the time, but says she has always been “attuned to opportunity”.
“When it comes to my creativity, I always kind of flow where the work goes,” she says. “I’ve never been really rigid or structured. I’ve never had a narrow path.”
Her first job, modelling, “found” Fraser in 2013, when she was discovered by the photographer Rob Eyre in her NSW North Coast hometown. Within three years she was making her international catwalk debut for Alexander Wang (she was among the first Indigenous Australian women to walk in a global fashion week), sporting a now-iconic bob that was famously cut backstage pre-show.
Fraser’s face was soon synonymous with brands such as Dior, Chanel, Prada and Givenchy, and she moved to New York in early 2016 before the Covid-19 pandemic brought her back to Australia where her next adventure — acting — would find her.
