--- name: "Tom E. Lewis" canonical: "https://film.one/person/tom-e-lewis" fi1m_id: "tom-e-lewis" imdb_id: "nm0507835" tmdb_id: 125533 wikidata_id: "Q7815686" roles: ["Actor"] born: "25 August 1958" died: "10 May 2018" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-26T00:28:56.008596+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Tom E. Lewis ## Identity Tom E. Lewis - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/tom-e-lewis - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** tom-e-lewis - **IMDb ID:** nm0507835 - **TMDB ID:** 125533 - **Wikidata ID:** Q7815686 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_E._Lewis, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7815686, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0507835/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/125533 Actor. Born 25 August 1958 in Ngukurr, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Died 10 May 2018. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 25 August 1958, Ngukurr, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia - **Died:** 10 May 2018 - **Also known as:** Tommy Lewis, Balang Tom E. Lewis, Tom E Lewis - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_E._Lewis, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7815686, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0507835/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/125533 ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith*](https://film.one/film/the-chant-of-jimmie-blacksmith.md) (80) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Tom E. Lewis > Lewis was found in an airport and put at the centre of one of the hardest Australian films ever made, and carried it by doing less than anyone around him. He never had a screen part that large again, and did not wait around for one. The thing to watch in *The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith* (1978) is Tom E. Lewis's face while a farmer counts out a fraction of what he is owed. He nods. He agrees. His shoulders do something else, and Fred Schepisi lets us see both at once and does nothing to settle it. It was his first film role of any kind: Rhonda and Fred Schepisi had spotted him at Tullamarine Airport, and Schepisi then put him at the centre of a picture most trained actors would have struggled to hold. Lewis holds it by listening, and when Jimmie finally states a grievance he says it as if surprised to hear it out loud. We called the ten minutes at that film's centre close to unbearable, and we should say how much of that is Lewis. What sickened us was not the events, which we will not describe, but how completely he had made us believe in the patient man who wanted a wage, a wife and a bit of land, so that when the film turns we could neither watch nor look away. The performance has been called raw, and it is; he had no training and Schepisi does not hide it. We think the rawness is the point. A drilled actor would have signalled where Jimmie was going. Lewis gives no signals, and we arrive at the same moment he does. Afterwards he spent years on Melbourne stages, with Playbox, the Melbourne Theatre Company and Handspan, and around 2001 he went back to Arnhem Land for good, founded Djilpin Arts and made records. Film became something he did now and then, almost always in the same country: Two Bob in John Hillcoat's *The Proposition* (2005), Jimmy Conway, the man the town is afraid of, in *Red Hill* (2010), Tommy in Ivan Sen's *Goldstone* (2016). Sen also directed *Yellow Fella* (2005), a documentary Lewis co-wrote about his own mixed heritage. He said of Jimmie: "The life of the character I played was hauntingly close to my own – a young man of mixed heritage, struggling to find his place on the edge of two cultures." The later screen parts are supporting or villainous, and what the notices consistently found in them is what Schepisi found first: a stillness that reads as weight, and a threat he does not need to announce. We have not reviewed those films and will not judge them at length. His largest later work was on stage, as Lear in *The Shadow King* (2013), which he co-created with Michael Kantor in several Indigenous languages and creoles and took as far as the Barbican in London. Reviewers admired him in it and found the production around him baggy. Start with *Jimmie Blacksmith*, with the warning we attached to it. It is the one film of his we would put in front of a stranger, and it is still hard to think of a debut in Australian cinema that asks more of a first-timer or gets more back. He made it as a young man, and then spent most of the next forty years somewhere the cameras were not. ## Biography Tom E. Lewis, also known as Tommy Lewis or Balang Lewis, was an Aboriginal Australian actor and musician from the Murrungun people. He was born on 25 August 1958 in Ngukurr, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and died on 10 May 2018 in Katherine, Northern Territory. Lewis was discovered at Melbourne Airport and cast in his first major film role as the title character in *The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith* (1978). He later appeared in *The Proposition* (2005) as Two Bob, *Red Hill* (2010) as Jimmy Conway and *Goldstone* (2016) as Tommy. He also worked extensively in theatre and released the albums *Sunshine After Rain* (2005) and *Beneath the Sun* (2013). Lewis founded Djilpin Arts in Beswick, Northern Territory, and received the Red Ochre Award from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2006. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith* (1978), Fi1m 80, as Jimmie Blacksmith — [page](https://film.one/film/the-chant-of-jimmie-blacksmith.md) ## Complete filmography (25) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Australia: The Wild Top End* (2019), as Narrator - *Wrong Kind of Black* (2018), series, as Monty Senior - *Finding Maawirrangga* (2017), Writer - *Goldstone* (2016), as Tommy - *Red Hill* (2010), as Jimmy Conway - *Double Trouble* (2008), series, Actor - *September* (2007), as Uncle Harold - *Crocodile Dreaming* (2006), as Charlie - *The Proposition* (2005), as Two Bob - *Yellow Fella* (2005), Writer - *Kangaroo Palace* (1997), series, as Koori - *Kangaroo Palace* (1997), as Koori - *Li'l Elvis and the Truckstoppers* (1997), series, as Dex Dexter - *The Life of Harry Dare* (1995), as Harry's Father - *Vacant Possession* (1995), as Billy - *R.F.D.S.* (1993), series, as Kilampi, Kilampa - *Touch the Sun: Top Enders* (1988), as Roy - *Slate, Wyn & Me* (1987), as Morgan - *The Flying Doctors* (1986), series, as Billy, Tommy Baringa, Ant - *The Naked Country* (1985), as Mandaru - *Robbery Under Arms* (1985), as Warrigal - *The City's Edge* (1983), as Jack Collins - *We of the Never Never* (1982), as Jackeroo - *A Town Like Alice* (1981), series, as Bourneville - *The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith* (1978), as Jimmie Blacksmith — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/film/the-chant-of-jimmie-blacksmith.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/tom-e-lewis