- Born
- Birth nameMargaret Ann Downs
- Height5′ 10″ (1.78 m)
- Maggie Kirkpatrick is an Australian TV actress whose career has encompassed roles across film, TV and an extensive time in theatre. Maggie's most known TV role is as Prison Guard Joan 'The Freak' Ferguson on legendary Aussie TV Drama Prisoner (1979). Other roles include a stint on Aussie Soap Home and Away (1988) as Viv 'The Guv' Standish, the movie Welcome to Woop Woop (1997), The Pirate Movie (1982), Voyage Into Fear (1993) and many more roles.
Maggie has also enjoyed a long extensive career in Australian theatre and even after Prisoner ended she joined the cast in a British tour in 1996 and 1997. Maggie has also had a role in Wicked as Madame Morrible.
In 2015 Maggie spent the year fighting a year long legal battle to prove her innocence after being charged with a historic offense. In the end Maggie was found innocent and slammed media coverage of the case, as media would show clips from Prisoner, calling it 'bad journalism' and saying that the media couldn't separate fiction from reality and revealed in 2017 that she was diagnosed with PTSD as a result of the legal battle.
Maggie in 2017 returned to the TV screen after a 9 year hiatus in the Australian Comedy mini-series The Letdown (2017), Australian Drama series Sando (2018) and as the voice of Doris in The Bureau of Magical Things (2018).- IMDb Mini Biography By: PhaseItIn
- SpouseNorman Kirkpatrick(September 1963 - ?) (divorced, 1 child)
- Intimidating stance during her run of Prisoner.
- Family: Caitlin Kirkpatrick (daughter), Adrian (older brother), Chrissie (mother), Daniel and Megan (grandchildren). When she was only six months old, her father - James Downs - was killed in North Africa, where he was stationed as a soldier.
- She was offered the role of Joan Ferguson after the producers of Prisoner (1979) spotted her in The Pirate Movie (1982).
- Jobs before making it as an actress include working in a dress shop and being a doctor's receptionist.
- Before working in Prisoner most of Maggie's roles were extensively in theatre, and she admitted that she was so nervous coming onto Prisoner that the 'stillness of Joan' came from Maggie's nervousness.
- Auditioned for Vera Bennett in Prisoner (1979) but didn't get the role. A few years later she would join the cast as Joan Ferguson.
- On Prisoner's ending: The conclusion of Prisoner after so many years, certainly didn't come as a surprise. But I felt that it was done in a rare and dignified way that you don't often see in television.
- On Prisoner Ending: It was deemed that viewers would want after all these years for Joan Ferguson not to become the governor but to get her comeuppance. And I must say those last episodes were among the most pleasurable that I was able to work on. I thought they were terrific.
- On Joan Ferguson's debut on Prisoner: I have to stay that any menacing stillness that was created in Joan at that point came from sheer terror. Sheer unadulterated terror. I was so scared. I was joining this highly successful show and I thought 'Oh my lord, what am I going to do..' So in all that nervousness and to stop the knees shaking there was just that, stillness. And there she was.
- It was just a job, but one that I'm eternally grateful for. That's the downside, there's so much more in my 56 years in this business that I'm prouder of than I am of Joan Ferguson, and they're all in the theatre.
- It was that sort of thing that really got up my nose and I have no trust in the media since. I am just wary of everything and wary of people as well. It's my fault for having been such an open book all my life so that was then and this is now.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content