Since graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2005 with an Advanced Diploma of Performing Arts (Acting), Melanie has worked consistently as a professional actor and writer in theatre, film and television in Australia and overseas. Some theatrical highlights as an actor include A Streetcar Named Desire (Blanche) and Dancing at Lughnasa (Maggie) for the Bakehouse Theatre Company; Twelfth Night (Viola) for Shakespeare SA; The Glass Menagerie (Laura), The Shape of Things (Evelyn), and Yellow Moon (Holly) for Black Swan State Theatre Company; and The Sexual Life of Savages (Alice) for Skylight Theatre Company Los Angeles. Melanie’s television work includes Gymnastics Academy: A Second Chance (Netflix); The Tourist (Stan/BBC1/HBO Max); Pine Gap (Netflix/ABC); Lockie Leonard (Nine Network), All Saints (Seven Network), Sea Patrol (Nine Network), My Place (ABC), and Showtime’s mini-series Cloudstreet. Her film work includes The Stranger, Awoken, A Second Chance: Rivals!, Little Sparrows, Area 407, and Terms of Service, for which she was nominated for Best Actress by Maverick Movie Awards, Los Angeles. Melanie has played lead roles in two fully improvised feature films: "Little Sparrows" and "Area 407". "Little Sparrows" went on to be selected for the Rome International Film Festival and the Palm Springs Film Festival among many others, and was picked up by distributor Film Movement. It has been available to stream on Netflix. "Area 407" was filmed in Los Angeles and produced by Cloud Nine and Suzanne DeLaurentiis Productions. It is distributed by IFC and is available to stream on Amazon Prime. Melanie has received several awards for acting including the Best Actress Award (WA Theatre Guild) for The Shape of Things, and Best Actress at the WA Screen Awards for the short film Trinkets. As a writer, Melanie wrote and produced two episodes of a web series "Couples Counseling" which led to her being SAG-AFTRA Eligible in Los Angeles, and co-wrote three episodes of "Grind", another web series produced in Los Angeles. She also wrote a feature film, "Revisionist History" which was produced as a staged reading by the Beverly Hills Playhouse in Los Angeles and is registered with the WGA. During her time at WAAPA, Melanie wrote and co-wrote several short plays and monologues, and wrote and produced a short film "The Letter", which was nominated for best film at the annual WAAPA Awards. As co-founder of Unseen Theatre Company, Melanie co-adapted several plays from books, including "Thief of Time", "The Last Continent", and "Pratchett Pieces" (1 and 3) and solely adapted two episodes of "Men Behaving Badly" for the Adelaide Fringe. She was also a script consultant and dramaturg for "Altar Ego", an original work produced by the Bakehouse Theatre Company at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Melanie is about to begin studying a Graduate Certificate in Screen Production with the University of Canberra, and is taking part in Screen POD, an initiative of Screen Canberra. Melanie has recently completed the script for a feature film, "Skin", and is working on a television series "Dischordant", the pilot of which is on Coverfly's Red List (#11 in television Drama half-hour) and is ranked in the top 27% of all projects on Coverfly. She is a proud member of the AWG, MEAA, and Sundance Collab.