Grant Piro is an Australian actor. He is best known as the host of the children's television show Couch Potato on the ABC. He also appeared as Captain Schnepel in Escape From Pretoria.

Career

He began his career in 1983 in the Australian television soap opera Sons and Daughters.

After completing George Miller's film Bushfire Moon (Miracle Down Under) in 1987, a chance meeting with British comedy legend Ray Cooney led to a three-year stint in the UK where he appeared in several of Ray's plays: It Runs in the Family, Wife Begins at Forty, the latter alongside the great Jimmy Edwards, as well as TV programs such as Casualty and Shelley.

He returned to Australia in 1990 to become the host of the ABC children's television program Couch Potato. During the 1990s, Grant appeared in a large number of Australian television dramas that included Janus, Correlli, G.P., Halifax f.p., Blue Heelers, SeaChange, Wildside, Good Guys Bad Guys, McLeod's Daughters, The River Kings, The Territorians, Stingers, Twisted Tales, Tales of the South Seas, Witch Hunt, and more. This trend continued beyond 2000 with appearances in Blue Heelers and Stingers again, Marshall Law, Crashburn, Headland, Rain Shadow, The Librarians, The Elephant Princess, Sea Patrol, and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.

Grant Piro became one of Australia's most respected theatre actors, with performances in Under Milk Wood, Whose Life Is It Anyway, Moby Dick, The Merry Widow, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, The Producers, The 39 Steps, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Drowsy Chaperone, Hairspray, His Girl Friday, and Hate.

His performance in the MTC's production of Realism saw him critically acclaimed for his display of the acting technique known as biomechanics. He appeared as several characters in the Rolf de Heer cult film Bad Boy Bubby, worked with film director Scott Hicks on his films Call Me Mr. Brown and Sebastian and the Sparrow, with Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, appeared in the French feature L'Amour En Embuscade (Love in Ambush) for Carl Shultz, and the films The Outsider, Darkness Falls, The Condemned, Save Your Legs, and Crime & Punishment.

Filmography

Theatre

• Wife Begins at Forty (1985)
• It Runs in the Family (1987)
• Under Milk Wood
• Whose Life Is It Anyway
• Moby Dick
• The Merry Widow
• Laughter on the 23rd Floor'
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
• His Girl Friday
• Hate
• The Producers (2004)
• The 39 Steps (2008)
• Realism (2009)^[2]
• The Drowsy Chaperone (2010)
• Hairspray (2010) as Wilbur Turnblad
• Around the World in 80 Days (2016) as Detective Fix

Personal life

He is married to Australian soprano and musical theatre icon Marina Prior. They have 5 children in a blended family. Two of the children are biologically Piro’s from a former relationship (Jackson and Madison), while three are biologically Prior’s from a former relationship.

References

External links

• Grant Piro at IMDb