Sam Atwell

Atwell was born in Nambour, Queensland. He and his family lived in Indonesia for 6 years before returning to Queensland where he grew up in Brisbane, attending St Peter's Lutheran College. He always had a passion for acting, pursuing speech and drama courses throughout school, and was credited as being the first drama captain in his school's history.

After high school, he attended Queensland University of Technology where he completed a B.A. in acting and then moved to Sydney after finishing at the age of 20. Atwell did some work with Channel 7 at the end of primary school and Children's TV for UNICEF, and also completed a short film made for television. In year 11, with the help of teachers and other students, he formed a school-sponsored theatre company that produced plays such as Property of the Clan, All Stops Out and Dags.

He completed a film called Acting Out alongside Lara Cox, before taking up his most notable role of Kane Phillips in the soap opera Home and Away. Before securing the role of Kane, he auditioned unsuccessfully for the roles of Tom Nash and Noah Lawson. He later learned that he had made it into the top 2 for the role of Noah, losing out to Beau Brady.

Atwell played the role of Craig Palmer in short-lived Aussie TV soap, headLand, and starred in a TV pilot entitled Call Back by Australian Writer Kate Toon. Other credits include City Loop, an independent film completed while he was at the university, The Wayne Manifesto, All Saints, and the Hal McElroy film Mr. Reliable.

While acting on Home and Away Atwell also made a foray into writing and directing. In 2002, alongside his girlfriend at the time, Leah Pappin, he started his own theatre company, ‘ActorCorp’. Atwell co-produced the play Savage/Love which he also starred in alongside former Home and Away co-stars Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen and Leah Pappin. He also directed 72 episodes of Home and Away (2007-2009) and wrote several episodes.

After leaving Home and Away Atwell travelled to Dublin in 2013, where he was introduced to the producer of the Irish soap Fair City. Moving there in 2014, he joined the production team of the soap, as a writer, script consultant and producer.

He continues to work predominantly as a producer of TV shows in Ireland. He currently works in Drama Development for RTE, having worked on Kin, Hidden Assets and Smother.

Atwell still acts intermittently, and had a recurring role in the BBC/ABC children's TV series Secret Life of Boys.