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Neighbourhood > Actor Profiles > Madeleine West

Madeleine West was born Melanie Weston, in Wood End, a small town near Melbourne, Australia, on July 26, 1979. When she was a teenager, her parents divorced and she and her brother, Jay, were joined by two more half-siblings, Jane and Jack, when her mother remarried. After leaving home and moving to Melbourne to study law, she became involved with amateur theatre and gave up her studies to make a career of acting. Only three days after finding herself an agent, she was offered the guest role of nurse Dione Bliss in Neighbours, before being given a regular contract with the show.

In June 2002, Madeleine was in Sydney for a public appearance as part of a Kids Helpline fundraiser, when she was hit by a bus, which mounted the pavement as she waited to cross Oxford Street. Madeleine had to be written out of Neighbours for a month whilst she underwent plastic surgery to cover scars on her face and monitoring for bleeding on her brain.

A year after the accident, Madeleine filmed her final scenes for the show, which saw Dione disappearing after her car crashed into the ocean on her wedding day. Guest appearances in shows such as Stingers and Last Man Standing followed, as well as movie roles in You And Your Stupid Mate and The Condemned. On top of her regular stage work, which has in recent years included the leads in And The Big Men Fly and Duet For One, Madeleine also performs regular gigs as a stand-up comic, a passion that started before, and continued throughout, her Neighbours days.

In November 2005, Madeleine gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Phoenix.

Official Website
www.madeleinewest.com.au

Articles
I Don't Recognise My Own Face
Madeleine Faces Her Demons
The Inside Interview: Madeleine West

Profile by Steve

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