John Bach
Birthday: Born in 1946-06-05 in Cardiff, Wales, UK
Deathday: Alive
John Bach (born 5 June 1946) is a British-born New Zealand actor who has acted on stage, television and film over a period of more than four decades. Though born in the United Kingdom, he has spent most of his career living and working in New Zealand. In 1997, his leading role as the titular detective character of Duggan was created for him, firstly in a couple of telemovies, then in a successful New Zealand series.
TV Credits
Spartacus
Character: Magistrate Calavius
Torn from his homeland and the woman he loves, Spartacus is condemned to the brutal world of the arena where blood and death are primetime entertainment....
Gallipoli
Character: Sir Ian Hamilton
As dawn breaks on April 25, 1915, ANZAC troops go into battle on the beaches of the Gallipoli peninsula. Landing in the dark chaos, Tolly, Bevan and their mates struggle to establish a tenuous foothold on the treacherous slopes and deep ravines. They endure the next eight months on the peninsula learning lessons of survival. By the time of the final evacuation they have also learned the skills of combat and what it means to be a young man in war....
Farscape
Character: Einstein
A freak accident during an experimental space mission catapults Astronaut John Crichton across a thousand galaxies to an alien battlefield....
Jack Irish
Character: Senator Michael Longmore
Jack Irish is a man getting his life back together again. A former criminal lawyer whose world imploded, he now spends his days as a part-time investigator, debt collector, apprentice cabinet maker, punter and sometime lover – the complete man really. An expert in finding those who don’t want to be found – dead or alive, Jack helps out his mates while avoiding the past. That is until the past finds him....
Mysterious Island
Character:
Mysterious Island is a Canadian television series based on Jules Verne's novel L'Île mystérieuse. It ran for one season in 1995. The beginning of the series is much as in the novel. A group of refugees attempting to escape the American Civil War in a balloon wind up stranded on a remote Pacific island, where they are able to improvise a comfortable living for themselves while they wait for a passing ship. As time passes, they become suspicious that some unseen force is watching and directing th...
This Is Not My Life
Character:
This Is Not My Life is a 2010 New Zealand television mystery thriller which originally aired on Television New Zealand's TV ONE channel on Thursday nights. Set in the 2020s, the show centres on Alec Ross who awakes one morning to find that he doesn't know who or where he is and doesn't recognise his wife or children. The story is set in the fictional town of Waimoana. The series is written by Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan and directed by Robert Sarkies and Peter Salmon. Thirteen episodes have...
Kidnapped
Character:
15-year-old Davie Balfour is poised to receive a vast inheritance when he's lured onto a cargo ship, knocked unconscious, and kidnapped by his malevolent uncle Ebenezer, who devises a scheme to sell him into slavery. But Davie's unforeseen rescue at the hands of a Scottish rogue, Alan Breck, with them racing across the Scottish moors, with English bounty hunters in hot pursuit....
Hercules
Character: Creon
A chronicle of the life of the Greek hero who after killing his three sons must perform five labors to repent....
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars
Character: Einstein
When a full-scale war is engaged by the evil Scarran Empire, the Peacekeeper Alliance has but one hope: reassemble human astronaut John Crichton....
Golden Fiddles
Character: Walter Balfour
Golden Fiddles is a 1994 Australian mini series based on the novel by Mary Grant Bruce. It was sot from 23 July to 16 September 1991 and was re-edited into a TV movie in 1994....
Wentworth
Character: Vinnie Holt
Bea Smith is locked up while awaiting trial for the attempted murder of her husband and must learn how life works in prison. A modern adaptation and sequel of the iconic Prisoner series....
Roman Empire
Character: Marcus Aurelius
This stylish mix of documentary and historical epic chronicles the reign of Commodus, the emperor whose rule marked the beginning of Rome's fall....
The Great Bookie Robbery
Character: Mike Power
On 21st April 1976, gunmen held up more than 50 members of Melbourne’s venerable Victorian club, escaping with several million dollars in untraceable cash.The robbery had been so brilliantly planned and executed that police were left without a single clue–and so strict was the robbers’ code of silence that not even the underworld was aware of their identities....
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Character: Thierry Arronax
New England, 1886: a creature of unknown origin is destroying ships at sea. It is the job of Professor Pierre Aronnax, a marine expert, and Ned Land, the iron willed sailor, to learn the truth about the monster roaming the seas. In their search, they come across the sophisticated submarine Nautilus, secretly cruising under the ocean, and its charismatic captain Nemo....
The Day of the Roses
Character: Tom Weir
On January 18th, 1977, a crowded commuter train heading for Sydney, came off the track and struck the pillars of an overhead road bridge, crushing part of the train and killing 83 passengers and injuring more than 200 others. This story follows the coronial inquiry into the crash with flash-backs to the main story, and the efforts of the rescuers to free the injured victims....
The Man from Snowy River
Character: Dandy Jim O'Rourke
The Man from Snowy River is an Australian television series based on Banjo Paterson's poem "The Man from Snowy River". Released in Australia as Banjo Paterson's The Man from Snowy River, the series was subsequently released in both the United States and the United Kingdom as Snowy River: The McGregor Saga. The television series has no relationship to the 1982 film The Man from Snowy River or the 1988 sequel The Man from Snowy River II. Instead, the series follows the adventures of Matt McGregor...
Heroes II: The Return
Character: Lt. Cmdr Donald 'Davo" Davidson
Heroes II: the Return is a 1991 Australian mini-series about Operation Rimau during World War II. The true and tragic story of Operation Rimau, one of the most daring raids of WW2. In September 1944 Ivan Lyon and 22 Australian and British troops attempted to blow up Japanese ships in Singapore. Just 10 miles away from the target they are discovered and so begin a long and desperate bid to escape to Australia. The series shows how after the war it is revealled that 13 men were killed during the ...
Legend of the Seeker
Character: Herald
The adventures of woodsman Richard Cypher, who discovers that he was born to fulfill a prophecy of becoming a guardian hero to oppressed people. With the help of a mysterious woman named Kahlan and a wise old wizard named Zedd, he must stop a ruthless and bloodthirsty tyrant from unleashing an ancient evil and enslaving the world....
The Lost World
Character: Balar
Early 20th-century adventurers find themselves fighting for survival after their hot-air balloon crashes into a remote part of the Amazon, stranding them on a prehistoric plateau....
The Paper Man
Character: Philip Cromwell
The Paper Man is a 1990 mini series about a fictitious media mogul....
Under the Vines
Character: Don Silverton
Rebecca Gibney and Charles Edwards star as two city slickers who inherit a failing vineyard in rural New Zealand.. the only problems are that neither of them has ever done a hard days' work- and they despise one another....
Movie Credits
Ike: Countdown to D-Day
Character: Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory
The story of the senior-level preparations for the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944 from the time of Dwight D. Eisenhower's appointment as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, to the establishment of the beachhead in Normandy....
Warlords of the 21st Century
Character: Bone
It's the 21st century, the Oil Wars have made a mess of the planet and the land outside major cities is lawless. After Hunter comes to the aid of Corlie, who has run away from the villainous Straker, he takes her to the peaceful community of Clearwater. Unfortunately for the citizens of Clearwater, Straker fully intends to get Corlie back....
Bad Blood
Character: Bert Cropp
During World War 2, a farmer in New Zealand murders seven people. The police, along with local Maori trackers, hunt him in the bush country....
Blood Oath
Character: Major Roberts
On an obscure Pacific Island just north of Australia, the Japanese Empire has operated a prisoner of war camp for Australian soldiers. At the close of World War II, the liberated POWs tell a gruesome tale of mass executions of over eight hundred persons as well as torture style killings of downed Australian airmen. In an attempt to bring those responsible to justice, the Australian Army establishes a War Crimes Tribunal to pass judgement on the Japanese men and officers who ran the Ambon camp. I...
The Heroes
Character: Donald Davidson
Based on a true story, The Heroes follows one of the most extraordinary and heroic exploits of World War II. After months of rigorous training in the north of Australia, a team of 14 men, most barely out of their teens, set sail from Cairns on board a leaky old fishing boat called 'The Krait'. Their mission, code-named Operation Jaywick, became a tense voyage through thousands of kilometres of Japanese held territory to launch a daring attack on Singapore Harbour. The raid is a success but wi...
The Hollow Men
Character: Michael Bassett (voice)
The 'stolen' insider emails that informed Nicky Hager's best-selling account of National's 2005 election campaign return in Alister Barry's (Someone Else's Country) new film - just in time to caution us against campaigning politicians in 2008. Addressing each other like schoolboy Machiavellis, party leader Don Brash and his advisors spelled out how they'd copy the big boys in Australia and the US in order to win the votes of people who'd never support the kind of policies such men are widely pre...
The Cure
Character: Lionel
When a young female scientist discovers that the pharmaceutical company she works for had developed a cure for cancer years earlier, she attempts to release it to the world. Knowing that they make more money from chemotherapy drugs than the cure, the company does everything it can to stop her....
Georgia
Character: William Karlin
A young woman investigates the death of her mother, who drowned when her daughter was still a baby. The question is: was it murder, suicide or merely an accident?...
Pallet on the Floor
Character: Jack Voot
A murderous black comedy set in the 1960s. Sam (McCauley) and his small band of hard-drinking and eccentric friends are having a night of it when a drunk truck driver, Jack (Bach), attacks Sam's Maori wife Sue (O'Brien). In the struggle, Sam and friends end up killing Jack. None of them regrets this, but it has been observed by Miriam (Gruar) who decides to blackmail Sam. Jack's brother Joe (Napier) comes looking for revenge and ends up being killed by Basil (Spence). Their jobs at the freezer w...
The Last Tattoo
Character: Austen Leech
In 1943, U.S. marines are stationed near Wellington. One of them is murdered by the boss of the Hotel Workers Union, who is sitting pretty, exempt from military service and living it up on black market profits. Girls under the control of the union - of whom the victim's fiancee, Rose, is one - give sexual favours to the Americans, in return for information. The marine assigned to investigate the murder, tries to find Rose through a public health nurse who traces VD infections. However the...
Other Halves
Character: Jim
A Polynesian street-kid and a much older middle-class housewife are both incarcerated in the same mental hospital - she for attempted suicide and he for habitual crime. A friendship grows between them such that she offers him a place to stay upon his release. However, difficulties arise with his continued criminal activities and dependence on her for support - then his gang moves in with them. The film is based upon Sue McCauley's award winning autobiographical novel....
The Sound and the Silence: The Alexander Graham Bell Story
Character: Alexander Graham Bell
True story of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, inspired by his mother....
The Ray Bradbury Theater: A Sound of Thunder
Character: Travis
S04E06 of "The Ray Bradbury Theater." A company provides big game hunters with expeditions to the past to kill dinosaurs. They only have one rule that's there to protect the time line: Never get off the beaten path....
The Lost Tribe
Character: Edward / Max Scarry
Anthropologist Max Scarry mysteriously disappears while doing excavation/research of a lost New Zealand tribe on a remote island. His wife and his twin brother Edward are clueless as to what could have happened, a situation complicated by their city's police suspecting that one of the brothers murdered a local prostitute who was found with a strange tribal charm on her body matching one found in Max's abandoned hut. What most certainly isn't helping matters is the strange behavior of Max's dau...
Goodbye Pork Pie
Character: Snout
Gerry hires a car in Kaitaia with a stolen licence and travels to Invercargill with John, whose wife has just left him. The ultimate New Zealand road trip adventure....
Wild Man
Character: Barman
The story of two itinerant con men, the Wild Man and the Colonel, who operate on the West Coast gold mining towns of the New Zealand South Island during the latter part of the last century....
Beyond Reasonable Doubt
Character: Detective Murray Jeffries
A docu-drama covering one of the most famous cases in New Zealand history, the murder of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe in 1970....
CrimeBroker
Character: Frank MacPhee
High court judge Holly McPhee devises blueprints for criminal operations and offers them for sale to the crime world. Her scrupulous operation falls apart when she takes part in a multi-million dollar bank robbery and becomes an accessory to murder....
Rest for the Wicked
Character: Frank
Ex-cop Murray(Tony Barry), is compelled to come out of retirement for one last case, when he finds out his old nemesis Frank (John Bach) is now in the Knightsbridge Gardens Retirement Village. In order to catch his man, Murray goes undercover by becoming a resident. He also discovers a world of sex, drugs and rocking chairs where life is lived and being old does not mean feeling past it. However Murray discovers that things are not always what they may seem to be....
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Character: Madril
Frodo Baggins and the other members of the Fellowship continue on their sacred quest to destroy the One Ring--but on separate paths. Their destinies lie at two towers--Orthanc Tower in Isengard, where the corrupt wizard Saruman awaits, and Sauron's fortress at Barad-dur, deep within the dark lands of Mordor. Frodo and Sam are trekking to Mordor to destroy the One Ring of Power while Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn search for the orc-captured Merry and Pippin. All along, nefarious wizard Saruman await...
Judgement Tavern
Character: The Judge
Judgment Tavern tells the story of Lucia, a young girl carrying her father's living head as they search for his fleeing body. On a cold dark night, they take shelter in a small village tavern - where a mysterious stranger with unfinished business is waiting....
The Ballad of Maddog Quinn
Character: Grandpa quinn
An unlikely outlaw wreaks hell across the dusty dystopia of The State on a wild quest to save what is held most dear, but things aren’t always what they seem on the desolate wasteland frontier....
Old Scores
Character: Ewan Murray
Former Welsh rugby hero Bleddyn Morgan has his life in New Zealand interrupted by a deathbed confession that leads to a replay of a controversial 1966 All Blacks/Wales rugby match - with the original teams. The now old men pull on their jerseys one more time while Morgan deals with his past on his return home....
The Light Between Oceans
Character: Mayor Jock Johnson
A lighthouse keeper and his wife living off the coast of Western Australia raise a baby they rescue from an adrift rowboat....
Mistress, Mercy
Character: Judge Anderson
This docu-drama dives beneath the sensational headlines to unravel the truth about a murder case that rocked New Zealand and catapulted teenage dominatrix Renee Chignell and cricket umpire Peter Plumley Walker into the national consciousness....
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Character: Madril
As armies mass for a final battle that will decide the fate of the world--and powerful, ancient forces of Light and Dark compete to determine the outcome--one member of the Fellowship of the Ring is revealed as the noble heir to the throne of the Kings of Men. Yet, the sole hope for triumph over evil lies with a brave hobbit, Frodo, who, accompanied by his loyal friend Sam and the hideous, wretched Gollum, ventures deep into the very dark heart of Mordor on his seemingly impossible quest to dest...
Utu
Character: Belcher
In New Zealand in the 1860s the native Maori people fought the British colonials to keep the land guaranteed to them by treaty. The warrior Te Wheke fights for the British until betrayal leads him to seek utu (revenge). The settler Williamson in turn seeks revenge after Te Wheke attacks his homestead. Meanwhile Wiremu, an officer for the British, seems to think that resistance is futile....
Heart of the Stag
Character: Shearer
Chilling story of a farmhand who realizes his popular boss has been committing incest with his daughter for years....
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Character: British Homeguard 1
One year after their incredible adventures in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Peter, Edmund, Lucy and Susan Pevensie return to Narnia to aid a young prince whose life has been threatened by the evil King Miraz. Now, with the help of a colorful cast of new characters, including Trufflehunter the badger and Nikabrik the dwarf, the Pevensie clan embarks on an incredible quest to ensure that Narnia is returned to its rightful heir....
Typhon's People
Character: Daniel Harrington
A scientist in New Zealand has a secret lab where experiments are performed on humans. When he is assassinated, opposing forces rush to his hideaway to suppress or expose his secrets....
My Name Is Bruce
Character: Shot in the Leg Guy
B Movie Legend Bruce Campbell is mistaken for his character Ash from the Evil Dead trilogy and forced to fight a real monster in a small town in Oregon....
Reunion
Character: Jack
A pregnant woman returns to her recently-deceased grandparents’ old family home to spend time with her estranged mother. What begins as a tenuous reunion slowly turns terrifying....
Piece of My Heart
Character: Mike
Adapted from Renee's 1995 novel Does This Make Sense to You?, the TV movie lays bare the pain caused by forced adoptions inflicted on unwed and teenage mothers in 1950s and 60s Aotearoa...
Carry Me Back
Character:
Two brothers take their father into the city for the weekend for a rugby game and a night on the town. However, the old man dies in their hotel and the boys need to smuggle his body back to their farm and make it appear that he died there to satisfy a clause in his will or else they won't inherit the property....
Kidnapped
Character: Cluny
15-year-old Davie Balfour is poised to receive a vast inheritance when he's lured onto a cargo ship, knocked unconscious, and kidnapped by his malevolent uncle Ebenezer, who devises a scheme to sell him into slavery. But Davie's unforeseen rescue at the hands of a Scottish rogue, Alan Breck, leaves them racing across the Scottish moors, with English bounty hunters in hot pursuit....