Biography |
Claudia Black was born on October 11, 1972 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia to parents Julies and Judy Black. Both of her parents are medical academics. As a child and teen, Claudia attended the Anglican Kambala School in Sydney which was established in 1887. While the school itself is aligned with the Church of England, Claudia herself is Jewish. She has two sons named Odin and Viggo from her former marriage to Jamie Oddie. The pair divorced married in 2004 and divorced twelve years later.
While Claudia is known for her illustrious career in science fiction, she got her start the way many Aussie actors do - on Home and Away. Claudia appeared in two episodes in 1992 as the character Sandra. She quickly began making her way through several Aussie productions such as G.P. and Police Rescue before landing a series regular role on the soap opera, A Country Practice. She appeared in four episodes of the thirteenth season, and in the entirety of the final fourteenth season. From there Claudia appeared in several more well-known Australian shows such as Water Rats, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Good Guys Bad Guys, and BeastMaster.
In 1997, Claudia filmed a pilot known as Amazon High. The series was meant to act as a prequel to Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. However, the series was not picked up, but parts of the pilot were eventually repurposed in the 2000 episode of Xena titled Lifeblood. Arguably, though, Claudia's breakthrough role came with the series Farscape. The series centered around an American astronaut who is thrown through a worm hole and finds himself on the other side of the galaxy as part of a fugitive alien starship crew. In it, Claudia played Aeryn Sun, a former Peacekeeper and fellow fugitive. The series was cancelled in 2003; however, due to fan support and outrage, the series was able to wrap up with a three hour mini-series.
Following the cancelation of Farscape, Claudia appeared in another popular (and long running) scifi series - Stargate SG-1. At first, she was only tapped to guest star in the season eight episode Prometheus Unbound as criminal Vala Mal Doran, but her performance was very well-received. Because of this when lead actress Amanda Tapping went on maternity leave, she was invited to reprise her role in the ninth season. Claudia was eventually brought back as a series regular for the tenth and final season. She also appeared in the two wrap up films Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum. Following the end of the Stargate SG-1 series, Claudia was cast in the pilot for the NBC series Life; however, she was replaced as filming overlapped with her second pregnancy (her first pregnancy was actually written into the final two episodes of season nine of Stargate SG-1).
Since wrapping Farscape and Stargate SG-1, Claudia has continued to work on television and occasionally in film. Her post recent television appearance was in the HBO series The Nevers which aired its final episodes in 2022. While not on screen, Claudia has done extensive voiceover work in over thirty video games. Her most notable characters are Chloe Frazer from the Uncharted series and Morrigan from the Dragon Age series. Most recently, she lent her voice to the character Tanta Olas in the action role-playing game, Forspoken. Claudia has also voiced characters in shows such as Rick and Morty and Final Space.
Official Links:
|