Chips Rafferty

Career overview

Chips Rafferty was an iconic Australian actor whose career spanned from the late 1930s and the 1940s until his death in 1971. Born John William Pilbean Goffage on March 26, 1909, in Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia, he came to the attention of filmmaker Charles Chauvel and was cast as a heroic digger in the First World War drama Forty Thousand Horsemen. Chauvel changed the actor's surname to Rafferty and promoted him as a new sensation, and following the film's commercial success in Australia, he established himself in the industry.

Referred to as the living symbol of the typical Australian, Rafferty was regarded by many as the personification of the stereotypically rugged, straightforward, and laconic Aussie male years before Jack Thompson arrived on the scene. During his career, he performed regularly in major Australian feature films and also appeared in British and American productions. Additionally, he appeared in commercials in Britain during the late 1950s that encouraged British emigration to Australia. He passed away on May 27, 1971, at the age of sixty-two.