Vale John Paisley, born October 15, 1938, Dumfries, Scotland; died December 25, 2023, Canberra.

John Paisley on screen

by Helen Musa

ONE of Canberra’s legendary theatre identities, John Paisley, has died aged 85 after a long period of illness.

As an actor, drama teacher, director and writer, Paisley had a notable talent for turning up wherever professional theatre and film-making industries were beginning to flourish.

Paisley was born in Dumfries Scotland into a Protestant family and often said he was a cousin of Northern Irish politician, Ian Paisley.

He graduated from Edinburgh College of Speech and Drama in the mid-1950s, followed by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow, in 1959, then worked as an actor and stage manager for repertory theatre companies in England, an experience he told a Chinese journalist in 2009 was "the best training ground available to aspiring actors in the United Kingdom during the 1950s and 1960s".

He emigrated to Australia in 1961 and became a teachers’ college drama lecturer in Adelaide, where he sought out theatre companies.

Always a colourful personality known for upstaging his peers, Paisley distinguished himself by sustaining an onstage sword wound during the Theatre Guild’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage” in 1964, but was soon out of hospital and back performing with the fledgling South Australian Theatre Company Inc.’s production of Max Frisch’s “Andorra” in 1965. In the following year, he joined the company on tour in David Williamson’s production of John Powers’ play, “The Last of the Knucklemen.”

But Paisley’s interests were turning to screen acting and by 1968 he was appearing in series like “Contrabandits” and later “Skippy.”

During the late 1970s he moved to Canberra, where he would teach at Dickson College, also becoming caretaker of the Childers Street Theatre in the huts on Kingsley Street Acton,where he lived in a flat so close to the stage that his disapproval could often be heard through the thin walls of the theatre.

He became an active member of the theatre community and a participant in director Ralph Wilson’s Saturday afternoon intellectual gatherings on the ANU Campus.

In 1979, now working with Fortune Theatre Company, he directed productions of “The Boat” by Jill Shearer, “The Room” by Harold Pinter and “Ashes” by David Rudkin at Canberra Theatre Centre, also acting in “Once a Catholic” by Mary O'Malley, directed by Anne Godfrey-Smith in 1980.

In 1981, Paisley acted in “Uncle Vanya,” directed by Pamela Rosenberg, then directed Chekhov’s “The Bear” at Canberra Theatre for the Canberra Independent Actors Company, earning critical praise for his “natural affinity for Chekhov." He later acted in Dario Fo’s “Accidental Death of an Anarchist” at ANU Arts Centre, directed by George Whaley for Fortune, now renamed Theatre ACT.

In the same year he travelled to Goulburn’s Lieder Theatre to play Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by John Spicer.

But literary theatre was not Paisley’s only forte and in summer productions at the Canberra Theatre in 1982-3, he was seen acting in “Annie,” directed by Terence Clarke and “Treasure Island,” directed by Ron Verburgt.

 Director Lu Chuan talks to John Paisley (right) during the shooting of City of Life and Death in which Paisley plays the lead role of John Rabe.

He also completed a BA in Literature at the ANU, worked in the university’s mail department and drove taxis to support his studies and his acting.

After a period of screen work during the 1990s, including with “A Country Practice” and “Blue Heelers,” Paisley moved to China to lecture at the ‘Peking’ University Department of Foreign Languages from 1999 to 2005, when he met and married Nanjing-born painter Zheng Keying. As he ventured into the fast- developing Chinese film industry, she became his agent, accompanying him on shoots and translating the dialogue into English for him.

Interviewed at the time, Paisley described his many encounters with unscrupulous agents, but he nonetheless proved very successful.

Paisley usually played the Western baddies in films, including the 2006 Jet Li box-office action hit “Fearless.”

By 2009, when he scored the lead role of heroic German businessman John Rabe in Lu Chuan's film about the Rape of Nanjing, “City of Life and Death,” he had acted in more than 15 Chinese films, drama series and documentaries.

He also tried his hand at screenwriting for the 2006 German family animation film, “Felix 2 - Der Hase und die verflixte Zeitmaschine” ( Felix: The Toy Rabbit and the Time Machine.)

After appearing in “Chinese Zodiac,” the 2012 action-adventure comedy film directed by Jackie Chan, his health was failing and Paisley returned with Keying to Canberra.

He died peacefully at a nursing home on December 25, 2023 and is survived by a daughter from an earlier marriage and by his widow, Zheng Keying, whose words of elegy for him are as follows:

Gentle wind through my fingers, nothing left.

White cloud drift the sky, nothing left.

You pass away calmly, lot of memory in my heart left.

I will take you home very soon, you will stay with me, with my love, as long as you want, as I am alive.

First published at Canberra City News, January 8, 2024