Elspeth Ballantyne

Ballantyne was born into a show business family in Adelaide, South Australia, and is the daughter of Colin Sandergrove Ballantyne[2] an Australian actor, playwright and photographer who was head of the South Australian Theatre Company. Having started her career as a laboratory technician with the Royal Adelaide Hospital, she then attended the prestigious drama school, the National Institute for Dramatic Arts. She went on to act as librarian Lori Chandler in the rural soap opera Bellbird, screened on ABC.[3]

Ballantyne subsequently played compassionate prison officer Meg Jackson in the soap opera Prisoner. Ballantyne was the only actor to stay with the series for its entire eight-year run. She later reprised her famous role of Meg in the original stage tour of Prisoner: Cell Block H – The Stage Play, which toured the UK in 1989.

In the early 1990s, she had a stint in Channel Ten soap opera Neighbours, as part of the Italian Alessi family.

She has appeared in feature films The Caterpillar Wish as Mrs. Woodbridge, and in Moonlight & Magic as thrift shop owner Desma. Ballantyne also appeared in the drama short film Twenty Five Cents (2007), and as the wheelchair-bound matriarch in the short The Last Tupper (2011). She played Maxine in the Boronia movies Boronia Boys (2009) and Boronia Backpackers (2011) and Paper Giants: Magazine Wars in 2013.

Ballantyne was married to actor Dennis Miller from 1968 to 1977, both had featured in rural series Bellbird, Together they have two sons, Matthew and Tobias.[4] She is the sister of film producer Jane Ballantyne.

• Elspeth Ballantyne at IMDb