Biography

Ming-Zhu Hii (phonetically: mɪŋ-dʒu haɪ) is a multi- and interdisciplinary artist. She has been working professionally as an actor in film, television and theatre for two decades, and as a practicing artist and writer/director across film, theatre, video art, hybrid and installation projects for almost as long.

She was born and raised in Hobart Lutruwita/Tasmania, moving to Naarm/Melbourne to study at the Victorian College of the Arts, where she is currently based.

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Her professional debut as an actor was in her final year of her BA Dramatic Art at VCA School of Drama, as one of four actors cast to co-create and perform in renown experimental German theatre maker, Uwe Mengel’s Lifeline in the 2002 Melbourne International Arts Festival.

She went on to work regularly in television and film, with substantial work on both Australia’s independent and main-stages. More recent performance for screen includes feature films Sleeping Dogs, Upgrade, Peter Rabbit and That’s Not Me; in television: main cast roles in the highly praised adaptation of The Family Next Door (ABC iView), Stan’s megachurch series Prosper, Halifax Retribution and The Ex-PM, with recurring guest star roles in Sisters, Newton’s Law and as Dr. Rebecca Aldridge in NBC’s blockbuster, La Brea.

Ming-Zhu also has a significant practice as an award-winning, premium commercial voiceover artist, represented by EM Voices.

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Ming-Zhu began making work in 2006, and premiered her first piece for theatre, Y. (on the life and work of Yoko Ono) at Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival. Her work for live performance has continued to explore the fault lines between theatre, live art, multimedia and video art and installation. Significant explorations in such hybrid works include 2009’s critically acclaimed Attract/Repel, and 2013’s Until Then, Then and This Is Beautiful. In 2017, she created an expanded cinematic installation at Mailbox Art Space called Dead Drop, as a contemplative coda to her first short, Close Observations of a Single Subject.

She undertook an AdDip in Screen & Media (screenwriting and producing), and in 2015 formed the small independent production company, Find & Replace Films, She has since gone on to make two narrative shorts — including 2018’s award-winning Intrusion (Best Experimental, LA Shorts; Narrative Finalist, Heartland’s Indy Shorts). Ming-Zhu was the 2018/19 Director in Residence at Malthouse Theatre.

Her most recent short film, Dissidence — a lyric love story in a time of creeping authoritarianism, shot entirely in still images — was completed in 2026.

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Her writing, directing and artistic practice is experimentally narrative, poetic, and frequently reflexive, and her key media are cinema, moving image, installation, written text, audio, television and performance — with a predilection for mystery, thriller and noir formats.

She is currently in development on multiple screen-based and art projects, including a feature-length narrative work for cinema on the gendered media gaze as it relates to physical violence in contemporary society.