Patricia Lovell

Early life and career Lovell was born in Sydney, New South Wales, in either Artarmon or Willoughby, the second child, and first daughter, of Letitia Evelyn (née Forsyth) (5 January 1906 – 21 April 1986) and Harold George Parr (1901 – 23 March 1970), an optometrist. During her childhood three of her five siblings died, including one who was quite ill at birth and died at 18 months, and her parents divorced. She attended Presbyterian Ladies' College, Armidale, but "didn't do well in the Leaving at all" and failed to get a university pass.

In 1964, Lovell became what she characterised as "one of the minor beauties" and it was there as an interviewer that she met Peter Weir, the director with whom she would produce her two best-known films, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli. and had two children, Simon Lovell, a helicopter pilot, and Jenny Lovell, an actor known for her role on the soap opera Prisoner (called Prisoner: Cell Block H in the UK and the USA). The couple eventually divorced. In the 1986 Queen's Birthday Honours she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).