Overview
Natalie has worked across the performing arts, cultural strategy, and fashion, alongside five years in the Defence Force as a Training Systems Officer.
Nat’s experience includes creative direction, consultancy, organisational coaching, facilitation, and leadership development. This breadth of work informs a grounded, adaptable approach shaped by both creative and high-responsibility environments.
Natalie Astwood’s path to acting has been shaped by resilience, discipline and a lifetime of performance. Across teaching, elite sport and leadership in the Royal Australian Navy, each chapter refined the same instrument: presence.
New Zealand → Australia | Childhood
Natalie was born in New Zealand and lived there until she was nine. She was then raised in Australia by her Dad in a single-parent household where early life was marked by upheaval and hardship.
When her family relocated, the ocean became constant. The beach, the rhythm of wave against sand. It was here that Nat first understood solitude, and surrender.
Performance came instinctively, storytelling, expression and observation were survival.
Long before formal training, there was already:
Resilience wasn't theoretical for her, it was lived.
2003 – 2010
Natalie completed a Bachelor of Arts in Drama at Edith Cowan University, with a Minor in Acting at WAAPA. She went on to complete a Graduate Certificate in Creative Industries (QUT) and a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Teaching, Drama & English (Griffith University). During her undergraduate years she was awarded Best Actor for Entropy
This period cemented technique: text analysis, character psychology, vocal and physical precision, and classical theatre (Shakespeare and Greek tragedy).
The respect for craft became non-negotiable.
From 2006 onward, she stepped into high school teaching. Drama and English classrooms became spaces of rehearsal, risk, and revelation. Teaching did not take Natalie away from acting, it deepened her love of it.
Every day she was: directing young performers, breaking down text, coaching confidence, and managing vulnerability.
The work never left, it simply shifted form.
Began at 33 | International Competition Years
Nat began Taekwondo at 33, not as a child athlete but as a person choosing discipline.
Years later, she became a World Champion with the International Taekwon-Do Federation, Gold (Power Breaking), Gold (Team Power), Bronze (Special Techniques). Nat is a current 3rd degree black belt.
She qualified as an International Instructor and A-Class Umpire
High-performance sport refined:
Performance mattered, but the years of training toward a single moment built something deeper, discipline and composure in front of an audience.
Taekwondo rebuilt her relationship with her body, with impact. with power. It gave her a stage on the dojang floor. She was a nominee finalist for the person of the year award on the Gold Coast under the sport category.
2019 – 2024
Natalie served in the Royal Australian Navy as a Training Systems Officer and later Assistant Deputy Director in Navy Coaching.
Her work spanned cultural reform, leadership coaching, and psychosocial risk awareness.
Operating in structured, high-trust environments required:
This chapter deepened her understanding of:
Coaching under pressure sharpened her awareness of status, hierarchy, ego, and vulnerability. It refined presence.
Throughout These Years
Throughout these years, creativity never disappeared.
Natalie worked across national fashion festivals and modelling platforms, drawn to transformation, silhouette, and visual storytelling.
She returned to live audiences through spoken word performances in galleries and arts festivals.
They also explored drag performance in Sydney and Melbourne interrogating identity and power. These creative spaces reawakened theatrical boldness, humour, exaggeration, intimacy, and risk.
Even when acting was not centre stage, the performer was always active.
2024 – Present
Natalie is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts (Cultural Leadership) at NIDA. She has undertaken advanced acting residencies, theatre intensives, and screen workshops in 2025.
Roles included: Hamlet (Gertrude), A Lie of the Mind (Lorraine), and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Marquise de Merteuil).
With ongoing training: the survivor, the educator, the athlete, the officer, the scholar, the performer. Now fully integrated into the actor.
The through-line has always been performance and now at 55, it is conscious, rigorous, embodied, and deliberate.
Natalie did not step away from acting, she was building the instrument and now, the instrument is ready.
Watch my work… Selected screen performances, full scenes, and current self-tapes.
Some of my personal journey, insights, and stories all written on my journal. Have a read!
Cultural activities play a significant role in the local economy of Cairns and based on an economic report, the sector’s value-added contribution was estimated to be over $460 million for
Alluring? Revive: Australia’s Cultural Policy – A Place for Every Story, A Story for Every Place. Art. Pillar 3 – Implement regulations on managing psychosocial risks, including bullying and harassment,
