Jack Charles was born on 5 September 1943 at the Royal Women's Hospital, Carlton, in Melbourne, Victoria,[1][2] to a Bunurong mother, Blanche,[3] who was 15 years old at the time,[2] and a Wiradjuri father, Hilton.

[4] Charles was a victim of the Australian Government's forced assimilation program which took him from his mother as an infant, and which produced what is known as the Stolen Generations.

[5] He tells how his mother sneaked out of the Royal Women's Hospital and took him to a "blakfella camp" near Shepparton and Mooroopna (Daish's Paddock[6][7]), but the authorities came and took him when he was four months old.

[11] First, he was invited by members of the New Theatre in Melbourne to audition for a production of A Raisin in the Sun, a play written by the African-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry.

[3] The director of the New Theatre, Dot Thompson, cast Charles in South African playwright Athol Fugard's The Blood Knot,[12] which was performed in 1970.

In 1971, he co-founded, with Bob Maza, Nindethana ("place for a corroboree") at The Pram Factory in Melbourne, Australia's first Indigenous theatre group.

[23] In 1974, Charles played Bennelong in the Old Tote Theatre production of Michael Boddy's Cradle of Hercules, which was presented at the Sydney Opera House as part of its opening season.

[12]: 116 His stage work includes Jack Davis' play No Sugar for the Black Swan Theatre Company in Perth, Western Australia.

In the show, Charles talks about his life, including his removal from his family and its consequences, his addiction to and recovery from heroin, and his crimes.

[32] It was partly due to this disappointment, that the white establishment was not yet ready to accept Aboriginal actors in major roles, that led to his co-founding of Nindethana and the development of black theatre for Indigenous people.

[10] Charles was interviewed on ABC Radio many times over the years, by Larissa Behrendt, Daniel Browning,[3] Richard Fidler on Conversations,[38] among others.

[5] He gave up heroin after two years on methadone as part of the Marumali prison program, which was delivered by Aunty Lorraine Peeters and her daughter Shaan.

He wanted to become completely clean by the end of a documentary film that was being made about him (Bastardy), which took longer than expected because of being on methadone for two years, eventually being released in 2008.

[39]He told Benjamin Law in 2020 that his experience with Christianity and the Salvos had "proper buggered me up" because of the abuse he suffered, but he had never wanted to sue the Salvation Army, as they do much good.

He liked to believe that Bundjil, the great wedge-tailed eagle, the ancestor spirit and creator of the Kulin land and its people, that had kept him alive through his darkest and riskiest moments in his life.

[19] Charles gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Adelaide and Melbourne (2013–2017).

[42] He said that he had petitioned local councils and later the Victorian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs to create a community centre for people after their release from prison, but had not been listened to.

[26] He lobbied the Victorian Government to expunge criminal records after a period time, which brought about a change in the law enabling him to work in the state's prisons.

[41] This was not the first time he had been met with this type of refusal, which he put down to racism, as the taxi driver had been prepared to take his [white] friend in the front seat until he saw Charles getting in the back.

[17] Charles died from a stroke on 13 September 2022 at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, eight days after his 79th birthday, and was given a farewell by his family with a smoking ceremony.

His death was widely reported in the Australian[1][51][10][2][53][54] and international press,[55][56] with prime minister of Australia Anthony Albanese, musician and comic Adam Briggs, actor Meyne Wyatt, and Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe tweeting their respects,[54] and Albanese giving an oral tribute, saying that he left a "joyous legacy" and that Australia had "lost a legend of Australian theatre, film and creative arts".

Premier Daniel Andrews was unable to attend owing to the flood emergency, with Acting Aboriginal Affairs Minister Colin Brooks addressing the funeral instead.

[62] Awards and honours include: Charles' five times great-grandfather was Mannalargenna, who was a highly respected Aboriginal Tasmanian elder and leader, acting as emissary to surrounding clans in Tasmania.

[2][6] His four times great-grandmother, Woretemoeteyenner (1797–1847), was a strong Aboriginal Tasmanian woman who stood up to the sealers who decimated the population of seals that they relied on for food.

They managed to find another sister, Christine Zenip Charles, whose foster mother was one of the few who let her keep her Aboriginal name on her birth certificate.