MUMBAI: Australian film and TV actor Bill Hunter expired of Cancer on Sunday. He was 71.

Hunter got his break in 1959 when he starred in the Hollywood film On the Beach. He appeared in the quirky trio Muriel‘s Wedding, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Strictly Ballroom. In the 2003 animated feature Finding Nemo, hunter gave the voice of the dentist who captured the clown fish.

His real break came as a stunt man when Hollywood made "On the Beach" in Melbourne. The movie about survivors of a nuclear war starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire. 

Most recently, Hunter narrated a documentary on Australia‘s natural disasters this year. He has two upcoming films.

Australia‘s National Film and Sound Archive head of film programming Quentin Turnour said Hunter followed in the lineage of unpolished Australian actors Chips Rafferty, who died in 1971, and John Meillon, who died in 1989. Australian audiences loved to see themselves in the laconic and gruff characters with soft hearts that they played, Turnour said.