Thomas Michael Wright (born 22 June 1983) is an Australian actor, writer, film director and producer. He is the co-founder (2006) and director of theatre company Black Lung and director of the feature film Acute Misfortune (2019). As an actor he came to attention in Jane Campion's series Top of the Lake, for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the (US-Canadian) Critics' Choice Awards. He directed the thriller film The Stranger, which is scheduled to appear at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Early life Wright was born on 22 June 1983 in Melbourne. Career Theatre Wright created the theatre company Black Lung, also known as The Black Lung Theatre and Whaling Firm, in 2006, with fellow writer and director Thomas Henning. Their first production, Avast, was called "Insanely fast-paced, artfully arrhythmic, meta-theatrical - a breathtaking combination of precision and chaos" by Chris Kohn, writing for Realtime. Under the Black Lung banner, Wright created productions with Adelaide Festival and Darwin Festival, Belvoir, Malthouse Theatre, and Queensland Theatre Co. and Brisbane Festival. Black Lung were hailed as one of the most influential theatre companies of the decade. Wright was the director, co-writer and production designer of Doku Rai, a production created over four and a half years, with a three-month rehearsal process on the remote island of Atauro Island, East Timor. Doku Rai came about after Wright formed a close relationship with Michael Stone, then Chief Military Advisor to the President of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta. Stone facilitated Wright flying in and out of the country over a number of years. Doku Rai was created with a group of independent Timorese artists, a number of them former resistance fighters. The film sequences in Doku Rai were co-directed by Wright with director Amiel Courtin-Wilson. As an actor he played lead roles for the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company, including the title role Baal in the controversial production commissioned by Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton and directed by Simon Stone in 2011. Television and film Wright came to attention of the world as an actor in the Disney Channel Original Movies, Stepsister From Planet Weird and Zenon: The Zequel in the early 2000s, and later in the Sundance / BBC TV series Top of the Lake in 2013, for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the US Critics' Choice Awards. Regarding his casting as