Acting Career
Friels career began with work mostly in theatre and television. In 1980 Friels was a presenter on the long-running children's series Play School. His first film role was in the unreleased Prisoners (1981), starring with Tatum O'Neal. The film was allegedly so bad that Tatum's father Ryan O'Neal purchased the rights to the film to prevent it from ever screening. His first actual appearance in film was in Monkey Grip (1982), an adaptation of a novel by Helen Garner, where he starred alongside Noni Hazlehurst.
In 1986, he played the title role in Malcolm, about a shy mechanical genius, for which he was awarded the 1986 AFI Award for Best Actor. Friels was also nominated for the Best Actor award the following year, for his role in Ground Zero, but did not win: the film received mixed reviews, with one describing him as "a proficient enough actor, but...miscast". Friels later won another AFI Award in 1995 for his starring role in the 1994 Halifax f.p. telemovie Hard Corps. Friels has played a wide range of other roles. He was a megalomaniac corporate executive in the 1990 feature film Darkman.
From 1996 to 1999, he played Frank Holloway on Water Rats, a role which won him the Logie Award for Most Outstanding Actor at the 1997 awards. In his acceptance speech he said "I'm very flattered for this and it's all rather silly, isn't it? So, thank you very much."
Since 2003, Friels has appeared as the main character in the BlackJack series of telemovies.
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