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Debra Lawrance

Australian actress

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ3379410
Source-derived summary

Debra Lawrance (born 1 January 1957) is an Australian actress. She is best known for her role on Home and Away, as Pippa Ross, which she played from 1990 to 1998 and in a number of subsequent return appearances, the most recent being in 2009.

Lawrance is also known for her role as Rose in Please Like Me, for which she won an AACTA Award for Best Performance in a Television Comedy and a Logie Award for Most Outstanding Supporting Actress.

Early life and education

Debra Lawrance was born in Melbourne, Victoria and was the second youngest of six children. In 1975 Lawrance started studying a Bachelor of Dramatic Art at NIDA, alongside such alumni as Mel Gibson, Steve Bisley, Judy Davis, Sally McKenzie and Robert Menzies. She graduated in 1977.

Career

Television and film

Lawrance has appeared in a number of roles including The Sullivans as Prue Waterman (1976), in Skyways as Sheila Turner, A Country Practice as Kerry Burgess (1982), Bellamy (1981) as Lisa and Sons and Daughters as Lisa Cook (1983–1984).

Lawrance had a more permanent role in Prisoner from 1985 to 1986 as Daphne Graham, after having had minor roles including as a Nurse and Trainee Prisoner Officer Sally Dean much earlier in the series.

Lawrance featured in miniseries The Last Outlaw, (1980) a series about Ned Kelly, and feature films Next of Kin and Fluteman (both 1982) and Silver City (1984).

Lawrance's big break was a lead role in The Fast Lane, a widely successful ABC comedy.

Editorial summary

“Debra Lawrance” enters the record as australian actress. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Debra, Lawrance and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1957, 1990, 1998, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1957-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Debra, Lawrance and Australian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Debra Lawrance” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Debra, Lawrance and Australian provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3379410. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1990, 1998 and 2009.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Debra Lawrance”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Debra Lawrance primary sources, Debra Lawrance archive and Debra research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Debra Lawrance”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Debra Lawrance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.