Timothy Conigrave
Timothy Fairfax Conigrave (19 November 1959 – 18 October 1994) was an Australian actor, writer and AIDS activist. He was born in Melbourne and studied at Xavier College and Monash University, where he acted in student plays. He moved to Sydney to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), finishing in 1984.
In Sydney, Tim helped start a theatre project called Soft Targets at Griffin Theatre Company and even served on its board. He acted in plays including Brighton Beach Memoirs and As Is, and he wrote plays such as The Blitz Kids. He was also part of a cabaret group called The Globos and worked as a Peer Education Officer for AIDS awareness through ACON in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
His most famous work is the memoir Holding the Man, an account of his 15-year relationship with John Caleo. They met at Xavier College; Caleo was captain of the football team. Tim finished the book just before he died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994, aged 34. The book was published in 1995 and later became a successful stage play and a 2015 film. A documentary about their lives, Remembering the Man, premiered in 2015 and won several awards.
John Caleo died in 1992, and Tim Conigrave died in 1994. A film adaptation of Holding the Man opened in 2015.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:37 (CET).