Julian McMahon

Julian Dana William McMahon was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on 27 July 1968. He was the son of William McMahon, a long-serving Liberal minister who became the 20th prime minister of Australia on 10 March 1971, and Sonia McMahon (née Hopkins), an heiress, socialite and fashion icon. He had two sisters and was of Irish descent through his father.

During his father's prime ministership the children were looked after by a nanny at the family home in Bellevue Hill, Sydney, while their mother lived with their father at The Lodge in Canberra. In a 2018 interview with the Herald Sun he reflected that his father, born in 1908, must have found it conflicting to parent in the 1970s by the standards he had grown up with. As a boy he dreamed of being an army cadet and playing rugby.

McMahon attended Sydney Grammar School, the private boys' school his father had also attended. He then briefly studied law at the University of Sydney and economics at the University of Wollongong before leaving to pursue modelling.

McMahon started modelling at 17 and worked internationally in Los Angeles, New York, Milan, Rome and Paris. While home in Sydney for his father's funeral in 1988 he shot a run of Levi's commercials that became a sensation and opened the door to acting. He told Variety in 2016 that he auditioned for a TV script, got the role and stayed in Australia for a few more years.

He debuted with a guest part in Rafferty's Rules and a lead role as Kane Edmonds in the daytime soap The Power, The Passion (1989). He joined Home and Away as Ben Lucini in late 1989, first airing in February 1990, and left when his contract expired in December 1990, alongside on-screen wife Sharyn Hodgson. His feature debut came opposite Elliott Gould in Exchange Lifeguards (1992), also known as Wet and Wild Summer!

After early struggles with US work permits, he was cast as Ian Rain on NBC's Another World in 1993. He went on to star as Detective John Grant in Profiler (1996 to 2000), Cole Turner in Charmed (2000 to 2003, with a guest return in season seven) and Dr. Christian Troy in Nip/Tuck (2003 to 2010), the role that brought a Golden Globe nomination.

His film work included Chasing Sleep (2000), Victor von Doom in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Premonition (2007), RED (2010), Faces in the Crowd (2011), Bait 3D (2012), Paranoia (2013), You're Not You (2014), Swinging Safari (2018) and Monster Party (2018). On television he appeared in Childhood's End, Hunters, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and Marvel's Runaways, then starred as Jess LaCroix in FBI: Most Wanted from 2020 until his final episode, "Shattered", on 8 March 2022, with crossover appearances in FBI and FBI: International.

In his last years he played Scally in The Surfer opposite Nicolas Cage, which premiered in the Midnight Screenings section at Cannes in 2024, appeared in The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat, had a cameo as the Australian prime minister in The Deb, and played Australian prime minister Stephen Roos in Netflix's The Residence (2025), his final role.

In 1994 McMahon married singer and actress Dannii Minogue, whom he met on the set of Home and Away. Their wedding was dubbed "the wedding of the year" by Woman's Day, but the couple spent much of the marriage apart and divorced within two years. Minogue later said they had rushed into marriage and cited friction with his mother.

In 1999 he married Baywatch star Brooke Burns. They had one daughter, Madison, known as Maddy, before divorcing in 2001. He had been with Kelly Paniagua for many years before proposing in 2013, and they married in 2014.

He lived in the United States from the 1990s until his death and became a naturalised American citizen while retaining his Australian citizenship. In 2018 he shared an improvised on-screen kiss with his former sister-in-law Kylie Minogue in Swinging Safari.

McMahon spoke often about his dual identity, saying his soul remained Australian even after decades in America: "I feel like I'm Australian on the inside and American on the outside." He said he loved Australians and Australianisms and would not change how he grew up.

He was candid that he was drawn to villains and damaged characters, and when CBS sent him the script for FBI: Most Wanted he described an "aha moment" in which he knew he had to play Jess LaCroix.

McMahon is remembered as one of the defining faces of 2000s television. Christian Troy in Nip/Tuck became a byword for glossy, provocative cable drama, Cole Turner remains one of Charmed's most popular characters, and he brought Marvel villain Doctor Doom to cinemas in two films. He followed a well-worn path from Home and Away to Hollywood and was among the most successful Australians to do so.

Co-stars remembered his warmth and humour. Nicolas Cage called him "the most talented of actors" and "a kind and intelligent man", and Alyssa Milano wrote that he "was magic". His late, critically praised work in The Surfer was honoured posthumously by the Australian screen industry in 2026.

For Nip/Tuck he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama and for the Satellite Award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama. He received Teen Choice Award nominations for Choice Movie Villain and Choice Movie Rumble (with Chris Evans) for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

In February 2026 he posthumously won the AACTA Award for Best Supporting Actor in Film for The Surfer. The award was presented by Shabana Azeez and Yerin Ha and accepted on his behalf by his wife, Kelly Paniagua.

McMahon's 1980s Levi's advertisements remain a fondly remembered piece of Australian pop culture. He voiced Doctor Doom in the 2005 Fantastic Four video game and in a 2008 episode of Robot Chicken. His 1994 wedding to Dannii Minogue, with helicopters overhead and magazine deals, was one of the biggest Australian celebrity events of its decade. He was a guest on talk shows including Conan and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Julian McMahon died on 2 July 2025 in Clearwater, Florida, at the age of 56. He had not disclosed his illness publicly. His wife Kelly announced his death in a statement to Deadline on 4 July 2025: "With an open heart, I wish to share with the world that my beloved husband, Julian McMahon, died peacefully this week after a valiant effort to overcome cancer."

On 10 July 2025 People reported, citing his death certificate, that he died of lung metastasis caused by head and neck cancer, and that his remains were cremated. Netflix's The Residence, his final series, was reported cancelled the same day he died.

Tributes came from Charmed co-stars Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, Holly Marie Combs and Brian Krause, Fantastic Four co-stars Ioan Gruffudd and Michael Chiklis, Nip/Tuck co-stars Dylan Walsh, Joely Richardson and Kelly Carlson, his ex-wife Brooke Burns, The Surfer star Nicolas Cage and producer Dick Wolf.