Pacharo Mzembe

Notes

Pacharo Mzembe is an Australian based Actor specialising in Theatre, Film & Television. He was born in Zimbabwe to Malawian parents and briefly returned to Malawi before migrating to Australia at the age of six. Unearthed as a sporting talent in primary education, he went on to attend the prestigious Ipswich Grammar School excelling in a range of sports which included rugby, basketball and athletics. Developing an insatiable desire to tell stories in his final years of high school led Pacharo to audition for and gain entry into the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) at just seventeen. Upon graduating NIDA and appearing in his first few professional mainstage productions, the Sydney Morning Herald identified him as one of "the ten next big names in stage acting”. His theatrical highlights include the portrayal of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the award winning The Mountaintop and a national tour with Prize Fighter, wherein he was nominated for Best Lead Actor at the Sydney Theatre Awards and the 16th Annual Helpmann Awards before receiving the Best Performer in the Theatre Companies category at the 36th Annual Green Room Awards. In 2019 Pach played Serge in La’Appartment at Queensland Theatre. Although Pacharo’s performing arts journey started out in the theatre, he has gone on to appear in numerous television and feature film roles including Paramount Pictures Love & Monsters, 20th Century Fox’s Terra Nova, Channel Nine's Underbelly: Razor and Here Come the Habibs, SBS’s Safe Harbour, Family Law, Danger 5 and ABC’s Spirited, Harrow, Wakefield and NBC’s popular series La Brea. His most recent projects include Nautilus, the feature film Sleeping Dogs opposite Russell Crowe, and The Bluff with Priyanka Chopra and Karl Urban to be released in February 2026. Pacharo temporarily suspended his acting career in the summer of 2012 to make a stand for disadvantaged youths through a staggering run across Australia titled the Run of Awareness. The run lasted a total of seventy days from Perth to Sydney via Adelaide with finances raised & donated to charities Youth Off the Streets and Room to Read. He resumed acting in 2013 before he was awarded the 2014 African Australian Arts Excellence Award by the Queensland African Communities Council (QACC). In 2019 he was identified as one of a group of 10 extraordinary actors, a “Rising Star”, by the Casting Guild of Australia. Pacharo is the founder of PMCO. Outside of acting Pacharo is extremely passionate about youth empowerment, filmmaking and encouraging individuals to "Be Unafraid”. He is a self-taught coder and advocate for lifelong learning through self-education.