Tragedy, an accident and a postie round — the life of actor Samuel Johnson

Australia Broadcast Center

18-05-2025

Warning: This story contains discussion of suicide.
Actor and cancer campaigner Samuel Johnson can't remember the car crash that nearly killed him, but he has an unlikely name for it: "The good accident".
The Gold Logie winner has pieced together the harrowing details: his partner Em holding his head together until the ambulance arrived; ground glass in his lungs; multiple fractures to his neck and skull; and the terrifying stretch where nobody knew if he'd survive, or how damaged his brain might be.
When Johnson finally woke up — speaking in a Russian accent due to post-traumatic amnesia — something fundamental shifted.
After a lifetime of often struggling with self-worth, he stopped punishing himself.
"I couldn't believe how much Em cared for me," he tells Australian Story.
Em adds: "He realised he was deserving of love. He put the whip away and stopped being so hard on himself."
Johnson's life has been punctuated by tragedy.
His mother died by suicide when he was three. A girlfriend also took her own life. His breakout role in hit TV series The Secret Life of Us made him famous overnight, opening the door to drug and alcohol abuse. In 2017 his sister Connie died of breast cancer.
But he's managed to channel his grief into purpose, raising millions for cancer research through his charity Love Your Sister.
At home in country Victoria, though, Johnson doesn't pretend to have it all figured out. He polices his drinking but hasn't given up alcohol entirely.
"I've been working on wrestling the alligator for decades now," Johnson says.
"I'm a work in progress. There's no neat bow on the end.
If his isn't a story of redemption, it is certainly one of determination. Johnson embodies grit — whether it's riding a unicycle 16,000 kilometres or recovering from a serious brain injury.
"I don't know if it's his will or if he's lucky or what," says Lucy Freeman, Love Your Sister's managing director, "but it seems like life deals a lot of things to Sam and he somehow triumphs over them."
Johnson was born in the small Victorian town of Daylesford in 1978, a year after Connie and nine years after his oldest sister Hilde.
"He was a wacky little kid. Everything was a dream and everything was magical," Hilde recalls.
His father — who renovated houses by day and wrote books by night — followed the work wherever it led, and Johnson found their "transient lifestyle" exciting.
Connie's cancer diagnosis at age 11 derailed her life, and they all felt the aftershocks for years.
"She seemed to be on a rocket ship to the stars, and then it got pretty real pretty quick," Johnson says.
"She was part of that first wave of kids in the 80s that survived when we treated them. We'd half kill them with chemo to try and save their lives. Really cruel thing to do."
Johnson has no memory of his mother. He had scraps of information — she was a poet, she'd been in and out of mental health institutions — but otherwise, she "was basically a ghost".
At 20, he found hundreds of her poems in his father's filing cabinet.
One, written just months before she died, was addressed to him.
He gets goosebumps as he recites the final verse.
All the seas of joy rise to sing for you boy
Surge and swell and roar
All the seas of joy sound wonderfully near
Since you've been here.
The poems — "a magic rainbow from my mum 20 years after she ended it all" — helped Johnson expand his picture of who she was.
"Her poetry reflected how smart she was, how capable she was, what a good person she was. And she loved me. She didn't leave me — she opted out of life itself," he says.
Johnson knows other people think his childhood sounds rough, but he refuses to entertain a victim mentality.
"People would say, 'Jeez, how much can one man handle?' But I see my life as quite idyllic."
Johnson acted through high school — by 15, he was out-earning his father — and when he was 21, The Secret Life of Us became a cult television hit.
"I was thrust into that world before I'd learned how to equip myself with the tools needed to cope with life itself, let alone life in the spotlight," he says.
He was swept up in a whirlwind of people and parties, and he had the money to fund "all kinds of lifestyle choices".
"I was a poly user — I liked all the things," Johnson says.
But fame never sat comfortably with him. When the show ended in 2005, Johnson retreated to the country to find himself again.
There he met a "brash young girl" named Lainie, "one of the most lovely girls you could ever meet". They were together for two years before she took her own life.
A diagnosis of bipolar disorder "gave some meaning to all of the things that were happening inside me".
He took medication for six years before tapering off, "and there's not been an incident since".
Johnson went on to win an AACTA and a Gold Logie in 2017 for his portrayal of music guru Ian "Molly" Meldrum in the TV series Molly.
He's done stints on radio and in the theatre, and even won Dancing With The Stars in 2019.
But his true purpose emerged beyond acting.
Connie beat cancer twice before her terminal diagnosis in 2010. When Johnson asked her how he could help, she told him to channel his infectious energy into something "bigger than us".
A joke about a unicycle evolved into an epic lap around Australia in 2013 to raise money for cancer research. He even ate a live huntsman spider for the cause.
"In 364 days, I turned from a pessimist into an optimist. I realised how amazing people are," he says.
"I had a lot of reasons to hate myself, but … the more I focused on other people, the more my life improved."
Later, love blossomed between Johnson and Em, Connie's best friend.
"One of the reasons Sam is very successful in his life is sheer persistence," says Em, who works alongside him at Love Your Sister.
"He doesn't stop. It doesn't matter if he's literally got bleeding blisters from the unicycle saddle. He will not stop riding."
Johnson was determined to keep growing Love Your Sister after Connie's death, and he has.
This year the charity hit an extraordinary $20 million milestone.
It is now focused on precision medicine, a cutting-edge approach that uses genomic profiling to help target the treatment for a person's individual cancer.
The charity donates to Omico, a not-for-profit body working on giving cancer patients access to precision medicine.
Love Your Sister's money is targeted towards funding services in regional Australia.
Johnson wants to see it become the standard of care for all patients.
Lucy Freeman says he has a knack for making people "believe anything is possible".
"You don't live a small life when you work with Sam. The ideas are large," Lucy says.
Hilde says the work has given her once-rudderless brother a profound sense of direction.
"It definitely saved Sam. He was heading into a very dark place, and look where he is now," she says.
In 2021, Johnson's life on the move came to a startling halt. He and Em were driving to see a friend when nature called, and they pulled over so he could relieve himself behind a tree. As he returned, he was struck by a car.
He spent nearly seven weeks in hospital, followed by 18 months of rehab. He treated recovery like a job, focused on giving it his all.
"He had to learn to speak again. Had to learn to walk again," Em says, but "there was no way he wasn't going to get this done".
Johnson, who didn't sport a Russian accent for too long, has called it the best year of his life.
He had post-traumatic amnesia; the 11 days following the accident were a complete blank. But he knows he is "a good news story" when it comes to serious brain injury.
"Even though I nearly died, a little knock on the head balanced everything out nicely," he says.
"A lot of people don't come out of it, and a lot of people come out of it seriously compromised.
"I've got no sense of smell. My vestibular system, which controls my sense of space and my balance, is a bit wonky.
"When I get tired my behaviour starts to change — so if you interview me for too long, I'll start talking funny. But apart from that, I'm alright."
At home in the little town of Tallarook, north of Melbourne, Johnson has found a sense of peace.
He volunteers as the local postie, getting up before the Sun a few times a week to embark on a 30-kilometre mail run on his pushbike.
He likes to sit by a big tree near the Goulburn River at dusk where he reads Japanese fiction, soaks up the nature around him, and sometimes cracks open a can.
Like all of us, he is complex and multifaceted — and that includes being imperfect.
"The problem is that I really love alcohol. It's fun. But I like it a little too much," Johnson says.
"One day I hope to cold turkey it. But I'm OK with it in my life as it is."
He has a few very good reasons to keep himself in check: "I've got a personal life I would never insult. And I've got a professional life I cannot jeopardise."
He knows it's a cliche, but he is ridiculously grateful for his life.
"I don't have sad days. I don't really have bad days. I'm not trying to paint a picture that's not true. It's just my life now. It's like a rainbow life."
Stream the Australian Story documentary Better Angels on ABC iview and YouTube.