Olivia Hargroder, not expected to live long, leads the film Boss Cat

Olivia Hargroder, 27, plays the lead in the feature film Boss Cat, a role built for an actor who can dance and then has to pretend she cannot. ABC News, in an Australian Story report first published on November 1, 2026, said she lives in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane, and that the character Sonja is 23. Hargroder told ABC that playing someone who is not a good dancer was the hard part, because she thinks of herself as a strong dancer.

She addressed the United Nations in New York in 2017 on World Down Syndrome Day. A careers counsellor later laughed at her plan to study at NIDA and suggested a bakery. She spent a year in NIDA's Open Young Actor's Studio with 12 others, then in 2021 joined Bus Stop Films, which ABC said works with about 250 young adults with intellectual disability, autism, or Down syndrome. Writer-director Genevieve Clay-Smith, a co-founder of that group, cast her after auditions. Hargroder made a coloured chart so a scene's anger, joy, or sadness stayed a tool and did not take her over.

Boss Cat premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in June and is set for general release on December 3, the International Day of People with Disability. The report also records her early life: a heart condition her mother, Kerry Read, was told was apparently incompatible with life, surgery at nine weeks with a stated 20 percent chance of survival, further heart surgery at 18, and knee operations after she wrote to surgeon Jeremy Bartlett at 15 because she kept falling. Those medical details are history in the profile. The news is the film and the lead. ABC did not review the movie or report box-office figures.