Ernie Dingo is an Aboriginal Australian actor who has had an extensive career in film and television. Best known to international audiences through his film roles as Charlie in Crocodile Dundee II and as the Australian detective who chases William Hunt around the globe in Wim Wenders’s Until the End of the World, Ding has also become a familiar and popular figure on Australian television.

Dingo’s television career is particularly significant for the way it has broken new ground in the medium's presentation of cultural difference. Initially taking roles scripted specifically for an Aboriginal actor by white writers and directors, he has worked consistently to broaden expectations of what aboriginality can include and to introduce and popularize and an understanding of Aboriginal perspectives on Australian life.

Ernie Dingo grew up around the small Western Australian town of Mullewa, where the local Aboriginal people still speak the traditional Wudjadi language. He first moved into acting in Perth when a basketball team to what she belonged formed a dance and cultural performance group, Middar. From there, he moved into stage roles in plays by Western Australian Aboriginal playwright Jack Davis before gaining a role in the television miniseries Cowra Breakout (1985) by Kennedy Miller for the Channel 10 network. Dingo’s background and traditional and contemporary Aboriginal culture have been important to his work in television because, as he points out, working as an Aboriginal actor frequently involved working also (usually informally) as a consultant, cultural mediator, co-writer, and translator.

Dingo’s first major screen roles were in film in Tudawali (1985), Fringe Dwellers (1986), and State of Shock (1989), all of which had white  scriptwriters and directors but don't sympathetically with problems of racism and disadvantage encountered by Aboriginal people. All three were small-release productions designed substantially for television adaptation and/or distribution. In 1988, he was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Banff Television Festival for his powerful performance as one of Australia's first Aboriginal screen actors, Rovert Tudawali, in Tudawali.

One of Dingo’s main skills as an actor is an ability to encourage audiences with an open, easy screen presence and use of humor while also capturing serious moods dramatically and convincingly. It is perhaps this versatility, above all, that has made him highly effective as a cross-cultural communicator. Dingo’s ability with lighter rolls was first demonstrated by his performance in children's drama series, including Clowning Around (1992) and A Waltz Through the Hills (1990), for what he received an Australian Film Institute award for best actor in a telefeature for his performance has an Aboriginal bushman, Frank Watson. 

However, his first emergence as a popular figure of mainstream commercial television occurred with his inclusion in the comedy-variety program Fast Forward. He is particularly remembered for his comic and personation of prominent financial commentator Robert Gottliebsen, in which he imitated Gottliebsen’s manner and appearance but translated his analysis of movements and share prices and exchange rates into colloquial Aboriginal english.

From Fast Forward, Dingo has moved on to great roles and other popular programs, such as The Great Outdoors and Heartbreak High. The latter two roles, as well as his role in Fast Forward, are significant because they are not clearly marked as specifically Aboriginal. InThe Great Outdoors, Dingo appears  alternately with other well-known Australian television personalities as a compere, or master of ceremonies, in light feature stories about leisure, travel, and the environment. In Heartbreak High,  he appeared as Vic, a media studies teacher at multicultural Hartley High. Both roles have done much to normalize the appearance of Aboriginal people on Australian television and have provided an important counter to the often-fraught treatment of Aboriginal issues and news and current affairs.

Dingo has also continued with serious dramatic roles with a major role as an Aboriginal police liaison officer, Vincent Burraga, in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s highly acclaimed drama series Heartland. The serious was in many ways groundbreaking, not only in its inclusion of Aboriginal people in script writing and production and frequent adoption of Aboriginal perspectives but also for its naturalistic treatment of a cross-cultural romance between Vincent and white urbanite Elizabeth Ashton (Cate Blanchett). The series’ ability to negotiate issues of cultural and political sensitivity was significantly dependent on Dingo’s skills and magnetic screen presence.

Ernie Dingo has been acclaimed by some as one of Australia's finest contemporary actors. In addition, he has established a place as a major figure in extending mainstream awareness and understanding of Aboriginal Australia.