From struggling in silence to finding his voice.
Filmmaker, actor, author and mental health advocate. For 17 years, Nick has drawn on his own experiences to challenge stigma, start difficult conversations and explore what it means to be human.
Nick Bracks is an Australian filmmaker, actor, author, entrepreneur and mental health advocate who has dedicated most of his adult life to destigmatising mental illness through storytelling.
Raised in one of Australia's most prominent political families, Nick was exposed to life in the public eye from the age of 12. In his early twenties, he was involved in a serious drink-driving accident that made national headlines. The incident became a turning point in his life, bringing his struggles with depression, anxiety and alcohol into focus and eventually leading him to seek help.
The media attention that followed led to a modelling career and an invitation to compete on Dancing With the Stars, where he spoke publicly about his struggles with mental health. This marked the beginning of his advocacy work and established him as one of Australia's early voices in mental health awareness. He later appeared in a recurring role on the iconic Australian television series Neighbours.
Since then, Nick has delivered more than 1,000 talks at organisations around the world, including two TEDx talks, working with businesses, universities and community organisations to encourage more open conversations about mental health, wellbeing and personal growth. He also hosted Soul Trader, a weekly radio show on Disrupt Radio.
In 2021, he released his first book, Move Your Mind: How to Build a Healthy Mindset for Life, published globally by Wiley. He also hosts the Move Your Mind podcast, interviewing leading voices in psychology, mental health, personal development and the human experience.
Nick founded Move Your Mind, a health and wellbeing company focused on helping people improve their mental and physical health through practical coaching, education and sustainable behaviour change. He also co-founded weMYND, a mental health technology platform connecting people with personalised support.
Alongside his advocacy work, Nick has founded and co-founded businesses across health, technology, media and fashion, including underBRACKS and Activated Nutrients, now part of Biome Ltd, a publicly listed Australian health company. His work across entrepreneurship, wellbeing and digital media reflects a long-standing interest in building practical tools, platforms and brands that support healthier, more meaningful lives.
Through Bracks Media, Nick is bringing together mental health advocacy, filmmaking and storytelling to develop original film, television and live performance projects. He has recently completed filming The Long Way Home, a feature documentary exploring men's mental health on Papua New Guinea's Kokoda Track, is in pre-production on the dark comedy series Amiss alongside producers whose credits include Euphoria, Succession, Silicon Valley and House of Cards, and is developing Lost Boy, a one-man stage show with veteran writer-director TJ Dawe.
Splitting his time between New York and Melbourne, Nick continues to explore the human experience through storytelling, with a particular focus on the struggles people hide, the patterns that shape their lives and what it takes to create meaningful change.
Trying to outrun what was happening inside his own head.
Through sport, alcohol, achievement, business and eventually storytelling, Nick searched for something that would make him feel enough. Some things worked. Plenty didn't. This is the story of how he got here, and why he's still figuring it out.
The Kid Who Couldn't Switch Off
From an early age, Nick struggled with anxiety, shyness and obsessive thinking. Sport became his escape. He became a state middle-distance champion, training up to six hours a day, sometimes in the middle of the night. But the obsession came at a cost. The extreme training coincided with delayed puberty and eventually pushed his body towards burnout. Sport wasn't just something he did. It became his entire identity.
Growing Up in the Public Eye
When his father, Steve Bracks, became Premier of Victoria in 1999, Nick was just 12 years old. Suddenly, family life became public life. Behind the cameras, he was a shy, anxious kid trying to work out who he was, while feeling increasing pressure to live up to expectations. The contrast between how life appeared on the outside and how he felt internally would follow him for years.
When Everything Fell Apart
Injury and burnout eventually stripped away the identity Nick had built around sport. After school, he deferred university and travelled overseas, searching for direction. But without training to occupy his mind, the anxiety hadn't disappeared. He felt increasingly isolated, uncertain of who he was or what came next. The thing that had once given his life structure and purpose was gone.
A Different Kind of Escape
Alcohol began to replace sport. Drinking four or five nights a week, often to the point of blacking out, Nick discovered another way to temporarily silence the thoughts and feelings he struggled to manage. The same compulsive patterns that had driven his training were now taking him somewhere far more dangerous. What initially felt like an escape was becoming increasingly destructive.
The Night Everything Changed
On 13 July 2007, aged 20, Nick crashed his car into a tree after drinking. He and a friend narrowly escaped with their lives. With his father serving as Premier, the accident became national news. Suddenly, his struggles were playing out in front of the country. But there was no overnight transformation. The public fallout was only part of the story, and his battle with alcohol, depression and anxiety was far from over.
Asking for Help
With encouragement from his mother, Nick began seeing a psychologist and confronting the depression and anxiety he'd struggled with for years. For the first time, he started to understand what was happening beneath the surface. Recovery wasn't linear, and understanding his struggles didn't make them disappear. But it gave him something he'd been missing: the possibility that life could be different.
Terrified of Five People
Nick was so terrified of public speaking that he sometimes vomited before presenting to a room of just five people. When a university business course required repeated presentations, he wanted to withdraw. With encouragement from his mother, psychologist and friends, he stayed. Every presentation was another confrontation with the thing he feared most. Slowly, through repetition, something began to change. The impossible stopped feeling quite so impossible.
Turning Fear Into Purpose
A modelling career led to television, including Dancing With the Stars in 2011, where Nick spoke publicly about his struggles with mental health. What followed was an unexpected career in advocacy and public speaking. Schools started calling, then businesses and organisations around the world. The man who once struggled to speak in front of five people went on to deliver more than 1,000 talks and two TEDx presentations. His greatest vulnerability had become the foundation of his work.
Building Things That Matter
Alongside his work in mental health, Nick built businesses across fashion, health, technology and wellbeing. He launched underBRACKS, co-founded Activated Nutrients, now part of publicly listed health company Biome Australia (ASX:BIO), and helped create the mindfulness platform Happy Waves. Some ventures succeeded. Others fell apart. Entrepreneurship gave him opportunities to build things he believed in, but also taught him that professional success and personal fulfilment weren't necessarily the same thing.
From Television to Acting
What began with modelling and reality television evolved into a deeper interest in acting and storytelling. After undertaking full-time professional acting training, Nick landed a recurring role as Brandon Danker on the long-running Australian series Neighbours. Acting offered a different kind of challenge, one that required vulnerability rather than hiding behind achievement. It planted the seeds for a creative direction he would return to years later.
Lost Again, Found Again
After moving to Vancouver, a major relationship ended and a business he'd poured himself into fell apart. Despite years of personal development, professional accomplishments and helping others through their own challenges, Nick found himself at another low point. It was a painful reminder that understanding mental health doesn't make anyone immune to struggling, and that external success can't resolve everything happening internally. It was also where he started finding his way back.
Finding a New Direction
The pandemic brought Nick back to Australia, where he experienced the devastating loss of his aunt and uncle, two of the people closest to him. During this period, he channelled years of personal experience and mental health advocacy into the Move Your Mind podcast and his first book, Move Your Mind: How to Build a Healthy Mindset for Life, published globally by Wiley in 2021. In a period of enormous uncertainty and grief, he found a new way to connect with people.
A New Beginning
After winning the US Diversity Visa lottery, Nick moved to New York, determined to pursue new creative opportunities. He continued developing his acting career, studying at the Atlantic Acting School, performing in theatre and exploring comedy. In 2022, he also made one of the most significant personal changes of his adult life: giving up alcohol. It marked a new chapter, both personally and creatively.
The Story Is Still Being Written
After years of speaking, acting, writing, building businesses and interviewing people about the human experience, Nick began bringing those worlds together through Bracks Media. His current work spans documentaries, scripted projects and live performance, including The Long Way Home and Amiss. The focus has evolved, but the underlying curiosity remains the same: why do we struggle, what are we avoiding, and what does it really take to change?
