Jack Thompson has starred in three films for director Bruce Beresford: Breaker Morant, for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Best Actor Award from the Australian Film Institute, The Club and Last Dance. In 1994, he received the Film Critics Circle of Australia's Best Actor Award for his role in The Sum of Us, directed by Geoff Burton and Kevin Dowling.

Among Thompson's additional film credits are director Niels Mueller's The Assassination of Richard Nixon, George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode II, Michael Cristofer's Original Sin, Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Woo's Broken Arrow, Carrol Ballard's Wind, Paul Verhoeven's Flesh and Blood, Mike Newell's Bad Blood, George Miller's The Man from Snowy River, Graeme Clifford's Burke & Wills, Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, and Philippe Mora's Mad Dog Morgan.

American television audiences will recognize the Australian actor from his roles in A Woman of Independent Means, the CBS miniseries Last Frontier; Golda, with Ingrid Bergman; and the telefilms Trouble in Paradise and The Letter. In Australia, he starred in the series Spyforce, and appeared in the miniseries Waterfront and the telefilms Because He's My Friend, Linehaul and Smithie.