Natalie Tran Australian Actress Born 1986 in Sydney

Early life

Natalie Tran was born on 24 July 1986 in Auburn, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. Her parents came to Australia from Vietnam as refugees in 1981. Her mother had worked in law and her father in literary lecturing; after the family settled in Sydney, her mother found work in the postal service and her father became a teacher in the public school system. Her sister, Isabel, made the journey with their parents.

She grew up in Auburn and went to primary school in Lidcombe. She first attended Rosebank College in Five Dock, then moved in Year 9 to Meriden School, an Anglican girls' school in Strathfield, where she graduated in 2004. She has said she did not enjoy secondary school much. At the University of New South Wales she began by majoring in education, inspired by her father, but once her online channel took off she switched to digital media and completed a degree in that field. During her studies she held a retail job.

Career

Tran posted her first YouTube video on 25 September 2006, at first replying to clips by other users. Her channel, known as communitychannel, soon became centred on observational comedy and vlogs. In these she played every character herself and delivered monologues about ordinary situations, such as losing a phone that was set to silent or failing to keep house plants alive.

She was invited to take part in the launch of YouTube Australia in 2007, and in February 2007 a video of her defending Vegemite was shown on the television programme A Current Affair. At Mashable's 2009 Open Web Awards she was nominated in two categories, Best YouTube Channel or Personality and Funniest YouTube Channel. By 2009 she was the most subscribed-to YouTuber in Australia and the 37th most subscribed globally; in 2010 she ranked 18th in the world and, according to TubeMogul, tenth for earnings, with more than $101,000 in advertising revenue between July 2009 and July 2010. She passed one million subscribers by 2011. That year she also worked with Lonely Planet on a series of travel videos recorded in cities including Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Buenos Aires.

Later projects included the relationship advice series Love Conundrums, which she began in 2013 and later dropped, and a talk at Brown University in April 2015 about Asian representation and stereotyping in the media. Her April 2016 parody of the apology video made by Johnny Depp and Amber Heard over Australian biosecurity rules drew praise from critics. In September 2016 she became an ambassador for YouTube's Creators for Change programme, and in December 2017 she released White Male Asian Female, a 40-minute documentary on how relationships between Asian women and white men are perceived. She stopped uploading regularly in December 2016.

Away from YouTube, Tran worked from 2010 to 2011 as the Sydney correspondent for The Whip segment on The Project. Her first film role was Helen in the 2013 romantic comedy Goddess. She was a regular on the sketch show The Slot in 2017 and 2018, appeared in all three seasons of the FX series Mr Inbetween as Jacinta, the ex-wife of the main character, and made guest and recurring appearances on Kinne Tonight from 2018. In 2021 she was a correspondent and writer for The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, and in 2022 she appeared in Heartbreak High and voiced two characters in the animated series Koala Man.

In June 2023 she became co-host of The Great Australian Bake Off alongside Cal Wilson, taking over from Claire Hooper and Mel Buttle. After Wilson's death in October 2023, Tran presented the show alone until Tom Walker joined her as co-host for the ninth season in September 2025.

Recognition

Australian media have often called Tran the country's "Queen of YouTube", and she has featured on several lists of the best Australian YouTubers. The Sydney Morning Herald included her among Sydney's 100 most influential people in 2011, and NewMediaRockstars placed her channel in its top 100 in 2014. Digital Trends named her video "Indoor Plant Serial Killer" among the funniest on the platform in 2020.

Personal life

Tran has been vegetarian since 2015 and later became vegan. She began a relationship in 2011 with the producer Rowan Jones, whom she met while working on The Project.