Soli Philander a multi award winning performer was born in Elsies River, Cape Town. While being one of South Africa's most versatile performers he is also known to be a comedian, television presenter, actor, director, playwright, a columnist and motivational speaker.

Soli matriculated from John Ramsay Secondary School in Bishop Lavis, Cape Town. He never thought that he would end up doing acting as a career. It came by chance when he accompanied a friend to an audition and he also stood for auditions. Since that day he performed around South Africa in all the key theaters. He also performed internationally in Sweden, The Netherlands, America, the United Kingdom, Swaziland and Namibia.

Besides theater Soli has hosted numerous radio shows and he formed part of the original 567 Cape Talk line up in 1997, where he still has a slot today. He has also presented on RSG, and portrayed comic characters on both Metro FM and AM Live. He has also starred in the satirical politics program, "Off the Record", and acted in "Reflections", a local drama series among a list of other equally popular shows.

He also hosted some of the television programs like M-Net pay channel's local version of the popular game show "Are you smarter than a 5^th Grader" and the Afrikaans music quiz show "Liriekeraai". In 2005 he hosted the first season of ETV's charity reality show "Let's Fix It". He also presented a program for M-Net called "Exploring Southern

Africa" and featured in the comedy shows "Lagnet", "People of the South", "Punch Line" and "It's a Funny Country". He has also appeared in child educational programmes "Bospraatjies” and “Kideo”.

He has performed in many corporate shows for major companies like Colgate, Castrol, Glaxo, Sachs, SAA, SAB, Eskom, Telkom, M-Net, Afrikaans Stereo, John Deere, and many more.

Apart from acting, and hosting television shows and running talk shows, he is a highly respected creative writer and a director. Some of his personal writings included the hit show "Woeskroes" and the entertaining character Rosie September "the maid with the most", in the brilliantly orchestrated "Take Two".

Despite his busy schedule, he still makes time to perform charity work for disadvantaged communities, schools and community organisations. His hard work has paid off, as he has received several best actor and supporting actor awards as well as the prestigious "Life Contribution to the Arts" award.

Sources:-

• Capetalk
• Speakers of note
• TVSA
• About entertainment
• Bookcelebs