So how did the acting bug bite?
My brother Luke got into it first. As a kid I always loved movies; I would sit down and watch movies all day long. But it wasn't like I dreamt of being an actor or anything. It wasn't until I was about 17 and I watched my brothers do TV shows in Australia that I wanted to pursue it seriously, and I started doing classes outside of school. I got an agent and started auditioning as much as I could. That was in my last year of school.
Can you talk a little about what made you decide that acting was the only path you would take?
I left to shoot something for a few weeks and when I returned to school my head just wasn’t there any more. So I left school completely about three-quarters of the way through my last year and I just started laying floors with my eldest brother Luke. I was just auditioning as much as I could and laying floors as well.
What did the surfing crowd think about having an aspiring actor in their midst?
I had a really tight circle of friends. A lot of guy friends that I grew up with, there was a big group of us, and they were always just so blasé about anything I ever did in Australia. It was just, “Yeah, cool man. Let’s go and surf.” So they never really showed that much interest or cared that much. They were just good mates who never treated me any differently.