Aussie newspaper, The Australian, published an article last month about the rather overwhelming success of Australian actors working on American tv shows.
The list of Australians now taking lead roles in America TV series is exhaustive. There are the obvious stars such as LaPaglia, Jackman, Rose Byrne in Damages or Rachel Griffiths in Brothers & Sisters, as well as less obvious ones, including House’s Jesse Spencer, former Neighbours star Alan Dale (Ugly Betty), Emilie de Ravin (Lost) and Dominic Purcell (Prison Break).
Then there are the not-so-obvious stars. Former Stingers regular Jason Clarke is the lead in cable series Brotherhood and 25-year-old Maroubra girl Yvonne Strahovski shines as a female action star in the spy comedy Chuck (due on Nine next year). Even Rove McManus has made three trips to the US this year to pitch TV ideas, appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and throw his hat into the late night TV talk show ring.
The ubiquity of Australians has prompted a growing sense of jealousy, even protectionism, among the natives, at least in the US media. The preponderance of British and Australian actors taking lead roles on American TV shows has been duly noted.
I actually had forgotten that Dominic Purcell was an Australian, so you can definitely expect to see him added to my list of actors to keep track of on AussieHunks.com. And I had no idea that Jason Clarke was Australian until Showtime featured him on a Public Service Announcement on Sunday night and he spoke with an Australian accent. LOL His New England accent is so good, I figured he was a local. Heh.
Two more commercials that Alex O’Loughlin did early in his acting career have been posted to Youtube. Yes, early in his acting career, she says. Even though his acting career is only four years old or so as it is *g*
The first one is an Australian Mitsubishi commercial and Alex is just freaking adorable.
The second one is a Toyota commercial. A sexy Toyotal commercial. I’m not kidding!
If you have a Youtube account, I highly recommend subscribing to Bella’s feed. She’s got the hook up!
Maybe I should have called the journal “Aussie Hunk”
Julian McMahon hosted the World Music Awards this year and it will be airing in the US on Thanksgiving evening, Nov. 22nd, at 8pm (your local time?) on the MyNetworkTV channel. You should check their local stations page to see if you have a local affiliate.
Julian committed some fairly egregious fashion don’ts for his WMAs appearance. So, here’s a picspam!
And here you are thinking “What is she talking about? He looks great here!” Well, yes, he certainly does. Julian’s sporting a nice casual look for the WMA rehearsals.
But then he decides to put on this for the pre-show party!
Dear God, man, what was he thinking!?
It gets worse!
Hi, I’m Julian McMahon and I’m wearing plaid pants, a velvet jacket, a lycra or something shirt, and a PURPLE BANDANA. Why yes, I have lost my fucking mind!
Phewww! Finally, for the show itself he puts on a normal suit. A very suave suit. But that hat? I dunno. In some pics I think it looks cute, but in others — it’s clearly moronic. But damn, that is a nice suit!
iF: What about Mick made you want to play this character?
O’LOUGHLIN: I really like his humor and that was the first thing that came off the page. First of all as an actor, you read scripts everyday and you read people’s interpretations of characters everyday, and some are more filled out than others and some are one-dimensional. Some characters speak to you more than others do. This character; I got him, I understood his motivations and his passions and why he is conflicted and why he thought was funny was funny. I just got him right away. I guess it all boils down to empathy. I had empathy for him and thought I could understand him so I thought I could justifiably play him.
One of the things I really like about Alex is that he’s really opinionated without being aggressively so. And he definitely has a healthy respect for his own capabilities. Most of the actors I really like have strong egos (Russell Crowe being a case in point), but Alex’s ego is nicely tempered by his friendly and gregarious personality.
He also strikes me as very bright and inquisitive, another favored trait *g*
I love this clip from the movie, The Holiday. Alex O’Loughlin is in the movie for all of 30 seconds so you don’t need to go out and rent it or anything, but damn, it is a hot 30 seconds! Pretty, pretty man!
If you’re an Alex O’Loughlin fan, don’t forget that August Rush opens in theatres tomorrow. Alex is playing the brother of Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ character in the movie. And he plays guitar! Not sure how big his part in this is, but I’m sure he’ll have at least a few good scenes.
I wasn’t overly interested in seeing this movie, but having watched both the Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger trailers, my interest is piqued so I expect I will be lining up to check it out!
Since Ridley Scott is my favorite director and Russell Crowe is my favorite actor, I really enjoy reading about how much Russell enjoys working with Ridley. So here’s another interview that makes me quite happy.
Q. Does having that sort of connection with a director make your job easier as an actor?
Russell: Of course! He knows the best thing to do is just see [what I’m doing as an actor], and he’ll get it when he sees it. But I know what he’s looking for. He downloads to me what his desires are, what he sees and believes in, what he sees the movie as, and I listen and retain it and become a version of his conscience. We’ll be in the middle of something and I’ll say, “Didn’t you say you wanted this to be like that and to have the bloke say this to go with that?” and he’ll say, “Exactly! And how would you interpret that?”
I wanted to see American Gangster a second time in the movie theater so I ended up taking my dad out to see it tonight. He loved it as well and said it was totally one of those movies he’d see again.
There’s a terrific long interview with Russell Crowe at The Void about American Gangster. Russell’s in excellent form and gregarious as hell.
I know that some of the people will assassinate me for saying this but what Ridley and I know about each other is that we’re both very kind and generous people. That’s why we get on.”
Here’s an intriquing bit of info about Alex O’Loughlin and his matriculation at NIDA.
But how did Alex get there, via a story which could be entitled, How Not To Get to NIDA? He was the bad boy of high school and college that many teachers would recognise. Actually, they won’t because his name is not in the records, not just because he often wasn’t in school (and never did drama past primary). Alex needed to escape a Canberra which did nothing for him before he changed his life, and his name.
I would seriously love to know more what that’s all about, but it probably explains the tattoos quite a bit *g*. You can read the rest of the article here. The last five paragraphs are about Alex.
NIDA is Australia’s pre-eminent dramatic arts institute.
