My dad bought a video camera at some point, and my brother and I'd play with that in the backyard. We were never thinking of it as a profession, it was just something to kick around on the weekends. Then I left school and did electrical engineering at the Uni of New South Wales. I only lasted a year, because I got this idea that maybe I should be a stuntman. I went to this girl's high school formal and a kid sitting at the table was telling a story, and he said the word ‘stunt’. And there was a light bulb moment: I'm gonna be a stuntman.

Instead of studying for my physics exam, I went home and looked up ‘stunt’ in the phone book. I found this number for an agency that represented stunt people, and first thing Monday, I called them saying, ‘How do I get into this?’ The lady was friendly, but was trying to talk me out of it, telling me how hard it was to get into. But I already made up my mind, so she said, ‘Write a letter about your background, and the sports you play’. I drove to the office and knocked on her door and was like, ‘Hey, I'm the kid who called yesterday, here's my letter and my background’. I basically called her every week.

When you're young, you think you're invincible. You definitely get scared, but I've always been good at overcoming that fear and having an awareness of what I'm physically capable of. But you’re not really thinking about the worst thing that can happen. I’d be more scared of fucking up in front of everyone than I was of getting hurt.

I saw people had showreels, and it was the same for stunt performers — obviously you had to have a showreel to get jobs, but I needed jobs to have material. I got this idea that if I shot some scenes, people would think I've worked on a movie. There was a stunt guy I'd met, Tony Lynch, and he'd been doing stunts for maybe five years. He had a video camera, so we would go out, train and film ourselves. My brother by this stage had left high school and gone to drama school at Nepean, and he was in the same boat. We set about making something a bit longer; my brother got another kid from his drama school, Kieran Darcy-Smith, and we had this whole action sequence with me and Tony, then acting stuff with the four of us.

Kieran entered us in the Bathurst Film Festival. We met other filmmakers and won a prize or two. We entered more film festivals, met other filmmakers and got a bit of a taste for it. The short film was called Loaded and it played at Flickerfest. Some director saw it and asked Kieran and I to play a couple of young punks on this TV show on the ABC with Garry McDonald called Fallen Angels. It was just one episode, but we were like, ‘Oh, wow, this thing we made got us a job’. 

Kieran and Joel started writing this film that was half an hour long. Loaded was like nine minutes and cost us a few hundred bucks to make. Most of that we spent on fixing things, like we broke the windscreen on my car — one of the first awards we won for Loaded at Flickerfest was Most Resourceful Production. So we thought, if the 10-minute film cost us a few hundred, a half-hour film is gonna cost us $1,000. We put $250 each into an account. We had to give the bank account a name so we called it Blue-Tongue Films. The film, of course, cost us way more than $1,000 because it was quite ambitious and we broke lots of things. By the end of the summer we'd spent $10,000 on our credit cards, and we'd only shot half the film.

Loaded got invited to screen at this festival in LA in 1999. The lady who organized it flew a bunch of us over. But it wasn't until 2009 that I went to LA with a visa to work there. By then I'd worked on Star Wars: Attack of the Clones as Ewan McGregor’s stunt double; one of the guys working on that film was Spencer Susser. My brother and I became friends with him, and we'd go to LA and stay with him, and he became part of Blue-Tongue Films.

LA I really enjoy — I love that people come from all over to work in the film industry. I have a lot of friends there, a lot of Australians. It took a little while to get used to but I spent a lot of years living there, so it's like my second home now. I always feel a sense of excitement when I show up because there's a lot of possibilities. It's very much a ‘yes’ town; you have an idea or something you want to talk about, and people are very supportive and encouraging.

I was making Mr Inbetween for FX and I came back to Sydney from LA to do the second season. We stuck around Sydney and another job got pushed, and I stayed here and started working on a third season. Most recently, I did Shark, and I did a music video for the Hilltop Hoods, for their new single ‘Show Business’, which was super fun. They're lovely guys, and I really resonate with the song because it's about working in show business for a long time and the highs and lows of it. I've got a handful of different things in development, and I'm about to go to Ireland to work on a show.

It's always great to go to a new place or meet people in another city; see art in another city, hear different music, watch films. Any of that stuff is definitely inspiring. And the great thing about working in entertainment is you're always meeting new people and having different experiences. I think it all feeds into your creativity in general. You can't help but absorb those experiences and make them part of what you're creating.

You find inspiration anywhere; ideas come when you zone out. When I want to clear my head, I go and jump in the ocean, just bob about without any devices. You can drown out the sound and go underwater or just float. Or I go for a walk along the cliffs to get out in the fresh air. I go down to Clovelly and walk in either direction — whether you go towards Coogee and Maroubra or Tamarama and Bondi, it's always different, depending on the time of the day and the weather. It's such a beautiful part of Sydney.

There's always something happening if you want to connect to the arts in some way. It's one of the great things about the city. There’s so many different cultural festivals — there’s the Sydney Comedy Festival, Vivid or the Sydney Film Festival. There’s the Writers’ Festival and the Archibald at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

No matter how much I travel, there's something about coming back here; it just feels like home. I very much appreciated Sydney during the pandemic. Australians would generally be quite rebellious, but also compliant; it felt like everyone followed whatever rules we were given, and it made it somewhat harmonious and enjoyable despite what was going on.

I always suggest people do the cliff walks, anywhere between Bondi and Maroubra. Along the coast there, no matter whether it's summer or winter, it's beautiful. Sydney is an amazing city, in that you can be in the city and then be at the beach within 15 minutes. And the beaches are beautiful and clean — I can't think of many cities with that proximity, and beaches to that level. That's one thing I miss when I'm in LA: proximity to beaches. As much as there are beaches in LA, they're not the same. The parks here are great, and the food's really good, and if you want to drive out of the city and go into the mountains, that doesn't take long either. It's kind of a bit of everything. And Sydney is very much a walking city. When you walk in LA, people look at you like you're a weirdo. New York obviously, is a great city to walk around, but in Sydney, I really like walking.

Pino’s Vino e Cucina in Alexandria is a great Italian restaurant. When I was living in Darlinghurst, Thai Nesia was my spot to get Thai food. There's so much great Thai in Sydney — there's another one, Chim Chim in Randwick. I'm big on Asian food. One thing I missed in LA is I didn't find lots of great Thai options. You had to really hunt for it. Whereas I feel like every suburb in the greater part of Sydney has a good Thai restaurant, or multiple good Thai restaurants. And then there's so many good joints for breakfast. In Darlinghurst, I'd always go to Bootsdarling. Now I'm living over Randwick way, I still venture over there when I can. In Clovelly, A Man and his Monkey is really great.

There’s the Art Gallery of New South Wales, or the MCA down near Circular Quay, but there's a lot of good little galleries around Sydney too. Again, that's the beautiful thing about walking Sydney; you just walk around Paddington and Darlinghurst and walk past them.

Anywhere from Surry Hills or Darlinghurst is great. If you're walking down Crown Street from Redfern or Surry Hills, you’ll get to Oxford Street and you can either go into the city or up towards Paddington. You could continue all the way to Bondi Beach if you wanted. There's so many great places around Paddington, if you go along Oxford Street and then down all those lanes — same in Surry Hills going down Crown Street, if you want to go from there through Hyde Park into the city.

The Hermitage Walk for me. I'd been down to Milk Beach but I hadn't done Hermitage Walk until the lockdown. It’s really quite special.

Depends on the length of the flight. If it's a short flight, I'm happy to have a window. If it's long, I like the aisle. Not that I get up a lot, but I don't like the idea of having to climb over people when they're asleep or wake them up. Subsequently, you end up being the person getting woken up all the time.

I don't know! I mean, I love music, lots of different sorts of music, but I think it all depends on where your head's at, what speaks to you at the time. If I had to listen to anything, anytime, I'd probably put on The Cure, because there's a kind of fun but there’s a darkness to it at the same time that I really appreciate and that sort of taps into me.

Home. 

Home, for sure, especially when you travel a lot. There’s something about landing back in Sydney that feels special, even if it's a short trip. It feels very comforting. I love so many other cities but there's something about Sydney that feels special. You come home and you go, ‘OK, gotta go jump in the ocean and reconnect’.