Hey Film Fans,
It’s no secret that we here at TODAY love all of the sexy brood of hunks on True Blood. But after interviewing Ryan Kwanten last Sunday at the Royal Plaza on Scotts, when he was here for the 24th Singapore Film Festival to promote his quirky little dramedy Griff The Invisible, he’s become our resident favourite.
“Oh no, you broke your rib?” enquired the dishy Australian actor of this writer of my recent mishap. “Yeah, I’ve been there many times before. I am very coordinated but unbelievably accident prone. So, yeah, I’m always getting bruised. On jobs and out of jobs. Things blow up in my face, I’m rushed to hospital, stitches on my arms …
“You just have to take care and let it heal,” he advised.
Care and concern from this hot hunk? SWOON!
When asked if I was his millionth interview for the day, he grinned and answered without missing a beat. “ Trillionth! But it’s not too bad. You’re lucky last! Anyway, it’s the suspense isn’t it? Can’t wait for all these hard-hotting questions that you’re going to be asking me like ‘What is my political stand point?…”
‘So what do you feel about the soci-economic standpoint of Singapore then, Ryan?’ I fired off with a laugh.
“Er, I’ve studied up on that! On my seven-hour-and-forty-minute flight from Sydney to Singapore. Who needs sleep? Who needs to watch films?”
Well it seems all of us actually. Especially the ones Kwanten been keeping himself busy with when he’s not burning up our TV screens. So you might think you’ve seen all Ryan Kwanten- all shirtless and sweating in HBO’s vampire hit series. But really there’s so much more to the actor than the hugely popular sexed-up stud Jason Stackhouse he’s played for four years. In fact, he’s a lot closer to his titular character Griff – a shy and awkward office worker by day who finds escape from his ordinary life by assuming the identity of a fantastic superhero at night.
“I really felt like he represented different parts of me…I’m very much an introvert at heart,” he revealed.
“It was the kind of story I felt really needed to be told,” he said when asked what drew him to the indie flick. “I feel like we’re seen the superhero styled film, we’ve seen the romantic comedies, but this is a really nice amalgamation of the two. This to me, was a story that I couldn’t forget and I felt that it needed to see the light of day, that people needed to see it. I thought if it can affect anyone else out there in the same way the same way it affected me, then we have something special.”
“I really think it’s the kind of story that if anyone felt that they were an outsider or that their voice doesn’t count, then this is the sort of film that makes you feel better about yourself.”
Looking back at films he has done — from 2006’s Flicka to 2011’s The Knights of Badassdom and next year’s Not Suitable For Children — it seems that Kwanten’s big screen sensibilities are veering towards the indies.
“I feel quite often that the writing is raw and the characters … there’s more to play with in the indie world as opposed to the sometimes more formulaic style that the studio likes to press out,” he said. “Nothing against that sort of style, it’s just not where I like to go. I like playing tortured souls, and you get a lot more of that in the indie world.
But that doesn’t mean big studio films are out for the thesp. “It’s just got to be the right film, the right character and the right film-maker. As with anything, if it’s a story that doesn’t speak to me, I have no real desire to do it. I’m not in the business of making money. I feel like everything will come if you do something because you love it.”
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