Shortly after I started working as a doctor, I decided to listen to the voice inside me before it was too late. It was now or never, so I decided to explore acting.
Jonathan LaPaglia
I thought I was clever by greeting casting agents in my Australian accent and then switching to an American one during the performance. But the Australian accent seemed to put them off. Now it's the opposite; they love Australians. And with my thick Californian accent I now have a problem convincing them I'm Australian.
The movie industry has collapsed into two types of film - the $100 million blockbuster or the small independent film of $1 million or less - and the huge middle ground has been lost. Cable is filling that void.
I have an old car that I've rebuilt myself - a 1973 Dodge Challenger - and I also have a 1967 Pontiac GTO.
In primary school I was terrible. I don't think I was particularly well behaved in high school, but I started to apply myself.
I just couldn't imagine hitting a child. But in 'The Slap' it's an extreme situation. You have to ask yourself - would you step in if a child was out of control?
As an actor, you want new challenges. U.S. TV can be very formulaic. So when something gets a reaction, as 'The Slap' has, that's great. The sense I get is that it's not about me or my performance. More than anything it's the subject matter that people are focused on.'
When I was at school, you had to choose; there was a lot of pressure to assimilate. You were an Aussie, or you were one of 'the wogs' - which was everybody else. But I didn't want to be in either group, so I felt like an odd one out.
Acting for me was hard enough without having to think of the accent. And also, when I was auditioning for stuff I would walk into the room with an Australian accent, and I would do the audition in an American accent, and they would invariably say, 'Yeah, it's that good, but I can still hear the oddity coming through.'
I think it's unreasonable to expect kids at 17 to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. And actually, I guess I had a desire to be an artist, and I did enroll in art school out of high school.
Unfortunately, I have two facets to my makeup, and that is both scientific and artistic. By doing medicine, I was only answering one of those sides.
