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This article is taken from the Edmonton Sun, Sunday August 27, 2000. Thanks to Aruana of the CrowePeople mailing list for typing it in.

G'DAYS FOR AUSSIES

Thunder from Down Under getting louder in Hollywood

By LOUIS B. HOBSON, CALGARY SUN

Australia's favourite sons are storming the beaches of southern California.

Unlike their disastrous invasion of Gallipoli in the First World War, this latest Aussie onslaught has all the earmarks of a crushing victory.

Australian actors have become a hot commodity in Tinseltown.

They nabbed some of the most coveted roles in this summer's big movies and they've stayed to star in some of next year's highly anticipated projects.

At the forefront of this foray is the road warrior himself, Mel Gibson.

Technically, Gibson, 44, is only half-Australian. His mother was born in Sydney but his father is American and Mel was born in Peekskill, New York.

Australians quickly - and rightly - point out that Gibson was raised in Australia from the age of 12 and it was in the land Down Under that he got his start as an actor.

Gibson is a classically trained stage actor who took Australia and then the world by storm when he starred in George Miller's low-budget futuristic thriller Mad Max. In 1980, Mad Max became the highest- grossing Aussie movie in history. In 1982, its sequel, Road Warrior, proved even more successful and quickly became an international hit.

Three years later, People magazine named Gibson its first Sexiest Man Alive and in 1987, with Lethal Weapon, Gibson became a box-office superstar. In 1994 Gibson directed and starred in Braveheart, winning Oscars for best director and best picture.

Gibson was paid a whopping $25 million US plus a percentage of the film's profits to star in The Patriot but took scale (salary) to provide the voice of Rocky the rooster in the claymation feature Chicken Run.

Is he an icon?

"Mel is an icon to all struggling Australian actors. He was the one who bridged the gap between Australia and Hollywood. He showed us that it was possible to make it to America and to be a success. Before Mel, that scenario was just a pipe dream," says Heath Ledger, the 21-year-old Aussie actor who plays Gibson's son in The Patriot.

Working with Gibson on The Patriot, Ledger observed that his famous countryman is a superhero in the international film industry.

"But he's also such a gentleman and a gentle man. That's what surprised me the most about Mel, that he could remain such a level- headed person after becoming so famous, so powerful and so wealthy."

While Gibson has often tried to downplay his Aussie roots, Paul Hogan became a star because of it. Hogan, 60, skyrocketed to international fame in 1986 as the star of Crocodile Dundee, a modest little comedy that grossed more than $400-million US worldwide.

Its 1988 sequel, Crocodile Dundee 2, generated about half as much excitement and revenue and his Almost an Angel and Lightning Jack were box-office duds.

Hogan has continued to maintain his Aussie Outback image and his self- deprecating humour by hawking Subaru sport utility vehicles.

"I've lived with Mick Dundee for so long that there are days when I don't know where Mick ends and Paul begins," admits Hogan.

Filming began this month in Queensland on Crocodile Dundee Returns, Hogan's latest attempt to regain his power in Hollywood.

If there is a pretender to Gibson's throne, it's the burly, brawling, sexy Russell Crowe, who has been hailed as everything from the new James Dean to the next Marlon Brando. Like Dean, Crowe, 36, has a raw, natural talent and like Brando he has a smouldering sexuality.

Crowe has Sharon Stone to thank for his passage to America. Stone had caught Crowe's award-winning performances in the Australian movies Proof and Romper Stomper. She insisted he was the only actor who could play the preacher in her western, The Quick and the Dead.

She said Crowe "is not only charismatic, handsome and talented but also fearless. I find fearlessness very attractive and I think audiences do, too."

The studio wanted an American actor, but Stone stood her ground, thus opening a door that Crowe's immense talents have kept from closing.

Richard Harris, who starred opposite Crowe in Gladiator, says the Aussie is "a throwback to great old movie stars. He's a Clark Gable or a Robert Mitchum.

"He's a man's man. He's a hard-drinking, hard-living, hard-loving, no- nonsense kind of guy. No one works harder on a movie set, but once he leaves it he's just an ordinary bloke. He's a rarity in the movie industry these days and that's what makes him so appealing on and off camera."

Crowe's co-star in 1997's L.A. Confidential was another Aussie, Guy Pearce. Pearce began his career as a young hunk on Australia's popular soap opera Neighbours. The show capitalized on the chiselled physique that had won him a junior bodybuilding championship when he was 16.

In what people in the Australian film industry considered either brave or foolish, Pearce agreed to play a flamboyant drag queen in the comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in 1994.

The gamble paid off.

Priscilla was an international hit and Pearce, sans his gowns, was cast in L.A. Confidential, Ravenous and this year's Rules of Engagement.

In 1977, when Geoffrey Rush dashed up on stage to collect the best actor Oscar for the independent movie Shine, few people knew who the lanky Australian actor was.

That's not the case these days.

Rush, 49, is one of the busiest character actors in the business. Since his Oscar-winning performance, Rush has starred in Les Miserables, Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Mystery Men and House on Haunted Hill and will be seen this fall as the Marquis de Sade in the film Quill.

The night Rush won his Oscar, Gibson rushed backstage to embrace his countryman and friend. When they were both young, struggling actors, Gibson and Rush not only shared the stage in a production of Waiting For Godot but, as roommates, shared digs for several lean years.

Gibson, Hogan, Crowe and Pearce qualify as the old-guard Aussies.

Closing in on their heels and turf are five more Aussie hunks.

It wasn't The Patriot that brought Heath Ledger to Hollywood but rather the Disney comedy Ten Things I Hate About You. Ledger was 17 when he was cast in the sword-and-sorcery TV series Roar. The show failed to become the next Hercules, but it did bring the strapping Aussie to the attention of Hollywood and it got him an L.A. agent.

"After Ten Things I was offered tons of really bad teen movies, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. I kept holding out, hoping I'd get offered something substantial."

Ledger's dream came true when he took the role of Gibson's son in The Patriot from Ryan Phillippe.

"I had spent every cent I'd made from Ten Things. If I'd missed out on The Patriot, I would have had to go back to Sydney with my tail between my legs."

That's not likely to happen any time soon.

Ledger is wrapping up The Knight's Tale in Prague and will begin work on The Four Feathers in October, the film he turned down Spiderman to make.

No one was more surprised than Hugh Jackman when he was called to audition for the coveted role of Wolverine in X-Men. Jackman was a song-and-dance man with just a few Australian film credits on his resume.

"I think it is the longest audition process on record in Hollywood history. It was 10 months from when I first put down a test to my final screen test. In between I pretty much met everyone at Fox studios, apart from Rupert Murdoch," recalls Jackman.

During this gruelling audition process, back home in Sydney Jackman was named Australian Star of 1999. His trophy went on a shelf next to those he received as best actor in a musical for his performances in the Australian productions of Sunset Boulevard and Beauty and the Beast.

Jackman, 31, is currently filming Animal Husbandry with Ashley Judd in New York.

Another song-and-dance man from Down Under who's tapping his way to stardom in America is Adam Garcia, who plays the enigmatic short- order cook in Coyote Ugly.

Garcia, 27, was one of the stars of the hit Australian tap show Hot Shoe Shuffle, which transferred to London's West End theatre district. The show closed after six months, but Garcia stayed in Britain, starring in productions of Grease, Birdy and Saturday Night Fever.

Garcia is currently in New York filming Riding in Cars With Boys, playing Drew Barrymore's son.

Garcia feels that Hollywood has just seen the tip of the iceberg as far as emerging Australian talent is concerned.

"The fact that Fox has built a new studio in Australia and that there are so many big American movies filming in Australia makes it most advantageous for Australian actors," Garcia says. "We've always had great training school but the American studios didn't get to see the graduates.

"They come down to film in Australia and need actors for supporting roles. When an actor proves his mettle, doors swing open."

This is certainly the case with Simon Baker, one of the stars of the fall movie Red Planet, dubbed "Hunks in Space.''

Baker, who shares this space mission with Benjamin Bratt, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore and Terence Stamp, had small roles in Ang Lee's Ride With the Devil and L.A. Confidential. But it was Red Planet that brought him to the attention of the casting department at Warner Bros.

Baker won the coveted role opposite Hilary Swank in The Affair of the Necklace, currently being shot in France.

Before he decided to pull up roots and move to America, Cameron Daddo was a star of Australian TV and stage, winning awards for his performance in the stage musical Big River.

It took no time at all for Daddo, 35, to work similar magic on such American TV series as Models Inc., FX the Series, Hope Island and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Like most of his countrymen, Daddo divides his time as much as possible between Australia and America.

"It's not a case of running away from my roots. I want to work in America because the opportunities are so much greater, but I want to return to Australia whenever possible to be a part of the industry that nurtured me and allowed me to come to America."

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