Dean O'Gorman is waiting for the cockroach man to turn up.

The New Zealand actor's house in Sydney is overrun, but waiting for the exterminator so early in the morning isn't going down too well.

"There's lots of cockroaches in Sydney," he yawns.

He's been living and working in Australia for the last two years and in his latest role as Luke Morgan in McLeod's Daughters he's come face-to-face with an even scarier Aussie critter.

"There was a snake on set the other day," he says, more excitedly.

The show, about the lives, loves, and perils of the people from the vast outback farm of Drovers Run, is filmed an hour out of Adelaide in the tiny outback town of Freeling.

"It honestly has six or seven houses," he laughs. "It's in the middle of nowhere, it's farmland and it's got brown snakes. It's not like the Outback in the sense that it's all dusty, but there's more alpacas and horses than there are people."

McLeod's Daughters finishes its current season tonight [22 October] at 8.30pm on TV2. However, O'Gorman is already filming the next series and was set to fly back to Adelaide the day after this interview took place.

He's reluctant to give any details about his character's antics on the show for fear of giving away too much of the plot.

"I don't know how much I can say without getting into trouble. I'm not going to use the term 'bad boy' to describe him, because he's actually not. He's not a farmer for one thing so he's a bit of a departure from the regular cast. He gets up to shenanigans on the show.

"I get involved in drag racing, and I'm there as the love interest for Jodi [played by Rachael Carpani]. She's compelled by Luke's slightly less well-behaved outlook on life. She basically picks me up."

Before heading to Australia O'Gorman starred in local feature films Toy Love and Snakeskin, and appeared in TV shows, including Shortland St, Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules and Serial Killers.

But Young Hercules is what he's known for best - the number of fansites dedicated to him because of that show is quite phenomenal. One site even tells us that he can walk on his hands.

He confesses that he can walk on his hands, but laughs: "I don't know where the hell this information comes from.

"I tend not to look at the websites because I'm scared if I see something bad about me it'll upset me. I have looked up a few a couple of times, and not that I'm a self-obsessed narcissist or anything, but I'm pretty sure every actor has searched for their own websites."

While walking on his hands is a definite talent, painting is one of his greatest passions - something he gets from his father, landscape and seascape artist Lance O'Gorman.

"I tend to be quite reclusive at times and painting's just a way of being reclusive without talking to anybody. It's a bit of respite from Sydney, which can be quite hectic."

O'Gorman says, like many New Zealand actors, the move to Australia was an obvious next step for him.

He likens it to how Kiwi bands tour or move to Australia to gain a bigger audience.

"But Australia is more receptive to New Zealand bands than they are to New Zealand actors. Because, I think, in Australia it is a bigger industry, but it's still a growing industry and I think it can be quite tough initially if you're from New Zealand because I think there's a certain protectiveness from the Australians."

But he says it is possible to get yourself known and uses friend, and fellow New Zealand actor, Joel Tobeck - who is staying with O'Gorman at present - as an example.

"He's doing really well now. My first eight months in Australia was hard, really hard, because in New Zealand I'd had a really good hit rate and I'd been working fairly consistently since I was 12.

"In Sydney I had to start all over again. But it does take perseverance," he says carefully.

And it's paid off. As long as he can keep away from the snakes, O'Gorman's latest role is a solid job.

McLeod's Daughters is one of Australia's most popular TV series and after all, he gets to hang out with the rather fetching Jodi Fountain.

"All of my scenes are with her," he smiles.

When Kate Elliott and Dean O'Gorman signed up for the lead roles in a film about infidelity, it cost them their real-life romances.

The unfortunate irony occurred when New Zealand director Harry Sinclair cast them as self-obsessed, lustful 20-somethings in his feature film, Toy Love- Elliott as Chlo, the mischievous seductress who sleeps with only unavailable men, and O'Gorman as Ben, the likeable philanderer who falls for her.

"My girlfriend would be like, 'You're doing what, today? With who?"' says O'Gorman. "And I'd get paid to lie in bed and have a pash."

"We're very method," Elliott winks.

"But when we had sex there was no chemistry, eh?"

"No. It was dead."

"Crap."

"Like sleeping with your brother."

Their wise-cracking rivalry was what convinced Sinclair and possibly their former partners that they'd make good lovers.

It also convinced those who saw the film at the prestigious Fantasporto Film Festival in Portugal, a prestigious event attracting 130,000 film-goers, to give Toy Love the Audience Award, and helped to sell the film to more than 21 countries at Cannes including the United States, where it will be released later this year.

"Kate and Dean just loved misbehaving," says Sinclair. "You could see the excitement when I asked them to do something shocking."

O'Gorman admits his favourite scene was telling a young dad he's not the father of his child.

"At the first screening you could see there are some really awkward moments for the audience," he says. "They weren't sure if they should laugh, and if they did laugh they felt bad about it."

His puppy dog good looks and comic sense of panic certainly make him a credible modern-day Casanova, albeit a self-centred one who makes some embarrassing errors.

"Ben has that tragic, ADD-type energy that's pretty consistent with real life. You go to a club and talk to someone for five minutes before they get distracted. Ben has that same frenetic energy."

O'Gorman now lives in Sydney but grew up on Auckland's North Shore, scoring acting parts since his teens in Young Hercules and Shortland Street and New Zealand feature films Bonjour, Timothy and Snakeskin.

Elliott, an elfin 21-year-old with a cutting wit and eye-lashes like Betty Boop may not be such a familiar face (other than parts in local dramas Street Legal and Cleopatra) but that looks set to change. Toy Love is her second film with Sinclair. At 16 she starred in his short film, Pale Blue and she's just finished filming Kiwi horror flick The Locals and Fracture, a film based on a Maurice Gee novel.

Later this year she will fly to Berlin to work on a film about Katherine Mansfield.

"Even though it's supposed to be fun and entertaining, Chlo is actually quite a sad character," she says. "You could make a film based on Chlo alone but I think it would be a tragedy."

Doing a Sinclair film, she says, is something every fledgling New Zealand actor dreams of. Cast members of his previous films Danielle Cormack, Willa O'Neill, Karl Urban, Joel Tobeck have become established actors, Urban in particular in Lord of the Rings. But Toy Love isn't what most people will expect from the director, she says.

"It has an absurd comedic element," Sinclair agrees. "It's vaguely reminiscent of American screwball comedies."

But for all its bumbling, slapstick appeal, compared with Sinclair's first two feature films the awkward Topless Women Talk About Their Lives and the dream-like The Price of Milk, Toy Love has the darkest theme.

"Infidelity is all around us," he says, clasping his head in his hands for a few seconds, as if to scour his imagination for the right words.

"You certainly hear astonishing stories of people's behaviour. Here's this guy trying to manage his life with these two girlfriends and he's completely unaware of the effect it has on others. I think that's disturbingly realistic."

Sinclair's foray into film-making began in the mid-80s, as a writer and performer in The Front Lawn, a theatrical production with acclaimed rock musician Don McGlashan. He also co-founded Auckland's Watershed Theatre in 1990 with a group of performers including Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Michael Hurst and the Topp Twins. Since then, he's become just as well-known for his unique method of film-making as the films themselves. Casting and writing are more important than directing, he believes, and after carving out a basic, scriptless idea, he moulds the final story around his actors.

It's a process not everyone warms to, and his films have been criticised for having aimless narrative, problems with continuity and lack of thematic coherence.

During Topless Women, however, which won a NZ Film Award, Sinclair used a new situation to his advantage and wrote Danielle Cormack's surprise pregnancy into the storyline.

Similarly, Toy Love was filmed in the weekends and written during the week, a process which meant the cast went into scenes with freshly learned lines.

"Most film-making is about trying to control everything and having a very pre-conceived idea of what is going to go in the film," he says.

"I like to take advantage of changing circumstances. We'd change the script even on the day. If it's raining you can put that in rather than being upset that the weather's bad for two weeks when you're supposed to be shooting a sunny scene. I love that flexibility."

O'Gorman and Elliott agree that working with Sinclair meant expecting the unexpected.

"We were shooting this scene which was cut later. It was Friday night, driving down Queen St in a convertible BMW," says O'Gorman. "There were boy racers everywhere. Harry was getting the driver to get reactions from people. He'd lean out the window and go, 'Hey, call me a bastard! You'll be in the movie'."

Elliott: "He'd ring me up on Wednesday night and I'd be like, 'Oh no, it can't get worse than the masturbation scene last week'. And he'd say, 'We want you to take off your clothes and jump in the Mermaids [Auckland strip club] tank.' Or, 'You have to do a sex scene but don't worry because you get to wear pyjamas.'"

The sex scenes, while not explicit, will be a challenge for some viewers, says Sinclair, after a characteristically long pause.

"The thing that bugs me about New Zealand is that anything cultural has to be serious and take itself seriously. We're too prudish. The spirit of Toy Love is a kind of irreverent, poking fun at stuffy people, then destroying the lives of stuffy people."

It's hard not to muse over the film's surreal moments: a voyeuristic stuffed cat; Chlo's strange obsession with Coco Pops, the latter an idea that came about on the day of the shoot.

"We don't build any sets," he says. "I like shooting in real places because it leads to surprising things happening. I like the idea of how you respond when you're having a tricky emotional moment and you go into Coco Pops mode.

"I don't really know where the cat came from. I guess I was connecting the ideas of childish behaviour. These are selfish people, toying with people's lives. It's also part of Chlo's fetishistic sex life."

"It's a pretty accurate representation of how people in their mid-20s live," O'Gorman adds. "The flats, the music they listen to, where they go out. You don't see a lot of New Zealand productions like that."

"Dean O'Gorman was always meant to play Johnny. We first mentioned the project to him when we saw him at Sundance in 1999," exclaims Producer Vanessa Sheldrick. "There's just something about him. He's a good-looking Kiwi guy, with a youthful appearance and that was really important against the older character of Seth. The audience has to sympathize with him."

"Johnny's probably what a lot of us are but don't want to be," explains O'Gorman. "I really liked the part. In a way he's the victim. He's the Everyman character that I think the audience will relate to. He's very normal, but not in a boring way - he reflects a lot of what people generally think and how they try to live their lives. He wants to go on the road trip; get the girl and convey a cool image, but he realizes that at heart he's really not that image. He'd rather stick to the safe way, play by the rules, go to Law School and live within the context of a normal life."

"The story is really complex. Initially, it seems to be on one level, but when you actually look at it, there are lots of different levels to it and all the characters are interwoven throughout the film, so it's really interesting and satisfying."

"Dean's great. He's very subtle. Very natural," comments Writer/Director Gillian Ashurst. "He's incredibly likeable which is so important for the role of Johnny. As soon as you meet this character, you like him - you can't help it. He's very open, he doesn't have to say things - because it's written all over his face. That's a great quality - gets rid of unnecessary dialogue and makes the director's job very easy. He's also fantastic at nailing things in one take - which is a blessing when you're on a low budget and a tight schedule. Dean was a pleasure to work with."

It was certainly an eye-opening experience for the actor. "I hadn't really considered it before we began, but we were on the road A LOT! "It was a rugged shoot out in the middle of nowhere and cold. Freezing. And I'm a complete woose with the cold. It was tough, but at the same time it was beautiful - great big vast landscapes and amazing sunrises and sunsets."

"I also got to do some really cool stuff," he says. "Shoot guns (which I haven't done before); drive a convertible (which was pure freedom - surrounded by nature rather than stuck in a studio) and everyone was really cool - Gillian; the crew, the cast - we all fitted in and worked well together. Melanie and Boyd and I are together in the film a lot, so it was important that we connected, but I think we all had a good grasp of the dynamics required."

"Dean is a fantastic film actor," adds Ashurst. "He understands the process, relating not just to the character, but to the image itself. It's like he has some kind of in-built aesthetic that's totally in-synch with the camera. I think he's going to go a long way in this industry."

Dean O'Gorman is a regular guest star in Renaissance Pictures productions, best known for his role as the young Iolaus in Hercules and Young Hercules. Taking time off during a recent British Xena Convention [Panathenaea 2000, September 1-3], the actor spoke to Xena Magazine about his roles in Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and Young Hercules.

Dean O'Gorman's acting career got off to an early start. His first role, at the tender age of 12, was in a pilot for an Australian television show. "I was into plays and drama at school, and probably without realizing it, that was the way I was headed," he says. "Then I got my first part in a television show, and I thought, 'I quite like this,' because I got time off school to play around!

"It didn't really become a viable career option until I left school, and I went straight from school into acting. My first professional stage appearance was in an open-air production of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. That was my first experience of performing live to an audience outside school. I liked it. The majority of my experience has been with television and film. I'd say that I enjoy those more than theatre, but that's not to say I wouldn't also enjoy theatre if I did more of it."

Asked to recall how he came to star as young Iolaus in Renaissance's Young Hercules series, O'Gorman responds with is trademark wit. "Whenever I'm asked 'How did you get the role in Young Hercules,' the first reply that comes to mind is, 'I had to sleep with a lot of people'," Dean O'Gorman laughs.

"There was nothing out of the ordinary about the way I got the part in Young Herc," the actor explains, adopting a more serious tone. "I went to an audition, got a callback and then got the part."

O'Gorman was offered the chance to audition for the role of young Iolaus after successfully portraying a character in an episode of Xena's first season. "I played Homer in the episode 'Athens City Academy of the Performing Bards'," O'Gorman recalls, "and the director who was doing the Young Hercules pilot saw it and thought I might be good as Iolaus."

O'Gorman remembers his first and only Xena guest appearance fondly, and one of his highlights of the hour was acting opposite Renee O'Connor. "It was the first time I'd met Renee, and I think she is a really lovely person," he admits. "We got along very well, and the story centered a lot on the relationship between our two characters. While some actors find there's a spark between their characters, others really have to work at it. But we got on really well. And it was a good story. It had a bit of heart to it. So we had fun, and Renee's cool!"

However, O'Gorman's experiences with Renaissance Pictures go back even further than Xena's first season. "I appeared in the season one Hercules episode 'The Gauntlet'," he reveals of the episode which also guest-starred Lucy Lawless as Xena. "I played Iloran. That was six years ago now, but it was good working at the start of it all.

"I played Hercules' cousin," O'Gorman expands, "who obviously got the short gene in the family! My agent put me up for the part and I just auditioned for it. But it was weird because I was a lot shorter than Hercules and much weaker. Maybe it was the blonde hair that made the producer pick me, I don't know.

"The role was that of the serious young man, and that was the one episode that Michael [Hurst] wasn't in," O'Gorman continues. "So I really played Hercules' sidekick. That was kind of funny because it sort of foreshadowed what was going to happen later in Young Hercules."

                
Most Young Herc photos on the Internet can be traced back to Lookout2's Young Hercules page

Of course, turning to Hercules' sidekick himself, how much did O'Gorman draw on Michael Hurst's characterization of the older Iolaus in developing his own version of the character? "T. J. Scott, who directed the pilot, and the other Young Hercules directors, had already worked with Michael a lot," O'Gorman recalls, "so they would say, 'Well, Michael tends to play it this way, so I think it would be helpful if you did this...'

"It's not that I was trying to imitate Michael in any way, " O'Gorman points out. "He has a unique style, and it would be like being someone I'm not. It's also disrespectful to copy someone or take aspects of them. The directors acknowledged that, and they'd just tweak a performance by saying, 'Iolaus reacts in this kind of way and maybe you should pay tribute to that', because maybe I would want to play a scene in a more humorous way than was intended. Sometimes the directors would know the character better than I did, because they had previously worked with Michael.

"When I started developing young Iolaus, there weren't many Hercules episodes to refer to," O'Gorman remembers, "and Michael's character had changed a lot from the early TV movies. In the early days, the character was much more restrained."

O'Gorman has a great deal of respect for Michael Hurst's abilities both in front of and behind the camera, although he laments the fact that he didn't have much opportunity to work with the talented Kiwi. "Michael never directed any episodes of Young Hercules," he points out, "but I would have liked him to have done so. I've seen him direct on stage and he's really great.

"I did do one scene with him at the beginning of the Young Hercules pilot, where he appears as a jewellery salesman. He was great, and we both did a lot of improvising. It was a little wink to the audience because he was dressed up as a different character, but it was still Iolaus talking to Iolaus!"

        

O'Gorman played opposite two different actors as the young Hercules in the series: Ian Bohen in the pilot and Ryan Gosling in the series proper, and the actor admits that he had a different approach to working opposite the two actors. "Iolaus reacts a lot to Hercules, and Ian's take on Hercules was very different to Ryan's," he acknowledges. "Something I was conscious of was that people would watch the show to see if I was like Michael, but I soon found my own niche and my own way to play the character. I also thought that people would look at the show and say, 'Well, Michael can be funny; let's see if you can'."

With about 22-23 minutes of screen footage needed for each episode, Young Hercules had a very fast turnaround. "We would shoot in four episode blocks," O'Gorman recalls. "These were done in about two weeks per episode, so we didn't get a lot of rehearsal time. But the crew and I had previously worked together, so the dynamic was already there. And we didn't need a lot of preparation for each episode. We just went out there and shot them.

"We had three directors," O'Gorman notes, "And they were all very much open to any suggestions we had as to how to do things. So we would try to get as many jokes in as possible, experiment and put things in before it all got locked down. There was rarely any rehearsal time, so it was in the moment on set where we got the freedom to try things, and add a few lines. But we got quite a lot of preparation time for the stunts and fighting," he adds, "because that needed to be rehearsed.

"On average, we were on set for about 12 hours a day," O'Gorman reveals, "and each episode took three to four days to shoot, not including Second Unit time. The Second Unit's work was quite pressured and rushed, but those guys did a great job. I had both a stand-in (Matt Brown) and a body double, and they'd have the same hair and be wearing the same costume as I was, which was kind of freaky!"

Unfortunately, O'Gorman didn't get to do many of his own stunts. "The only real stunts I did was when I fell over all the time!" he admits sheepishly. "I wanted to do more of my own stunts, but because of time, much of the work was done by stuntmen on Second Unit. In truth, Hercules got a lot of the fights and I would do more flips or jumps. Where there was a chance that we might actually break a part of our bodies, we'd let the stuntmen do it! But the stunt department was really great, and they liked to involve the actors wherever they could, particularly in the fights.

"I got my nose broken on one occasion," he remembers. "We were in a stunt fight during which I was supposed to get a bucket kicked out of my hand, but I had the bucket too close to my head so it was knocked into my nose! I didn't realize it at the time, so I kept on going. When I sat down I felt fine, but my body suddenly decided to go into shock and everybody was really worried. I thought they were worrying about me, but it was just that they needed to get through the shooting schedule!

"I had to go to hospital and turned up there in my Iolaus costume with a broken nose and wearing leather trousers, and the nurses were like, "What the hell?' The doctor looked at me as if to say, 'What were you doing?' because I was wearing the leather, the sword, the boots, the gauntlets and the jerkin. So while I was lying there in this hospital bed, the doctor was trying not to laugh!

        

"I hurt myself all the time, but it's not anyone's fault," O'Gorman muses. "It's not that I'm particularly uncoordinated, it's just that when I get tired I fall over! I hit things and trip over them!"

One of O'Gorman's regular co-stars on Young Hercules was fellow Kiwi actor Kevin Smith, who played (amongst other characters) the gods Ares and Bacchus. "I'd never work with him again," he jokes. "Actually, Kev, Ryan, and me all had a great time on Young Hercules and got along really well. We'd laugh all the time and keep making jokes. In the episode 'Con Ares,' Kevin had to play a peasant farmer who looked like Ares, but who turned out to be just downbeat and stupid. We had a great time in that episode; it was hilarious and really good fun.

"Kevin was just like us and wanted to put as many jokes into the show as possible. Young Hercules is a lot less serous than Xena and Hercules, and I think he enjoyed it as much as we did."

Anther regular on Young Hercules was Meighan Desmond, who reprised her role as the goddess Discord. "I'd worked with Meighan before on the New Zealand soap Shortland Street," O'Gorman reveals. "It was a great cast and everyone liked the show and was committed to it."

So does O'Gorman have a preference for a particular type of Hercules, Xena, or Young Hercules episode? "I like both the comedies and the dramas," he says. "It's good to have a bit of drama and tension in some shows. We did an episode of Hercules called 'Twilight' where there were big battles and explosions. We were working in mud, and director wanted us to look really dirty, so we were running around everywhere and there was mud and blood. That was cool!"

Are there any other roles O'Gorman would like to have played for Renaissance Pictures? "I would have liked to play Julius Caesar," he says after a pause. "I love the roles where you get to be the leader of an army and you get to take your troops into battle. All that stuff is great, and that's why I love these shows. I love the fighting and the battle sequences and all the action. The majority of acting jobs are nothing like that. Being drama orientated, I like those as well," he quickly clarifies, " but for these shows you can get out and get dirty and run around."

So what direction would O'Gorman like his career to take in the future? "I'd ultimately like to do some directing," he admits, "but for the present, acting is where I'm headed. Before I do any directing, I know I need a lot more experience.

"The great thing about Young Hercules is I really got to see that filmmaking is dependent on so many different things. In the end, the directors were very open to suggestions, and I was allowed to direct a scene on the show. So the thought of directing has become less daunting now.

"I used to think, 'No way could I tell a crew what to do', but now directing would be creatively satisfying. So I would like to write, produce and create my own project."

When New Zealand actor Dean O'Gorman visits London in September, he'll spend a frantic day surrounded by young fans signing autographs and posing for pictures.

Yet at home on Auckland's North Shore, O'Gorman, 23, can go about his life without this type of recognition. That will change for those few days in London when O'Gorman takes center stage at a convention for fans of the action-adventure Young Hercules.

Now screening on TV3, the children's show is one of the spin-offs from the Renaissance Pictures series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Filmed in NZ, that show also spawned Xena: Warrior Princess and, in the process, made a number of local actors- like O'Gorman- into internationally recognised celebrities.

He stars in Young Hercules as the young Iolaus (Michael Hurst played the adult Iolaus), best friend to the boyhood Hercules (Ryan Gosling) alongside Jodie Rimmer as Lilith, the only female cadet at the academy, Kevin Smith as Ares the god of war, Meighan Desmond as Ares's sister Discord, Joel Tobeck as Ares's devious nephew Strife and Angela Dotchin as the sassy young woman who runs the in where the young cadets spend their free time.

Like its parent show, Young Hercules is set in ancient Greece during the golden age of myth when warlords, monsters, and meddling gods interfered in the live of ordinary people. In this series, the headstrong young Hercules has been sent by his mortal mother to a warrior training academy so he can learn to use his god-given strength responsibly.

"When I first got the part I thought I'd better get to the gym," says O'Gorman. "I threw myself into training but I was burning the candle at both ends and got quite sick about a month before the shoot started. I lost a lot of weight, so that helped me to look a lot more muscly than I actually was."

He laughs when asked if having a black belt in karate helped win the role, saying he earned that a long time go and was not allowed to do his own stunts, anyway. Much as he would have liked to, he says the "stunties" could do it far better at less stress to directors and producers conscious of continuity issues should one of the lead actors break their arm. Not to mention the insurance ramifications.

He did, however, have to complete a sword-fighting workshop!

He suspects boyhood war games may have been some help toward preparing for the role- not that he realized it at the time he and his friends were dressing up in army surplus gear and making home videos.

"I was only 11 and it never even entered my head to think I could be an actor. I always figured I'd be a graphic artist or something like that. Never an actor."

That changed when he was spotted at school by a talent scout and, at 12 years old, landed a role in the Australian TV movie Wildfire [The Rogue Stallion], followed by the kiddult adventure series Raider of the South Seas. Since then there's been Shortland Street and the films Bonjour, Timothy and When Love Comes, but it is Young Hercules which has given O'Gorman an international profile.

Since filming in 1998/99, O'Gorman has attended one show convention in the United States. He describes it as an unbelievable experience. "We walked on stage and there was all this cheering and flash bulbs going off as people took photos. The place was huge and was full of kids all wanting to meet us. It's the closest I'll ever get to being a rock star.

"You can't take it seriously, though, because it's so unreal. The kids who want to meet you only want to do so because they really think you are the character you play. It's really kind of cool that they all speak to me as if I'm Iolaus, but the moment you walk out the doors, life goes back to normal."

And if the acting ended tomorrow, there'd be no waiting on tables for O'Gorman. The son of well-known landscape painter Lance O'Gorman, he'd paint for his supper!

What's a nice boy like Dean O'Gorman doing in a film role like this?

Already a 10-year New Zealand screen veteran at the age of 22, O'Gorman makes quite a departure from his usual cheery-chap roles to play tortured wastrel Mark in Garth Maxwell's relationship drama When Love Comes.

Not only does he spend quite a bit of screen time acting (convincingly, it must be said) very out of it, sex-wise his character sure puts it about a bit.

If they ever see the film, those American fans with Web pages in O'Gorman's honour from his roles as sidekick Iolaus in Young Hercules might well be a little shocked by his transformation.

That swerve is one of the reasons he took the edgy role, says the affable O'Gorman, sitting in his agent's Auckland office.

"The film for me was a change in how my career has been going along. It was good for me to try not to get myself typecast".

No, playing a gay character didn't make him pause for thought, though he says it was strange.

"It was weird. There is obviously a part of you that goes. 'It's not what I've experienced, it's not me, it's not part of my life, it is different.' As much as you want to pretend you're a liberal, it is still quite strange."

O'Gorman laughs loudly when it is suggested that at least Simon Prast (playing Marks main love interest) looks like a good kisser.

"Luckily, I've never been worried about my sexuality and ultimately you have to ask the question, 'Who really cares?' maybe if you walk into a pub in Dargaville and they've just seen the movie..." he laughs. "But what is someone going to say?"

Well, they'll probably still say, "There's that guy from Shortland Street," actually.

But his time as nurse Harry Martin is only part of O'Gorman's list of credits, which began at the age of 12 after being "discovered" by a casting agent during a school speech contest.

After parts in kid-ult series like Raider of the South Seas, his first feature job was the Kiwi-Canadian teen romance Bonjour Timothy at 17, on to a regular spot on our favourite nightly soap a year later, and then heading to the Xena-Hercules franchise and various telefeatures.

Had the work not kept coming, he might have taken up the place he kept postponing on the AIT graphic design course after finishing Rangitoto College, but eventually his deferments ran out as this acting gig started to resemble a career.

When Love Comes, which has been orbiting both the international and gay-and-lesbian film festival circuits this year before its local commercial release next week, is some of the toughest work he's done.

"I found playing Mark, although it was challenging, quite stressful. I'm not claiming that I've gone all method about it, but it is something that does require a bit of concentration to play all of those different kinds of emotions."

So is this the start of no more Mr. Nice Guy?

"It's just nice to make a change. While I'd like to make movies that are uplifting there's always that part of you that goes, 'I want to play the evil guy because it's not me.' So anything that is not me is a challenge, and if I rise to the challenge then I've kind of proved myself."

Bachelor boys Oliver Driver and Dean O'Gorman have come up in the world since their days as self-confessed schoolboy geeks. Proudly displaying the stylish fifth floor apartment they're renting near Takapuna Beach in Auckland, the acting buddies say they've been together through the bad times and now they're enjoying the good. Looking back at the teenage dilemmas they faced when they first met, the two laugh at how their luck has changed. Oliver, who plays nurse Mike Galloway on Shortland Street, laughs as he says: "It's not that girls wouldn't look at us - they couldn't. I was tall and fat and Dean had more acne than you could poke a stick at. We formed a freak's bond." That bond is still as strong as ever - though the "freak" tag is a thing of the past.

Oliver, now tall and slim at 23, is enjoying his role on New Zealand's favorite soap. Dean, a blemish-free 21-year-old, is currently on screen in the TV2 mini-series The Chosen, and plays a major role in the Hercules and Xena spin-off Young Hercules. Giggling as they vet the latest visitor fronting up to the video entryphone, Dean admits that the modern apartment - complete with gym, sauna and heated pool - is a cut above the usual first flat. "I call it the flat because 'apartment' sounds too posey, but, yeah, it is pretty great," says Dean.

Since moving in a couple of months ago, the pair have furnished the spacious apartment with stylish couches and a state-of-the-art TV and stereo. "We'd have to get in a lawyer to split our stuff up," jokes Oliver, who cut half the legs off his couch to get it through the door. "We have completely different schedules so we hardly ever see each other, but we go for a drink together when we find we're both at home. We flat together because we're really old friends but I think it helps that we're both actors because we understand each other's weird hours. It's also a good thing that we have completely different taste in women!" Asked about who keeps the place so clean, Oliver says: "I'm a bit tidier than Dean but he's trying quite hard. Unfortunately he's still suffering from LOMS (Loss of Mother Syndrome) but I think he's getting over that."

"We're like parents with each other. We say: 'Where were you last night? What sort of time do you call this?'" With summer approaching, both admit they are looking forward to having friends over for drinks on the balcony, or poolside picnics. But they say they are prepared to give up the champagne lifestyle if their incomes dry up.

"For years I've been riding a Vespa and living in some pretty scummy places," says Oliver. "Now I have a regular job and can live in this nice apartment, but maybe next year I'll have to sell my car and I'll be back on the Vespa. Living here is a treat for us - we're enjoying it while we can."

A long time gone from Shortland Street, he has been busy in a string of roles and is about to make a welcome return to our television screens.

Hunky Bonjour Timothy star Dean O'Gorman has almost forgotten what it's like to be a famous face in his home country. Before leaving Shortland Street in early 1996 he was accustomed to fans tapping him on the back and asking for an autograph. But now, he admits, former admirers of soap nurse Harry Martin more often take a second look and ask, "Have I seen you at a party or something?"

All that is about to change, however, as the 21-year-old returns to our television screens this year in his new role as Andrew in the TV2 series The Chosen. Working almost non-stop since leaving the Street, the energetic actor is now on set at Puhoi, just north of Auckland, playing an "intense, brooding role" as a boy in a rural town that is being overtaken by a religious cult.

While Dean admits it will be "quite nice" to be back on New Zealand television again, he says that is not his main priority with acting. "I once felt I had to see my face on TV to justify calling myself an actor, but now that's not so important. My ideal career path would be to get a wealth of experience ... then star in a blockbuster."

Since his most famous roles, in feature film Bonjour Timothy and Shortland Street, he has been dashing across the Tasman ... leaving no time for romance. "It's sad, but it's probably best for me to be single because I'm always moving," he says.

His action-packed schedule has included pumping iron for the role of Iolaus in the movie Young Hercules, donning a toga for a part in Xena: Warrior Princess and spending two weeks in the Fiji sun while filming Treasure Island. In March he moved to Sydney and ended up starring in a telefeature [Doomrunners] and then the series Big Sky, alongside former Street star Martin Henderson.

Of his latest role, Dean says, "It's great that there's no bike or horse riding, and no two-headed monster to fight. Maybe people will have time to recognize me again ... I'll soon find out if that's a good thing or not."