When I was about thirteen I decided to become an actor. I took acting classes and jumped at the chance of being in any kind of production. I once spent six nights acting as a tree that came to life when the wind blew past to it in a community production. I am still trying in lots of ways. My most recent role saw me as a man struggling to come up with the money for boat trailer repairs in Melbourne. It was a short film about a man and his boat written by someone about fifteen years younger than me who thought he was the next James Cameron. I took the role seriously, because I always do, and did some research into marine trailer repairs. From what I could gather from the incredibly pretentious script, fixing his marine trailer symbolised an escape for the man. He was trapped in Melbourne with terrible memories of a family he had lost but couldn’t leave without his boat. There was a lot of intended symbolism that comes across awfully, but the kid cast me and thanks to his rich father, wants to pay me, so I told him I thought it was genius. I spent a few days down at the shipyard getting to know not only the boats, but the characters that cropped up. Between the boat handlers and the visiting boat owners, they were an exceptionally nice bunch of people. I realised that people who had a natural relationship to the sea, and thus ocean vessels, were very peaceful and soulful people. I was happy with the level of research I had done and felt I could adopt the persona of a man so desperate to fix his boat that there must be more to the story.