Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
March 31, 1999
Coping With Sea Change
Byline: KATE DE BRITO

IF THERE is one thing David Wenham proved with his roles in SeaChange and the movie The Boys, it was that his drama teacher was a terrible soothsayer.

Wenham, the teacher said, would do well in theatre but could forget about a career in film or television.

If not for the fact that his drama teacher now lives in Turkey and has probably never seen SeaChange or Wenham's award-winning The Boys, you'd imagine he's eating humble pie.

Last year was a towering time for Wenham in both television and film.

There was his performance as SeaChange's Diver Dan, an enigmatic ferry man/cafe owner/fisherman with a seductively melodic voice and neckerchief that he wore perpetually tied at a rakish angle.

The role fitted him like a comfortable coat.

Female hearts were set aflutter by his quirky raise of an eyebrow, the wry smile and the dry humor - cloaked by the hint of a dark past.

Then came a stunningly disparate performance as Brett Sprague in The Boys, a disturbing Australian movie based on the murder of Sydney woman Anita Cobby.

As Sprague, Wenham was as intense and ferocious as Diver Dan was relaxed.

"A film like The Boys defined David as a great actor, but SeaChange defined him as a leading man and we're a bit light on for them," says SeaChange co-writer Andrew Knight.

But how does the shortish, 30-year-old actor with ginger hair and scraggly beard earn such a grandiose level of acclaim? It's not like he possesses Mel Gibson's looks.

Even Wenham finds it hard to explain. He scratches the ginger beard that has become his trademark - a beard he can't wait to shave off.

"I love the character (of Diver Dan) so it's hard for me to be objective," he says.

"It was quite a long journey for me, too, to eventually locate him. I began by looking as far away from myself as possible and it didn't work. There was no resonance. So it came back closer to myself."

Wenham is so in demand he has joined the list of Australian stars getting calls from casting agents in Los Angeles.

His LA agent recently asked whether Wenham would consider appearing in an Arnold Schwarzenegger project. Wenham turned it down, preferring instead to do the stage play ART in Sydney with Tom Conti and John Waters.

Wenham was in Hawaii last year, starring as a Flemish priest in Paul Cox's film Molokai when the first wave of "Wenham-frenzy" hit in Australia with SeaChange.