Ryan Kwanten goes from 'True Blood' to 'Red Hill'

It's hard to say what "True Blood" fans would find more surprising about Ryan Kwanten - that's he's 34 years old (with 18 years in the business) or that he's Australian.

"I'm amazed by the number of people who run into me on the street and are shocked when they hear me talk and are convinced I'm preparing for a role right now," says the genial fellow, trim and muscular and pretty much otherwise as you'd expect from seeing him as Jason Stackhouse on HBO's vampire soap. "I'm going to use this film ("Red Hill") as evidence that this is actually my real voice."

Kwanten is modest about his long career in his homeland ("I would say 13 of those years were anything but pro," he says with a laugh), but there's no denying that he took his share of chances to get where he is now. American fans' first chance to see him carry a movie comes in the Australian "Red Hill." The violent, modern Western drops his idealistic young policeman, Shane Cooper, into the middle of a blood feud between the men of a remote town and an Aborigine escaped convict returning for vengeance. It's heady stuff for the actor to return home a conquering hero, especially considering his hardscrabble beginnings.

"I've lived a very adventurous life. I moved out of home when I was 15 1/2. Even when I came here, I was totally penniless," he says. "At the end of my five-day ticket, I got a call from the producer of a film I was in. She said, 'You might want to stick around. We're getting a good response to the film.' I said, 'I've got no money.' She said, 'Figure out a way. I might be able to set up a meeting or two for you.' "

Kwanten then sat down with the owner of the Cadillac Hotel, where he was staying and, improbably, talked his way into three rent-free months in return for full payment - with interest if desired - when he had the money.

"It was that three months that I got representation, got jobs, got a little bit of money together, got the ball rolling," he says, trumpeting the hotel's name as his form of repayment to the owner - who will probably have hordes of impoverished thespians washed upon his shore because of it.

As to his persistent youthfulness (he looks about 22 in the new film), "maybe it's the shaving, maybe it's the darker hair," he says. Whatever it is, it helps project a squeaky-clean image ideal for a character Kwanten acknowledges was named for two classic Hollywood Western icons - Alan Ladd's hero in "Shane" and leading man Gary Cooper. He points out, though, that despite the iconic names, his young cop is no Clint Eastwood or John Wayne yet: In his first scene, he has misplaced his gun and must begin a new assignment without it.

But that moment of brain lock isn't indicative of who Shane Cooper is - as opposed to, say, Kwanten's often brainless and even more often shirtless libidinous lunkhead on "True Blood."

"Shane's very logical, very analytical," says the actor. "Every step that he makes is based on intelligence and information he has received. Jason, none of that applies. He wears his heart on his sleeve; every decision he makes has no intellect behind it, just, 'This seems good.' "

Switching from a cushy HBO gig to a seat-of-the-pants indie in dicey conditions is the kind of roughing it Kwanten enjoys.

"Anyone that knows me knows that I'm a masochist at heart," he says. "It was funny; in our original conversations, (director Patrick Hughes) kept saying to me, 'This is going to be really hard. Are you sure you're up for this?' He didn't realize that every time he kept asking, that was feeding into how I like to work.