Aussie star earns Mel Gibson comparisons
12th August 2009, 13:00 WST
Source: The West Australian

With his rugged Aussie good looks and charm, actor Luke Arnold has been compared to Heath Ledger and a young Mel Gibson.

His first feature film, Broken Hill, is a joint Australian/American production about a teenager who dreams of being a classical composer while he’s busy working on his dad’s sheep station in western NSW.

The film was a hit at the recent Giffoni Film Festival in Italy, Europe’s largest youth film festival, where it won three awards including best film in its age category.

The young jury and audiences likened Arnold to the two iconic Australian stars – comparisons the 25-year-old brushes off modestly.

“They’re both two big favourite actors of mine, and legends and people I look up to, so while comparisons are great and flattering really it’s about the work you do,” said Arnold, who trained at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

After a few guest appearances in TV shows like McLeod’s Daughters and The Strip, Arnold said he was doing the “struggling unpaid actor thing” in Melbourne when he got the Broken Hill audition.

Just weeks later he was on set ready to take on the biggest role of his life, leading a cast that included Oscar-winner Timothy Hutton, Spy Kids star Alexa Vega, and The Black Balloon actor Rhys Wakefield.

“I was just wondering what the hell I was doing in the middle of it all,” Arnold laughed.

“I think with a different cast and crew it may have been a lot harder for me to deal with the responsibility, but they were all so welcoming and confident and so much fun to work with that I got to ease into it really nicely.”

Part of the challenge for city boy Arnold was learning how to do the jobs his character farm boy Tommy had to do on a daily basis.

So he had a quick crash course in sheep shearing and motorbike riding before they started filming in Broken Hill.

“The eight days we had in Broken Hill … was just a condensed eight days where really I was doing a lot of farm work all week – drenching, throwing hay bales, shearing sheep,” he said.

Broken Hill will have its Australian premiere in Melbourne on August 24, ahead of its US release on September 11.

Arnold said he is excited about travelling to the US and seeing how the film is received by Americans.

“This is an Australian film in so many ways, but most of the crew and the core creatives are American,” he said.

“I think it might be a nice mix of being made by people who really know the American audience’s sensibilities, but have this different Australian landscape.”

Broken Hill will be released nationally in February.