Playing the hero on screen is always a good way to get yourself into
the limelight, but ask any actor where the real challenge is and
they'll agree - sometimes it's good to be bad.

Whether they're the bad guys with an evil laugh or the beautiful but
scheming vamp luring the innocents to their doom, playing the
villain presents an irresistible challenge to actors - how do you
make an audience care about someone who really isn't that nice?

"It's definitely a challenge and something you really have to be
careful with," says Peter O'Brien, who from this week joins Nadine
Garner, Daniel MacPherson, Shane Bourne and the rest of the City
Homicide team as one of the worst imaginable bad guys, a criminal
whose crimes have affected children.

"And I was just discussing that with friends this week, because I
know that once you have children yourself, there's a real difference
in perception. Anything bad that happens to children is very, very
difficult to see so there's this huge challenge [as an actor] to
give a storyline and a character some accessibility.

"You can't change who they are and what they have done, but at the
same time you have to present it to an audience in a way that is
intriguing so they follow you rather than just pigeonhole you."

Fortunately, O'Brien said, the whole City Homicide team had taken up
the task of presenting his character's story, with the traditional
cop-show format abandoned for the next few episodes. The result is
crime from a completely different point of view.

"I'd never seen City Homicide so before I took the role I watched a
few DVDs and already thought this was some of the best cop stuff I'd
seen in a while," O'Brien said.

"And then with this particular story it's different again. They've
broken part of their format and are telling things from a different
point of view. The director has layered things in a way that's not
the standard 'here's a cop, here's a bad guy, let's solve the crime'
format and I really enjoyed it."

O'Brien also enjoyed the fact that, for the time being at least, he
was working back in Australia. Both he and wife Miranda Otto had
been in the US working on various projects (notably Gossip Girl and
Cashmere Mafia respectively) when the US writers' strike cut things
short.

"There's that old expression that if you want to make God laugh,
tell Him your plans," O'Brien said. "I just think that's what
happens. While you're heading in one direction you start making
inroads in other areas and other opportunities open up."

O'Brien's busy hands

If there's one thing Peter O'Brien has learned, it's that he doesn't
have a high boredom threshold.

Happiest when he's busy, O'Brien took advantage of the recent US
writers' strike to enrol in New York University's filmmaking course -
and topped his class with three short films.

"I'm now putting in for funding to make a couple of other shorts and
we'll see how that goes," he said. "It's all with the intention of
working towards getting a feature [film] up. That's what I'm geared
towards."

City Homicide, Monday, 8.30pm, Seven.

Nadine Garner's Fan Group is at:

http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/Nadine_Garner/

written by Scott Ellis ,the editor of The Sun-Herald Television
Magazine.

July 27, 2008


http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv--radio/man-behaving-very-
badly/2008/07/27/1217097026684.html