The 37-year-old Sydneysider is a pretty chilled and relaxed kind of guy who introduces himself by name when you meet him even though, duh, of course you know who he is. (This, by the way, is the world’s simplest and most accurate test of whether a celebrity is a wanker or not.)
He’s a little smaller in person than you expect. So we guess you might say he’s down-to-earth in every sense of the phrase.
Here’s another thing. Kwanten once parked his pushbike in Steven Spielberg’s parking spot. Chained it up and all. Lucky Spielberg didn’t get too mad or someone would have had to save Ryan’s privates.
And here’s the really important thing. Kwanten is not even one per cent as dopey as his character Jason Stackhouse in the HBO series True Blood, which has just wrapped up after seven excellently vamptastic seasons.
In fact, Ryan Kwanten quotes poetry. Because of course Ryan Kwanten quotes poetry.
“Look I’ve always said that my favorite quote is an Emerson quote which goes: ‘what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us’.”
Nice. And what does lie within you, Ryan?
“I’ve found that voice inside that just sort of says it’s OK to just be you.
“I think the hardest thing as an actor is not losing sight of who you are, because no one does you better than you. And I think it’s good to bring a little bit of me to anything that I do whether it’s a role like Jason or something else. There’s a little bit of Ryan in everything I do.”
What normally happens in researching pieces like this is that we, the balding suburban slobs of the media, are made to feel even more uncool than usual when we speak to ridiculously cool and famous people like Ryan.
Kwanten’s different. He’s got this knack of making you feel like his best and oldest mate. After five minutes I almost invited him to poker night this week. Actually Ryan if you’re reading, come over. Just remember to bring a six pack.
True Blood is behind Kwanten these days. Seven seasons of blood sucking fun is done, but not before the writers had one last laugh by penning a saucy gay vampire sex scene involving Kwanten and Alexander Skarsgård, who plays Eric the vampire.
Read this entire interview here or click on the image below to watch the video interview with Ryan: