Daniel Henshall on the red carpet with cast member Felicity Ward. Photo: John Woudstra
Kark Quinn, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports
Daniel Henshall is fast becoming a veteran of the red carpet. The 29-year-old actor was at the Jam Factory last night for the Melbourne premiere of the new Working Dog comedy - Any Questions for Ben? - just days after strutting his stuff on the crimson strip at the Sydney Opera House on his way to collect the best actor award at the inaugural Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards. Not a bad way to start a film career, really.
The award came for his debut role as serial killer John Bunting in Snowtown, as grim and impressive an Australian film as you will ever see. Any Questions for Ben? is a different proposition, a comedy about a 27-year-old playboy with the lot (Josh Lawson) who runs smack into what the filmmakers call a ''quarter-life crisis''. Henshall plays the hero's mate Nick, a triathlete who, he says, ''starts the story thinking his life is not that great and ends it realising it's actually pretty good''. It is, he adds, ''a very nice-guy role''.
Two weeks after Snowtown wrapped, Henshall was in prep mode for the Working Dog film, the first from the Melbourne crew behind The Castle, The Panel and Frontline since The Dish in 2000. ''It was a relief to jump straight into another project,'' he says of the move from the darkness of Snowtown to the lightness of Any Questions. ''It gave me a chance to forget about it.''
Henshall says he's long been a fan of the Working Dog crew. ''I've been watching them since the age of seven. My favourite sketch is still Rob Sitch and Mick Molloy in Shitscared,'' he says.
As for the dilemma at the centre of their new film - which was known during production as 25, the rough age of the characters - it's genuine, Henshall insists. ''Doing press for this film I've had a lot of questions from older people, basically asking, 'What's this quarter-life crisis bullshit?' But it's real. A lot of people aged 25 to 30 have been given so many opportunities and done so much, they've travelled the world, they've got the uni degree, they're four or five years into their career, and they don't know who they are.
''They seem to have it all, but they just don't know who they are.''
He's right, of course. We're all rapidly learning who Daniel Henshall is, though.
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