Ryan Kwanten does a handstand at TV show True Blood's panel session at San Diego Comic Con 2012

Leaves co-stars speechless ... Sydney-born actor Ryan Kwanten does a handstand at the "True Blood" panel at San Diego Comic Con. (Photo by Chelsea Lauren/WireImage) Source: Getty Images

The Daily Telegraph reports

He has emerged as one of the most popular cast member of the cult vampire series True Blood and Aussie pin-up Ryan Kwanten has proven why, going to great lengths to show his, er, versatility during a panel session at the annual Comic-Con comic convention in San Diego.

The Not Suitable For Children actor was reportedly responding to a question from the audience about who of True Blood’s famously buff-and-beautiful cast was in the best physical shape.

Kwanten simply let his hands do the talking, throwing himself into a handstand and tottering across the stage as his Kiwi co-star Anna Paquin announced into her microphone: "I love my job."

No wonder.

Birth of a new Aussie classic

Aussie actor Ryan Kwanten stars in Not Suitable For Children. Picture: Tim Carrafa Source: The Daily Telegraph

Nick Dent, The Sunday Telegraph, reports

It’s great that Aussie filmmakers are having a go at the toughest film genre there is, romantic comedy, and getting it right in the essential thing: likeable, interesting characters.

Hot on the heels of Any Questions for Ben? comes Not Suitable for Children, another rom-com about a young hedonist obliged to do some soul searching.

Jonah (Ryan Kwanten) has inherited a house in inner-west Sydney and shares it with buddies Gus (Ryan Corr) and Stevie (Sarah Snook).

On Friday nights the house becomes party central, at which Jonah enjoys strings-free sex with a range of admiring girls.

It's during one of these liaisons that Jonah discovers he has a lump. He's got testicular cancer. The treatment won't affect his sex life, but it will render him infertile and his sperm can't be successfully frozen.

The biological alarm clock that Jonah didn't know he possessed starts to clang. He needs to find a woman who will consider having his baby, and fast.

Not Suitable for Children is very accomplished for a debut feature but its director has strong credentials.

Peter Templeman's short film The Saviour was nominated for an Academy Award in 2007. Co-writer Michael Lucas has written episodes of Ten's Offspring and shows understanding about urban Australians and their emotional and sexual peccadilloes.

Kwanten is well suited to the role of a cheerful, impulsive stud: he's been playing one on HBO's True Blood for the last four years.

The film's real revelation, though, is Snook, who impressed in the ABC's Sisters of War but hasn't had a major film role before this. She's like a cross between Cate Blanchett and Emma Stone, both in looks and in her combination of dramatic clout and comedy finesse.

Despite disliking children, Snook's no-nonsense Stevie makes the decision to help Josh find a suitable mother for his child from among both his former conquests and her single colleagues.

To see her gingerly unstrapping Josh's baby nephew from his car seat, you would think she was defusing an incendiary device.

She's funny and unexpectedly touching, and so is the movie.

Picture of the month: July

The Nunnery, Newtown – Not Suitable for Children

True blue? It's in my blood

Craig Mathieson, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

Not Suitable for Children shows that Hollywood may call, but Ryan Kwanten won't put Australia in the back seat, writes Craig Mathieson.

There have been so many Australian actors relocating to Hollywood over the past 10 years that there's probably a special window at Los Angeles airport's passport control for them. Some go into movies, following the lead of Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts, while others find success amid the US's bountiful television industry. But what really divides them is their attitude to working in Australia: some come back and some don't.

Ryan Kwanten is among the former. The one-time Home and Away star fetched up in Los Angeles in 2002 and struggled for several years, at one point sleeping in a motel storeroom for three months to make ends meet. But in 2008 he landed the role of Jason Stackhouse, a libidinous southerner in Alan Ball's lusty supernatural romp True Blood on the leading cable network HBO.

The show was a hit, and remains so as its fifth season airs. But in his hiatus from production each year, Kwanten has tried to return to Australia to star in an independent local film. There's been a modern western in Patrick Hughes' Red Hill, the idiosyncratic fantasy Griff the Invisible and now the Gen Y romantic comedy Not Suitable for Children. You can't fault Kwanten's dedication to local filmmaking.

''I really enjoy it,'' he says. ''There's the obvious connection I have with Australia, but beyond that we have some of the most talented filmmakers, technicians and actors that the world has to offer. It's not just my duty to come back and work, I get a lot out of it. It means a lot more to me to do something like Not Suitable for Children than a $100 million Hollywood epic.''

It's 11.30pm in Los Angeles and Kwanten is driving home along California's 405 freeway, having just finished a day's work on True Blood. The difference between an American cast and an Australian one, he says, exists off-camera; camaraderie comes quickly on a local production.

That helped in Not Suitable for Children, the story of three twentysomething housemates in Sydney's inner west - the coasting Jonah (Kwanten), no-nonsense Stevie (Sarah Snook) and the eccentric Gus (Ryan Corr) - whose lives revolve around a weekly for-profit house party. When circumstances dictate that Jonah will only be able to procreate for another month, he is determined to find a way to become a father.

''Everyone makes a snap judgment at the beginning of this film that they think they know Jonah, but they don't,'' Kwanten, 35, says. ''I can speak from personal experience - anyone who's gone through a traumatic time can - but it's not until you go through life-defining moments that you realise who you really are and how valuable the people around you are.''

It's a reactive role, defined by offbeat humour and an underpinning melancholy that Kwanten enjoyed expanding with writer Michael Lucas (television's Offspring) and first-time feature director Peter Templeman.

As with his roles in Red Hill and Griff the Invisible, it's a world away from Jason Stackhouse. ''Michael's script gave me the opportunity to do something different from what I've done before,'' Kwanten says.

''For me, personally, there couldn't be anything more uninspiring than playing the same character over and over again. I like to pride myself on breaking out of the pigeonhole that I might put myself in, let alone the industry. If you take a risk you might fall on your feet or fall on your arse, but you have to keep trying.''

Not Suitable for Children is now screening.

Sarah reveals a naked ambition for Hollywood

Actress Sarah Snook at the Hilton, Sydney. Picture: Anthony Reginato Source: The Daily Telegraph

Jonathon Moran, The Sunday Telegraph, reports

She’s been dubbed Australia's next Cate Blanchett and narrowly missed out on the lead role in the Hollywood version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

But Sarah Snook is determined to ignore the hype and comparisons and make her own mark.

If that means a career in Hollywood - or not - so be it.

"I'm hoping for as long as possible to keep a foot in each country and if that means the work is here (in Australia) then excellent and if it is there, then excellent," Snook tells Insider at Sydney's Hilton Hotel last week.

"I will go where the work is. If the writing is good, then I'm happy to be a part of a project."

Snook stars in the new Australian film, Not Suitable For Children, playing 20-something Stevie in The Secret Life Of Us-type angsty drama about a young man facing mortality after being diagnosed with testicular cancer. The film also stars Ryan Kwanten and Packed To The Rafters' Ryan Corr.

Snook's real life is not that different to the story told in the film. She's 24 and lives with four flatmates in Sydney's inner suburbs.

"Our house is known as a good party house. It is like a rite of passage that you go through in your 20s, you've got to do the share thing at some point," Snook says.

Her Not Suitable For Children role required some nudity for Snook, who shares several passionate sex scenes with Kwanten.

"It is very personally challenging to do that but everyone on set treats that kind of thing with a lot of respect, a lot of caution and a lot of care so I never felt unsafe at any point," Snook says.

Snook has been pegged as one to watch since graduating from Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2008. Her first taste of Hollywood came when she was shortlisted for the big budget Daniel Craig film, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (released this year), but missed out to US star, Rooney Mara.

Her red hair and fair complexion - not to mention her talent - has also earned Snook comparisons to fellow NIDA graduate, Blanchett.

Up next for Snook is a starring role in low-budget US horror flick, Jessabelle.

"Jessabelle is my first thing in America and if something comes of that, I guess I will be doing more work there," she says.

Snook and Kwanten shine in Not Suitable

Ryan Kwanten as Jonah.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports

True Blood's Ryan Kwanten is the biggest star in Not Suitable for Children, but emerging actress Sarah Snook shines just as brightly in this edgy and fresh Australian romantic comedy.

Before all you guys read "romantic comedy" and sprint directly to your Rambo and The Hangover DVDs, you should know that Not Suitable for Children doesn't really fit into your typical mould.

It's set in Sydney's pulsing inner-west, where the popular party boy Jonah (Kwanten) lives in a share-house with Stevie (Snook) and Gus (Ryan Corr), and survives off the profits from their epic house parties.

This carefree sex, drugs and booze lifestyle is abruptly altered when Jonah discovers he has testicular cancer. What's more, because his swimmers have an issue with the freezing process, the required operation in four weeks' will render him infertile.

It's refreshing to have a movie about a guy's biological clock ticking and Kwanten plays the loveable idiot Jonah so well, it's hard not to feel sorry for him.

With babies on the brain, he tries to track down every woman he's been with, including an ex-girlfriend (Bojana Novakovic), to see if they're keen for parenthood.

Kwanten nails the subtle and often awkward humour, particularly in a scene where he meets with a lesbian couple on his hunt for a willing mother for his child.

As the child-hating Stevie, who decides to help Jonah in his search, Snook is a stand-out. With a natural charm, she just jumps out from the screen and despite having just one other feature film credit (a small part in Sleeping Beauty), she holds her own opposite Kwanten.

Having just missed out on being cast as Lisbeth in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake, Snook is definitely one Aussie actress to watch - she's got quite a career ahead of her yet.

Corr doesn't get as much to do as comic support, but he does get laughs, particularly in a scene where all three friends sit at a table and there are noticeable sparks between Stevie and Jonah.

Filled with a youthful energy, Not Suitable for Children is the feature film debut for director Peter Templeman, who was nominated for an Oscar in 2007 for his short film Saviour.

Written by Michael Lucas (TV's Offspring), it's easy to tell where the plot is going, but the dialogue is funny, surprising and touching while still steering clear of sentimental cliches.

Not everyone will be comfortable with the premise, but Not Suitable for Children is a smart Aussie film, that's funny and raunchy, but also tugs at your heartstrings.

Word of advice: don't watch the trailer for this one. As with most "rom-coms", it gives a lot away, and it's far better to go into this and be surprised.

Not Suitable for Children in Australian cinemas now.

On a wild ride, baby Ode to the inner west

Not in here ... Ryan Kwanten parties hard in Not Suitable for Children.

Helen Barlow, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

Aussie hunk Ryan Kwanten's urge for adventure doesn't leave much time to settle down, at least for now.

In the HBO series True Blood, the former Home and Away star Ryan Kwanten plays Jason Stackhouse, a dim-witted southern hunk one might categorise as an easy lay. In the Australian movies Red Hill and Griff the Invisible, he was naive as a happily married cop, then a wannabe superhero. Now in his best Australian movie yet, Not Suitable for Children, his character, the party-loving inner-city dweller Jonah, is forced to grow up fast when faced with testicular cancer and the prospect of never having children unless he can find a vacant womb before his looming operation to remove the lump.

The thing is, even if Kwanten looks a decade younger than his 35 years, he has never been that naive or carefree.

"Ryan's the exact opposite of Jonah. He's a focused, driven guy," says the film's 33-year-old director, Peter Templeman. "Jonah's life is scattered. He has an attention span that just flips from one thing to another. But when he latches on to this desire to be a dad he just throttles it."

Given Kwanten's commitment to filming True Blood – the reason he was unable to attend the Sydney Film Festival (which opened with Not Suitable for Children) – he is speaking on the phone from his home in Los Angeles.

It's midnight but Kwanten shows no sign of tiredness.

When you are as fit as this former triathlete (and son of a champion surfer) who grew up in Queenscliff on Sydney's northern beaches, stamina is no problem. Kwanten gets his kicks snowboarding, jumping out of planes, swimming with sharks and, recently, experiencing zero gravity on a plane specially designed to give passengers a sense of weightlessness at 7600 metres. "It was truly awe-inspiring," he says.

How about Everest? "I really want to climb Machu Picchu. That's on the list to do relatively quickly." Kwanten, who had studied for a business degree at the University of Technology, Sydney, before deciding on an acting career, says he doesn't want to go through life with any regrets.

"I just feel like it's a 'Why not?' type of thing." It also stems from his natural timidity.

"I always used to be that guy who would sit in the corner and watch people dance and wish that I could have the guts to get up there and dance myself – even though I wanted to dance so much.

"I hit 21 and I thought that life is too short and if I want to go and do something, I should go and do it."

Kwanten says his mum, Kris, puts his adventurous nature down to astrology: Sagittarians reputedly have their arrows aimed at new challenges – and new women.

"We are free-spirited," says Kwanten, who is single.

"You just have to make us feel like we have our freedom and then we are all yours."

This may have been sage advice for the dozens of female volunteer extras who lined up to be part of the jam-packed party scenes in Not Suitable for Children, which was filmed in a famous Newtown share house known for the kind of wild parties Jonah organises. Again, though, the share-house experience is foreign to Kwanten.

"I've spent time on friends' couches but never for extended periods. I've always lived by myself, except for when a girlfriend was living with me. I felt it was easier. Making the film was a nice experience for me because I hit it off pretty quickly with Sarah [Snook] and Ryan [Corr].

"You are in the trenches together when you shoot films like this, so it very much feels like how it would be living together."

The eldest of three boys, Kwanten says he does have the yearning to have a child, though doesn't share his character's dilemma.

"I like to think I'm still quite a virile man; parenthood is not something I want to rush into," he says. "I want to do it when the timing is right and who knows when that is going to be?

"Look, at this stage it's almost easier to have a kid than it is to have a wife."

The day after our interview, Kwanten is due to meet the multinational group of actors he's shared his working life with for the past five years, the True Blood team. If he ever were to meet Miss Right, one gets the impression he'd aim for the kind of relationship his onscreen sister, Kiwi Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse), has with her British husband, Stephen Moyer (vampire Bill), whom she met on the series.

"Anna is normally a very vivacious girl but with the added twins on the way, she is overly exuberant now," Kwanten says fondly. "It's a really sweet thing to see your co-star and someone I've been working with for more than five years to have this real lust for life. I honestly couldn't be happier for her and Stephen because you see so many of these so-called celebrity couples getting together and the next week they've broken up. If you ever see Stephen and Anna together, you can see there's a real genuine love for each other there."

We are sure Kwanten's time will come, too.

Ode to the inner west

Sydney's inner west has never looked so realistic — and like so much fun — as in Not Suitable for Children, a collaboration over five years between writer Michael Lucas (Offspring) and director Peter Templeman. "The inner west is one of Sydney's great treasures," Templeman says. "There's such a wonderful, diverse, vibrant culture.

"The area boasts a great contrast of being deeply urban and bustling but there's also lots of green with trees and parks."

The filmmakers struck gold when they discovered a rambling Newtown terrace house. "It's an iconic kind of party house called The Nunnery and was a notorious share house for 25 years," Templeman says. "It was built as a nunnery in the early 1900s and had never been renovated so was in a really decrepit state. Seven women were living in it and they were just getting kicked out when we found it. It was a sad situation but we were happy we were putting it on film just before it was to be renovated."

In many ways, the film pays tribute to a way of life that is slowly disappearing, as university students stay at home with their parents and real estate becomes too expensive to allow the bohemian way of life that has made the inner west so special.

Not Suitable for Children opens July 12. Season five of True Blood is screening on Foxtel.

True Blood star Ryan Kwanten chooses low-budget Australian film Mystery Road over big-budget Hollywood roles

Appearing in another indie movie in Australia ... True Blood star Ryan Kwanten is filming Ivan Sen's 'Mystery Road' in Ipswich, Queensland. Source: Getty Images

The Daily Telegraph reports

True Blood star Ryan Kwanten has continued his trend of picking low-budget Aussie flicks over big-budget Hollywood roles.

Sydney-born Kwanten has signed on to play a pig hunter in the indie drama Mystery Road, which began shooting yesterday in Winton, central Queensland.

Kwanten, whose latest Aussie flick Not Suitable For Children is currently in limited release, will star alongside Hugo Weaving in the film by the director of Toomelah, Ivan Sen.

Mystery Road, which is also written by Sen, will also star ex-City Homicide star Aaron Pedersen in the lead role of a detective who returns to his outback home town to solve the murder of a teenage indigenous girl.

The ensemble cast includes Jack Thompson, Tony Barry and Damian Walshe-Howling.

Courageous, audacious and cutting edge Film Festival

 

Ryan Kwanten in Not Suitable For Children. Filmmakers have taken chances with style and content in this year's Sydney Film Festival says Festival Director Nashen Moodley.

Garry Maddox, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

A sexy comedy set in Sydney's inner west and starring True Blood's Ryan Kwanten will open the Sydney Film Festival next month.

Director Peter Templeman's Not Suitable For Children has Kwanten playing a hedonistic twentysomething who becomes obsessed with having children when diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Described by festival director Nashen Moodley as capturing "the unique charms of Sydney's most bohemian suburbs", the film also stars Sarah Snook, Ryan Corr and Bojana Novakovic.

It is Templeman's feature film debut after his 2007 Oscar nomination for the short The Saviour.

The festival's competition, for "courageous, audacious and cutting edge" filmmaking, features two more new Australian films:

* In her follow-up to Somersault, director Cate Shortland's coming-of-age tale Lore is about a teenager who takes her four younger siblings on a precarious journey across Germany after World War II. Adapted from Rachel Seiffert's novel The Dark Room, it stars Saskia Rosendahl.

* Tony Krawitz's Dead Europe has Ewen Leslie as a Sydney photographer returning to his family's ancestral home in Greece to discover his late father's cursed past. Like the TV series The Slap, it is based on a Christos Tsiolkas novel.

What looks like an intriguing competition line-up also includes the Jack Kerouac adaptation On The Road from director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries), the Oscar nominated drama Monsieur Lazhar from Canada, the Taviani brothers' Berlin prizewinner Caesar Must Die and a 320-minute, two-part Indian epic, Gangs of Wasseypur, which is described as "an exhilarating tale of vengeance" about the decades-long conflict between two violent families.

Moodley's first festival, which runs from June 6 to 17, also features the premiere of the Pixar animated comedy The Brave, with star Billy Connolly as special guest.

As well as a retrospective on master Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci that includes Last Tango In Paris, 1900 and The Last Emperor, there are special presentations of new films from such well-known directors as Michael Haneke (Amour), Ken Loach (The Angels' Share), Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) and Australia's Rachel Perkins (Mabo).

The festival will close with American director Colin Trevorrow's sci-fi comedy Safety Not Guaranteed, about three cynical magazine staffers who investigate an ad that promises a time travel adventure.

A romantic comedy with serious balls

 Australian actor Ryan Kwanten / Pic: Cameron Richardson

Excerpt of an article by Colin Delaney, Encore Magazine

Has an Australian filmmaker finally cracked the rarely attempted romantic comedy genre? Colin Delaney visits the set of Not Suitable for Children to find out if Oscar nominated first time director Peter Templeman’s flick about testicular cancer has the balls to make it big at the box office.

A mismatched collection of twenty somethings loiter in front of a large old house in Eveleigh, south of Sydney’s CBD. Goths, surfers, hipsters and stoners make up the group. Inside it’s shoulder-to-shoulder with revellers filling hallways and stairwells. The event is not just thrown together either – flashing lights and disco balls suggest the members of this household take their parties seriously. And the amount of drugs and alcohol circulating certainly deem the environment unsuitable for children.

Encore is on the set of Oscar-nominated Peter Templeman’s feature film debut Not Suitable For Children, starring Ryan Kwanten (True Blood, Griff the Invisible) as the lazy playboy, Jonah. Never struggling to find a bed-mate, but never settling for just one, Jonah feels his biological clock speed up when he discovers a lump on one of his testicles.

The film follows his quest to find someone to mother his child while there is still time. Helping Jonah with the cause are his flatmates, Gus and Stevie who acts as his ‘womb agent’, setting him up with girls she thinks will be a suitable ‘host’ for his unborn offspring. Producer Jodi Matterson says, “It’s a traditional romantic comedy, but in reverse as Jonah crashes through his ex-girlfriends. We think he is going to end up with the ex who is the love of his life yet we see this friendship with Stevie simmering into a relationship.”

Writer Michael Lucas began working on the script while studying at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and the story is based loosely on his personal experience. After discovering a suspicious lump, Lucas made a Friday afternoon visit to the doctor.

“Over the weekend he became incredibly anxious thinking ‘what if I have testicular cancer?’ and ‘what would happen if I couldn’t have a baby?’ and he was flicking through his phone book thinking ‘who of my girlfriends would join this pact with me?’” Matterson explains. “Fortunately he found out on Monday that he was fine but the idea stuck with him.” The concept of a lead male character desperate to have a baby also struck a cord with Matterson who was interested in the role reversal within the romantic comedy formula.

While Australian filmmakers have long demonstrated a solid grasp of dramas, the rom-com is a genre yet to be cracked – with a few notable exceptions. The 90s saw the highly successful Muriel’s Wedding and more recently, Peter Helliar’s I Love You Too showed box office promise in 2010 but few other directors have attempted the format since. Matterson believes that while local filmmakers are often wary of the style, it falls well within their capabilities. “It’s very hard to make a romantic comedy in Australia because we don’t have the $40-50m budget and romantic comedy stable of stars. It comes down to script and requires real passion for the genre.” A passion Matterson says “romantic comedy junkie” Lucas has in spades.


Cast and crew

When Michael Lucas’s agent approached Matterson with the script, the plan was for Darren Ashton to direct as Matterson and Ashton had previously worked together on feature films Razzle Dazzle and Thunderstruck. Upon reading the script, they felt another director would be more suited and Ashton took on the role of executive producer instead. Matterson interviewed numerous directors before selecting up and coming Peter Templeman who cut his teeth on the set of acclaimed children’s series Lockie Leonard. Having won 38 major festival slots with a number of well-received short films and an Oscar nomination for the 2007 short The Saviour, Templeman was ready to tackle his first feature.

“The way Peter looks at the world and the sensibility he brings to it has an edge,” Matterson explains. “Matched with Michael’s script, which is quite a traditional romantic comedy, it makes for an interesting combination.” The creative team locked in, casting was the next major consideration. With established TV actors taking on their first feature roles – Ryan Corr (Packed to the Rafters) who plays Gus, and Sarah Snook (Spirited) in the part of Stevie – securing Kwanten was a major coup.

“We were very keen to get Ryan purely on a creative level,” Matterson says. “Often the realities of film financing mean thinking about names first and then asking if they are right for the role second. We were incredibly blessed that in this situation we had someone we really wanted that also ticked all the right boxes.”

The original working title of the film was The Twentysomething Survival Guide and in the earliest drafts of the script the main characters Jonah, Gus and Stevie ran a self-help website of the same name.

“A couple of drafts in, we got rid of the website but kept the title,” says Matterson. In the website’s place, layabouts Jonah and Gus turned to throwing parties at the share house charging guests an entry fee to keep them in the lifestyle to which they are accustomed. While the basic premise remained the same, the evolution of the script called for a new name.

“We had been looking for a title for about six months when halfway through pre-production Michael came up with Not Suitable For Children. It was the first title we could all agree on,” Matterson says. With a working list comprising hundreds of titles, she admits they considered some interesting options.

The worst, Matterson says, “probably had something to do with testicles. There was a lot of Get The Ball Rolling and Balls Out”.

The project is currently in the final stages of post and while a release date is yet to be set, the picture is due to be locked off by the end of February. With the wait to see if they have nailed it almost over, Matterson is realistic about the film’s chances.

“You can make a really great film and for whatever reason it doesn’t find an audience or you can make an average film and it’s in the right place in the right time,” she says. “We’ve had a very definite audience in mind the whole time and we’re doing everything we can to give that core demographic a film they would enjoy. We can only hope it reaches that audience, makes its money back, and beyond.”

True Blood star Ryan Kwanten arrives in Sydney for a true blue Christmas

Touchdown ... Ryan Kwanten arrives back home in Australia for Christmas. Picture: Snapper Media Source: Supplied

The Daily Telegraph reports

TRUE Blood hottie Ryan Kwanten has added some fresh blood to Sydney's celebrity holiday ranks, arriving yesterday for the Christmas break.

The former Queenscliff boy is believed to be mixing business with pleasure, catching up with family on the northern beaches and shooting a campaign for surfwear label Mambo.

Known best for his turn as over-sexed fang-banger Jason Stackhouse in the vampire series True Blood, Ryan Kwanten has become a regular sight in Sydney having recently spent several weeks here shooting his upcoming flick Not Suitable for Children.

Kwanten's latest holiday comes during a break in filming of his supernatural thriller 7500 in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, one visiting celebrity continuing his attempts to evade the paparazzi is Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, snapped arriving on the private pier at the Vaucluse mansion where he has been holed up with wife Melinda and their children Jennifer, 15, Rory, 13, and Phoebe 9.

While proving to be anything but publicity-friendly, Gates is said to be enjoying his Christmas break, having been spotted indulging in a few harbour cruises and the odd long lunch at some of the best-known waterfront eateries.

Ryan Kwanten shows another side in new sitcom New Girl

Actor Ryan Kwanten is set to play the love interest in Ten's coming sitcom New Girl.

Picture: AFP PHOTO/VALERIE MACON Source: AFP

The Daily Telegraph reports

HE has shot to fame playing loveable lunkhead Jason Stackhouse on True Blood.

But TV audiences will soon see a new side to Aussie hunk Ryan Kwanten, who is set to play the love interest in Ten's coming sitcom New Girl opposite its star Zooey Deschanel.

In a coming episode, her character will bar-hop on a quest for a Valentine's Day one-night stand and she'll snag Kwanten, who has already displayed his under-rated comic chops in True Blood and also in the low-budget Aussie flick Griff The Invisible.

Though the series is yet to air on Aussie screens it has already been a hit in the US, with actors including Justin Long and Natasha Lyonne also filming cameos.

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Earlier this year, Kwanten was busy filming Not Suitable for Children in Sydney alongside Bojana Novakovic and Alice Parkinson. The movie, directed by Peter Templeman, is due for release in 2012.

During the on-location shoot in Stanmore, in Sydney’s inner-west, I had the opportunity of watching Ryan Kwanten at work. Here are some of the snaps taken in Durham Street on 11 August 2011.