‘I’VE BEEN EXTREMELY LUCKY’
HOW PAUL DE GELDER WENT FROM BEING A SHARK ATTACK SURVIVOR TO BUDDING TV STAR
The day started out like any other for Paul de Gelder. The Navy clearance diver was in the water alongside the naval base in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo. It was a stretch of Sydney Harbour Paul knew well, having previously dived there many times. “I won’t swim there anymore,” Paul, 41, tells New Idea. For good reason, too.
Paul’s life changed forever when he was attacked by a 3m bull shark. “It just so happened it was the wrong day and the wrong time to be there,” Paul says of the brutal February 2009 attack. All he could do was fight for his life.
As the shark shook him, dragging him under the water, the Australian diver was helpless. Miraculously, he survived, but suffered horrific injuries.
“I lost my right hand and right leg,” Paul says. “The shark took my hamstring, so it rendered my leg useless. I had no nerves [in the leg], so doctors removed my knee joint and folded my calf muscles into the back of my hamstring.”
The double amputee returned to work six months after his ordeal. But he has since used his incredible story as a catalyst for a career change. After quitting the Navy in 2012, Paul has become a motivational speaker, shark documentary presenter and now first-time actor with a role in Foxtel’s latest drama, Fighting Season.
The series tells the story of Australian solders returning from Afghanistan and their struggles to adjust to regular life. Paul says he can see similarities between himself and his character Corporal Travis Davis.
“We were both injured at work,” he says. “We were both put into a kind of limbo where the military didn’t know what to do with us.
“You’re lost and grasping at all the straws and fighting to stay positive by spending as much time with your friends as you can. That drove me when I was going through my recovery.”
If Paul thought swimming in shark-infested waters was terrifying, it was nothing compared to his audition for his Fighting Season role.
“That was absolutely nerveracking,” he says. “I’m a Steve Irwin energy kind of guy and I tried that in the audition – it didn’t quite work. The producers said, ‘Bring it down, Paul.’”
Fortunately, he had some good help at hand. Paul was given acting lessons over Skype by New Zealand acting coach, Miranda Harcourt, who has worked with Nicole Kidman.
“My biggest goal with acting was [to] not look like an idiot,” Paul laughs. “If I’ve succeeded in that, then I’m happy.”
No acting training, however, could quite prepare Paul for his second day on set when he was required to film a strip show scene. There he was on stage in front of 30 screaming women – and assembled film crew – in just a G-string.
“I can’t even dance and there I am ripping off my clothes in a Magic Mike- style strip show,” he says. “I actually gave myself G-string rope burn between my butt cheeks because the G-string got caught when I was ripping it off. I was walking funny for the next day.” Ouch!
Paul is now based in Los Angeles, where he’s an everin-demand shark “expert” for Discovery Channel. It’s also the perfect place to forge an acting career. “I’ve been extremely lucky with circumstances in my life,” he says.
It’s all a far cry from his destructive, rebellious teenage years. “I was stealing, drinking, fighting, smoking drugs and cutting my arms up with a little hobby knife,” he admits. “I’d been picked on growing up and I would go out on the Canberra streets and pick fights with people.”
When he was 21, Paul was set on by 20 guys and had his “butt kicked”. He moved from the nation’s capital to Brisbane where he tried being a rapper.
“But there wasn’t a lot of money for white rappers in those days,” he says. “And when that imploded I joined the Army.”
If his foray into acting pays off, Paul says he’s ready for it.
“Every time I’ve made one of those big scary decisions in my life, something amazing happens. I’ve learnt to not fight it any more.”
FIGHTING SEASON AIRS SUNDAY, 8.30PM ( AEST) ON SHOWCASE