Musician/actor bucks the trend.
Actor-musician Cameron Daddo talks about landing a job on Home And Away after a string of roles in the US. Kerry Harvey reports.
An invitation to move to Summer Bay hit a lot of right notes with Cameron Daddo.
It is his first Australian acting role since moving his family – wife and model Alison Brahe and their three children (Lotus, 23, River, 19, and Bodhi, 13) – back to Australia in 2017 after 25 years in the United States.
Even better, Home And Away has given the 55-year-old performer an unexpected stage for his music.
“The role came up and I really liked it,” Daddo says, of playing Evan Slater, the long-absent father of Alf Stewart’s grandson, Ryder (Lukas Radovich).
“I thought the quality of Home And Away is very good and I know some of the actors on there so it was a bit of a no-brainer decision for me. It was like, ‘Absolutely, let’s go’.”
The fact that Evan is also a musician definitely played a big part in his decision to take on the job.
“That was one of the reasons I wanted the role because he’s a singer-songwriter and so am I and I was able to bring my music to the show which has been fantastic,” he says.
“So you are not looking at an actor who is pretending to play and sing. You are looking at someone who has actually written the music and is singing my own songs that I’ve written and recorded and you can download them on Spotify. It’s been great.”
However, what’s not so great is the reason for Evan’s arrival. The muso is dying from terminal asbestos poisoning and wants to get to know his son while he still can.
“I knew the character had an end to it,” says Daddo, adding after discovering how much he was enjoying himself he did start regretting the finite storyline.
“As we got deeper into it I was like, ‘Does he really have to die?’ I
mean, people do live for many, many years with this disease, but they’d already written it that he died.”
Meanwhile, Daddo sees the irony of coming into Home And Away – long considered a launching ground for young actors with their eyes set on Hollywood – after more than 30 years in the industry.
“I didn’t need it,” he says of why it has taken until now for him to make the move to Summer Bay.
Instead, in 1992 he became a household name in Australia and New Zealand starring in Bony,a series about a white man raised by Aborigines who uses the skills he learnt growing up in his work as a police detective.
The series gave him the profile he needed to launch himself on Hollywood where he quickly landed the role of photographer Brian Peterson in the Melrose Place spin-off Models Inc. Lead roles in F/X: The Series and Hope Island followed as did regular guest roles in big shows of the 90s and noughties. He has done his time as well on all the CSIs, Boston Legal, 24, Without A Trace, NCIS and Nikita.
Daddo popped home to Australia from time to time, even making the tele-movie Scorched in 2008 with his Summer Bay co-star Georgie Parker, who plays Ryder’s aunt, Roo.
His last appearance Down Under was on Packed To The Rafters as Adam Goodman, the newspaper publisher who made Julie Rafter (Rebecca Gibney) almost forget her marriage vows.
“The way I see things is everything is cyclic. I’ve come into Home And Away and I feel like it’s a new beginning for me, a new beginning for a more mature version of myself,” he says, adding he is not worried about the public recognition that comes with being part of the long-running drama.
“When I started in TV when I was 18, I understood very quickly that people invite you into their home, and when they invite you into their home you become part of their family, so when you are on the street you’ve got to understand that there is not a lot of separation in most people’s minds,” he says.
“They’re just like, ‘There’s Cam. He’s part of our family. He’s been in our house every night at 5.30’. That’s something you have to accept when you do stuff like this. It’ll be interesting.”
“You are looking at someone who has actually written the music and is singing my own songs.”
– Cameron Daddo