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Big Screen Dreams
The biggest discovery of Underbelly: The Golden Mile isn’t that John Ibrahim just runs nightclubs, it’s Dan Mor.
Like them or not, the success of Underbelly has provided a platform for Australian actors to showcase their wares to audiences of 1.5 million plus viewers per night. That's a much bigger number than the highest local earner accumulates at the Australian box office over its entire theatrical run.
In the latest, Underbelly: The Golden Mile, the role of Danny Karam, aka DK, was snared by little known Dan Mor. With a few weeks to go before the series climaxes, we accompanied Mor to a movie premiere, and the recognition factor was off the charts. Even though Mor doesn't immediately look like the character he plays on the box, many a double take is followed by high fives as people embrace this TV antihero.
We had met Mor for the first time a week earlier, when interviewing him at the studios of The Actor's Pulse, an acting school based around the Meisner technique, a school he swears by. Mor is an incredibly ambitious individual, with an intensity not unlike the biggest movie stars, who only took up acting late in life.
"That's a long story," Mor warns with an accent that's Israeli but which could equally be Spanish. "I played Water Polo for the Israeli national team, then I played for two years in the states for UCLA, and that was when I knew I wanted to live in Los Angeles. I wanted to be closer to where it was all happening," he says about the acting bug. Mor eventually fell into the diamond business, which is how he arrived in Australia. "My mum always said to me, ‘Make sure you've got something to fall back on.' Acting is a bit like that. It's a great thing to get into, but it can be like chasing the golden goose."
After a few acting classes, Mor decided to audition for NIDA, just to see if this bug was for real. "I wanted to stand in front of an objective and professional panel, to tell me where I was at," Mor says. "I nearly got in. I got call backs, and I remember one of the head teachers said to me that I was too alpha male for this year's team. Even though I fell short in the end, it was still a huge turning point in my life."
Mor is a bit of a player. He continues to maintain his diamond business, Rich And Mor, and he's also one of the key people behind the infamous White Parties in Sydney. Without an agent, Mor managed to land two key roles in succession: a chunky part as a drug dealer in Serhat Caradee's accomplished crime drama, Cedar Boys, and now Underbelly. In the latter he gives 110% as real life crim Danny Karam, one of the toughest and maddest characters that walked down Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross. "I did a lot of research into the real DK. It was like my version of Finding Richard, except I call it Finding DK," Mor says, referencing the Al Pacino film about staging Shakespeare's Richard III.
The 35-year-old certainly found something because his portrayal of the drug-dealing, drug-taking maniac DK is magnetic, if not dangerously close to sympathetic. "When you play a villain, you're not there to judge him. You have to love him, and bring yourself into the character," Mor explains. "You put yourself in his shoes. You try and find or create an intimate relationship with what he wants and what he needs. So what does he want? He wants to put food on the table; he wants to look after his children. A bad man doesn't know he's a bad man, he's there because he thinks he is right. Know that and you understand why, if someone gets in his way, he acts the way he does. Plus the truth of the matter is he was a rather charismatic person to begin with."
Although he doesn't have an acting job on the horizon, Mor is busy refining his skills as an actor and has started work on a personal project. "I'm working on a story, which was conceived by my father," says Mor. "He's a veteran of the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, and from his impressions we're making a story with this global anti-war message. It starts 5,000 years ago and plays into the present and then the future. We're in the treatment stage and looking to get a top writer on board. It's something I want to do for my father and it's close to my heart."
Back at the movie premiere, Mor plays it cool as people continue double checking him. We ask whether he'd consider moving to Israel where the film industry is enjoying a successful renaissance. "My mum has shown a lot of people back in Israel what I'm doing," he says, referencing his well-connected ex-supermodel mother. "So people know me there, but I am living here, this is my home now. I'm very happy here and I think this is the best place to hail from - even better than LA."
Underbelly: The Golden Mile and Cedar Boys are available now to buy and rent.
Picture caption: Mor at the launch for Sony 3D Home Entertainment.