By Gill Pringle
We spoke in depth and candidly with actor Dacre Montgomery, whose career will potentially go supernova after he landed a leading role in Power Rangers, and will soon also been seen in Season 2 of Stranger Things. He spoke about self-belief, bullying and how he’s prepared for what the future may bring.
How did you feel when you got the role? “Pretty overwhelmed. I’m from a small town in Australia [Perth] but I had been pursuing acting for ten years so I felt like this was my time, my opportunity to really work hard and make the most of what I had been given. So training for three months before we shot the film and then shooting the film for four months and putting my everything into it and hopefully that comes across on screen.”
Do you feel pressure because there are so many Power Rangers fans? “No. I feel confident. Not in an arrogant way but in a way of, ‘I’m going to work hard in this role to make the most of it and I’m going to have confidence in myself that I’m going to achieve that to the best of my ability,’ and that’s what I’ve done. So hopefully that resonates on screen and people can see that but if people can’t see that then I shouldn’t have been pursuing acting.”
Are you ready for all the fan stuff blowing up? “I’ll be honest with you – from the beginning I was like ‘I’m going to lose my anonymity, my privacy’. I was a little bit worried about that. But I think over the last year I’ve had a little bit of time to process just how my life might change. Because I’m a complete unknown, it’s a very, very slow ramp-up so each milestone I cross I’m like, ‘Oh! Somebody noticed me in a bar!’ Or I get some weird messages online. It’s very slow. So I have time to process it and go ‘Oh that’s really weird…or maybe I’ll just ignore them when those kind of things come through.’ So it has a really nice perfect trajectory of just winding up slowly so I’m not just suddenly bombarded. I think I’m getting myself more mentally prepared each month for what lies ahead. And I think that’s important otherwise a lot of actors tend to go off the rails.”
Is social media important to you? “The thing about film or TV actors, or people who have a public figure, I think the most interesting thing is the idea of intrigue. Who is Leonardo DiCaprio? What does he do in his spare time? That’s what people are interested about. He’s this person on screen but off-screen, he’s a completely normal guy. But he doesn’t have Instagram. So you don’t know that he’s a completely normal guy! So your view of Leonardo DiCaprio is not ruined because he’s posting a photo on the toilet or he’s posting a photo in the kitchen. For me social media is important because it’s an opportunity to grow my brand but, no, I’m not posting photos every day. I post occasional photos here and there. I don’t write my thoughts on Twitter or Facebook because I think that ruins it for the audience because then not only can I not live my normal life but also when people see me living a normal life, it defeats the illusion that they have of somebody in film or TV. When I go and watch a film or TV show, I want to escape. I don’t want to know what this guy is doing at home. I want to go and watch this actor play this incredible character and be part of this film and just lose myself in that. That’s why I got into acting and into this industry – because I love the escape.”
Your family have always been in the film industry and you first began acting when you were 10 years old. Was it always clear to you that you wanted to pursue this as a career? “My parents were behind the camera. My mum was an assistant director and my dad was a sound recordist. I always loved that buzz of going on set and the adrenaline. I was auditioning for 10 years but I never got a major role. I did drama at school and studied drama at university but Power Rangers was my first ‘real’ role. But I felt like I had ten years of going, ‘I want this! I want this!’ I’m a firm believer of what you visualise tends to come true. And if you work really, really hard for it and you want it more than anybody else, then it somehow has a way of lining up and there’s an energy out there in the world that gives back. I’m not a spiritual person but I definitely think there’s something about exuding that visualisation and then the world gives it back. And it takes time and it comes in different forms and. For me, my time came ten years after I started wanting it. And I think that’s good because everything I learned in that ten years about myself, about my acting and about the industry; if I didn’t have any of that I would have been all over the place. But now I’m focused and I know what I want and I know how to get there. I want a long diverse career.”
Why are superheroes so important in today’s culture? “I think that superheroes, for a lot of people give them somebody to look up to. When I was younger I watched Smallville on TV and it ran for ten seasons, like a decade. So I watched it when I was younger and by time it was finished I was probably about 18. And I looked at that actor who played Clark Kent [Tom Welling] going through all his high school years and he’s got superpowers but he’s going through trials and tribulations just like anyone else. But he seems to be able to grow and overcome and learn from those experiences and then take that and use that in his superhero capacity to help other people. And I think regardless of the fact that superhero abilities don’t exist in real life but you can help people, and you can have a mentality that is supported by a strength. And it might not be physical but it can be internal in your heart and your mind to help others to do things to achieve greatness. And, for me, Smallville was a dramatisation of that concept; that idea of people being able to do great things and stand up for themselves and for others. It instills in you, as an individual, confidence in your own life to be like, ‘No! I can do it because he did it.’
“I was a big kid at school; I was bullied at school. I didn’t have many friends so, for me, it was a thing of going, ‘Well, I didn’t have any of that and I wasn’t the good-looking guy and I was overweight and that doesn’t have to be the be all and end all. You don’t have to finish there.’”
Was weight always an issue? “I was always just a big kid. I was just naturally big so for me it wasn’t about naturally losing baby fat. I’d never really gone to the gym or been a huge sports person. I liked to free-dive and did a lot of sailing and boating. I got my boating license. I made the school rugby team and on the first day I shattered my elbow in Grade 9 so I didn’t go back. The gym became great for me and, prior to Power Rangers, I got into boxing and really love it. Gym, boxing and yoga are a healthy combination for me together with good diet. It clears my mind when I’m working out.”
Bullying is such a big deal now. What advice do you give to kids who are being bullied? “I spent so much time dwelling on being bullied, thinking, ‘This is so bad, I’m never going to get over this’. But you will get over it. You do get over it and you can overcome it and I think the only way that I did that was by visualising what I wanted in my life. Sitting there in Grade 9 or 10, being bullied, and going, ‘Well, no. In five years I’m going to be at the university I want to be at studying acting and in ten years I’m going to be performing in the roles that I want to perform in’. And I had absolutely no doubt. The whole idea in life, we call it the Tall Poppy syndrome in Australia – you grow taller and they cut you off – and it’s perceived as arrogance or whatever but I think, for me, it was just about, ‘no, that’s not true. The bullying is not going to affect me, it’s about focusing on what I want to achieve.’ And I think anybody sitting there getting bullied – it does end; there is light at the end of the tunnel but the way that you get there is by focusing on that future that you want and making it for yourself. Because that future doesn’t come by you sitting there and going, ‘Oh my God, I feel so bad. Like this kid did this to me today, I felt like this….’ It’s about going home and going, ‘you know what? I’m going to actually use that negative energy that they’ve given me and convert it into passion and ambition and actually drive away from that.’ So, no, I’m not hanging around with the same people. I’ve still got friends from high school that I hang out with but I’m not affiliated with those people who were like that towards me and their world that they live in at the moment? I don’t function in that space or in that world. I’ve moved away from that and I have directly pulled myself into this stream that is hopefully going to allow me to live the life that I want to live.”
Tell us about growing up in Perth and wanting to be an actor? “I was very fortunate because I always wanted to study at WAAPA, the West Australian Academy for Performing Arts. I took a gap year and I got in when I wanted to, and it’s literally down the road from my house, and I actually got this role a month before I graduated, just before I turned 21 so it all lined up quite nicely. It’s been a pretty incredible journey and yes Perth is a long, long away but I also feel like the world is very accessible now, being able to self-tape and send an audition to the other side of the world. We’re much more fortunate than people like Heath Ledger in the ‘90s and coming to America.”
Where is home today? “I’m back and forth very regularly but if I’m not working and I’m not needed in America or Canada, I’ll predominantly stay in Perth because if I do a 6-week stint in Perth it gets a little bit boring but I can think there. I have my gym, my yoga, I can write and read scripts and audition by self-taping – and I also know a lot of the actors who are still at WAAPA who can come and help me. And it’s also completely removed from the rest of the planet and the buzz. I feel very clear when I’m there.”
Is there a dream role for you? “I would love to play Indiana Jones. Let’s put that out there! I hear DreamWorks are doing it. I want to play that more than anything else. No question. Harrison/Indy was just so cool to me growing up and I had the boxed set. It’s a few years away but hopefully with a beard and a suntan and a few extra kilos of muscle, I can pull it off.”
And until then? “Leonardo DiCaprio’s company own a script about Billy Milligan, a real guy with 22 split personalities. The script has been around for about 20 years and James Cameron wrote the last draft. I’ve been obsessed with it for the past year.”
Power Rangers is in cinemas from March 23, 2017
