AAA<\/p>\n
David Wenham is showing me his scars. \u201cI have 60 stitches on my face from skin cancer removal,\u201d he says, pushing back his sandy blond hair, so I can examine the small mark tucked into his cowlick. The other scar, barely visible, runs down the middle of his forehead, from his hairline to his eyebrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThankfully, in Brisbane there was an extraordinary plastic surgeon who specialised in facial skin cancers. Unfortunately, he is now retired, so I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m gonna do next, but yeah, I have two lots of 20 stitches \u2013 that\u2019s 20 stitches in the deep dermis and 20 stitches on top.\u201d<\/p>\n
We stumbled into skin cancers and scars because Wenham \u2013 one of our most recognisable and acclaimed actors who is fair of hair and fair of skin \u2013 moved to Brisbane a few years ago with his family, after 30-something years of living in Potts Point.<\/p>\n
That was a bold choice, especially for someone with his complexion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, you got me there,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cAnd the other day, I had, I can\u2019t tell you how many, burnt off my arms, and I have to have two cut out, scraped and burned coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n
I have a big old lumpy scar on my right shoulder from a GP who was a little too cavalier removing a mole.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I have one \u2013 strangely \u2013 down in the groin area and I went to the \u2018butcher\u2019 who did it, and that one scarred,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that one, I\u2019m guessing, it probably came from [the 2006 action movie] 300. We shot that, in Montreal during winter, in our leather underpants [Wenham played a buff Spartan soldier] in the studio, and it was like minus 26C outside, and snow up to your knees.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, you know, we go into the studio \u2013 because it was all green screen and red screen \u2013 and spend the whole day in leather underpants. We had to look as though they couldn\u2019t get pasty. So besides spraying colour on us, we had to go to a solarium once every week.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the only thing I can think of, obviously, I picked that up from the solarium because there\u2019s no way that was ever exposed to the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s Speedo territory. \u201cYeah, underneath the Speedo.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/84a357b8388665a1d67f26a3f4f792f5102997ea.jpeg\")
David Wenham had to keep his tan up while filming 300.Warner Bros.<\/p>\n
We are sitting at the Sydney Theatre Company\u2019s Wharf Restaurant and Bar on a cool Friday, where the weather feels like it has finally committed to autumn (no Speedos here). Wenham is great fun, endlessly self-deprecating and reveals himself to be a Swifty. (What era? \u201cI\u2019ll get in trouble if I say because Millie, my daughter, will read and go, \u2018Oh no\u2019, and then I\u2019ll embarrass her.\u201d )<\/p>\n
He is in the middle of rehearsals for An Iliad at STC. It\u2019s a hefty one-man show, in which he plays the Poet \u2013 aka Homer \u2013 who is recounting the tragedies of the Trojan War. He speaks, at one point, in ancient Greek, and recounts a list with 200 items on it. \u201cI\u2019ll be employing the memory palace for that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
We have already ordered food, as Wenham is on the clock. It\u2019s fish and chips for him (the flathead listed on the menu is not available, so it\u2019s been swapped with a gurnard), and a side of cos salad. He then coaxes me into ordering the grilled Mooloolaba swordfish, to which I add roast spiced carrots, which turn out to be bloody enormous. We settle on sparkling water for drinks, and away we go.<\/p>\n
Wenham grew up in Marrickville, in Sydney\u2019s inner west. His family \u2013 he was the youngest of seven kids \u2013 lived on Illawarra Road, surrounded by Greek migrants.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was certainly the least trendy suburb when I grew up,\u201d he says. \u201cI loved it. I absolutely loved it. I was in a minority, being Anglo-Saxon, most of my neighbours were Greek, pretty much all of Illawarra Road, between where I lived and up to Marrickville Road, were all Greeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndrew, [was] my neighbour. I used to have two dinners every night. I\u2019d have dinner at our place at five o\u2019clock \u2013 we always ate very early \u2013 then I\u2019d jump the fence and have dinner with Andrew.\u201d<\/p>\n
(In a coincidence worthy of the Fates, I was driving on Illawarra Road just before meeting Wenham for lunch when I spotted a Honda Odyssey parked on the side of the road with a sticker on the back that read: \u201cMy other car is an Iliad.\u201d )<\/p>\n
![\"Fish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/f86680f22f5074b98a546268469b12c65739b1df.jpeg\")
Fish and chips at The Wharf Restaurant and Bar.Janie Barrett<\/p>\n
Wenham never had any great ambitions about being on screen \u2013 he saw only one or two films a year when he was growing up \u2013 \u201cDisney films, like Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo\u201d \u2013 while the TV at home was \u201calways locked on the ABC. So I\u2019ve got a lot of news and current affairs in \u2013 This Day Tonight and Four Corners \u2013 as a kid, I didn\u2019t really see much entertainment on television\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was only when his parents bought him a subscription to the theatre (\u201cI was a naughty boy at school, and a teacher basically brought up the idea that I should go to acting class\u201d), and he started going with his dad on Monday nights, that he began to see a future in it, but not as a leading man.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought that I\u2019d be playing leading men, ever,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to play characters that were further removed from who I was as a person, and that always excited me. Then my career took a very strange left-hand turn, which I didn\u2019t anticipate, and I found myself playing leading roles, which I found puzzling at first, and then I followed that.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the usual pattern of supporting roles in local TV soaps \u2013 A Country Practice, GP, Blue Heelers etc \u2013 his big breakthrough on film came in 1998 with The Boys, which was loosely based on the infamous Anita Cobby murder. Wenham played the psychopathic Brett Sprague \u2013 the same role he played in the stage version some years earlier \u2013 and it was the beginning of a Wenham speciality: off-kilter men, often with mullets, who were cajoling or threatening, usually both. He was sometimes funny (Gettin\u2019 Square), sometimes heroic (Lord of the Rings), but always unsettling (Fake).<\/p>\n
The same year The Boys came out, Wenham took another sharp turn, playing dishy Diver Dan in the ABC dramedy SeaChange. That he was suddenly this sex symbol was, to him, quite baffling.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/65ffd31c5e98e766bcd8c8d4646586ca727d4181.jpeg\")
The swordfish.Janie Barrett<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started [on SeaChange], I know it seems bizarre to say, but I never saw myself as the leading man in that series,\u201d he says. \u201cI just thought I was this, you know, offbeat fisherman who happened to be just another one of the characters within the town.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I was very surprised \u2013 I was away during the whole time that the first season aired, I was in Hawaii shooting a movie called Molokai \u2013 I came back, and suddenly, I was a known public figure, which was very different to when I left for Hawaii some months earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n
You were lusted after, David!<\/p>\n
\u201cVery, very, very odd. I suppose the upside is it gave my family and friends many hours, days and weeks and months of mirth at my expense. Homer Simpson would have said, you know, \u2018They weren\u2019t necessarily laughing at me. They were laughing towards me\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slightly less unsettling was his Lord of the Rings experience, in which he played the wise warrior and leader Faramir (still hunky, but this time on a horse). You were our Boxing Day tradition for three years, I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right! What do you do once it\u2019s over? You start watching the extended version.\u201d<\/p>\n
He still has Faramir\u2019s sword \u2013 gifted to him by director Peter Jackson \u2013 and the clapperboard from his final scene. What did he do? \u201cIt was a very short action thing \u2013 waiting, watching, listening, and then running around the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Wenham](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/870eaa2e86559a34e862c10580eefb054463be1f.jpeg\")
Wenham as Diver Dan with Sigrid Thornton as Laura. He never expected to be playing love interests. ABC TV<\/p>\n
Apart from SeaChange and Lord of the Rings, he gets most often approached about 300. \u201cThat one was critically slammed, but has become a huge cult classic,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s so strange, the amount of people that come up say, \u2018Oh, please do it. Is there a possibility of a sequel?\u2019 And I know the answer to that: zero chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
With so much experience under his belt \u2013 Wenham is now 60 \u2013 is acting harder or easier for him now?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably against what you would think. It becomes harder, for many reasons,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of people are very surprised by children\u2019s performances on film \u2013 \u2018Oh, my god, that performance is extraordinary\u2019 \u2013 to me, I don\u2019t think it is extraordinary because that\u2019s what kids do. They play. They imagine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very easy to act when you\u2019re young. It\u2019s harder when you get older because as you go through life, you start to accumulate baggage, and also people, especially if you\u2019ve done a bit, people know your work, and it\u2019s harder to surprise people, in a way, but that\u2019s the thing that does genuinely fuel me. I like subverting people\u2019s expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3709c4b58ef0bea968200f53c673811b4af905c0.jpeg\")
The bill.<\/p>\n
Our time is up, and Wenham has rehearsal to head back to. He says he rarely watches the things he makes, instead he finds the most satisfaction in their creation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my happy place,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, yeah, I\u2019ve done it. I was there. I\u2019m in the present, moving on. That\u2019s my happy place at the moment, in the rehearsal room, playing and creating from a little spark on the first day to see what happens four weeks later. That\u2019s the thing that really fires me.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Iliad is at the Wharf 1 Theatre from April 13 to June 14. <\/p>\n