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Glued to the screen

NO ONE can accuse Jonny Pasvolsky of not paying his dues.

The Sydney actor, who recently joined the cast of McLeod’s Daughters  as the mysterious Rob Shelton, started out behind the camera as a film editor.

“One of my first jobs was for the ABC ­ they needed someone to archive all their old TV that had been shot on film,” he says.

“So, I used to sit in this garage with an editing machine and watch every print of things like old Play School  episodes and cut out all the scratched stuff and paste it together and then send it to the archives.

“There were 54,000 cans of film and it took me over21Ž2 years.”

These days Pasvolsky leaves the editing to someone else, with not only his first television role on which to concentrate but also his first part in a feature film.

The 32-year-old stars alongside Gary Sweet, Sam Worthington and Steve Bastoni in Geoffrey Wright’s (Romper Stomper) new gangland-inspired adaptation of Macbeth, M., currently shooting in Melbourne. Pasvolsky confesses he “hadn’t watched a lot” of McLeod’s  before joining the series.

“When I first got here, I watched 60 episodes in 21Ž2 weeks to get some idea of the style of it,” he says.

It didn’t take long before he began to see a pattern emerge.

“McLeod’s  always has a bit of a tear jerker in every episode,” he laughs. “There’s a little bit of an emotional thing happening. But they’re really good at it.”

Naturally, the arrival of Pasvolsky’s character looks set to cause more upheaval around Drover’s Run.

“Rob’s an enigmatic, serious sort of bloke with a big secret,” he says. “I think everyone finds him pretty weird.”

But that makes him all the more fun to play, Pasvolsky says. “It’s great to have a secret as an actor,” he says. “You’ve really got to try and understand the bigger picture . . . you can’t give away too much too early.”

While he is thrilled to be a part of the McLeod’s family, Pasvolsky admits the departure of series favourites Myles Pollard (who left last night) and Bridie Carter is daunting.

“I’m sure, initially, people will be confronted by the new faces, especially by Rob, because early on his mysteriousness seems to make him a possible threat to the characters everyone knows so well,” he says. “I can understand that people who love the show might go: ‘Why are you doing that to my favourite character? Why is he there?’ But hopefully (viewers) will see this as a new chapter for McLeod’s and go with it.”

 McLeod’s Daughters. Nine, Wednesday 7.30pm

By Erica Thompson
August 04, 2005
The Courier Mail