I`ve never thought of myself as a big star or a teenage pin-up. I`m just me. It`s probably Billy that people really like anyway, rather than me.

Like Billy [his character in "Neighbours" (1985)], my dad is a GP and my two eldest brothers are, too. If I wasn`t acting, I would have definitely gone into medicine, too. It`s totally fascinating.

I always find music guys writing about love. Think of something else for a change. I`m sorry, but it`s been done, and it does work and it`s good and all that, but I think something else would be nice. I tend not to write lyrics, cause I`m a bad lyricist. I sort of write the music, and I can orchestrate the whole thing, but the words, [singing] "I woke up this morning . . . " Awful stuff.

At one point we were going to make him English. I`ll never forget Hugh`s face at the read-through.

It was the best 300-pound investment I ever made.

I started off with violin, then I started learning guitar, then I went to piano. But I self-taught piano just because I enjoyed it. I`ve always really enjoyed music. I haven`t played much the last four years because I`ve been traveling around, so when I got his role [Neal in Uptown Girls (2003)], I had to start playing the guitar again.

I`m from Melbourne - it`s a city of about 3 million - but when you`re growing up in a place like that and you think it`s quite a big city, and then you travel around and you go, "Actually . . . no." So when I go back now, Melbourne feels like a country town. My mum will be in like 15 cars of traffic and she`ll be complaining. And I`m like, "That`s not traffic, I`m sorry!"

Mum decided that I could sing a bit, so she put me in a choir, which I hated and it was just a nightmare. I was a rebellious sort of choirboy.

[noting that all his siblings are doctors] I`m the black sheep of the family.

I`m glad I`m back to being a nobody.