He’s the envy of all Australian men and now the multi-talented and ridiculously good-looking Dean Geyer has added another feather in his cap as the hot new star of one of the world’s biggest television shows – ‘Terra Nova’.
Dean Geyer hit the entertainment scene way back in 2006 as a contender on the hit, now defunct, singing competition ‘Australian Idol’. But finishing third in the contest to eventual winner Damien Leith and runner-up Jessica Mauboy did wonders for the emerging star’s career.
Following Idol, in 2007, Dean signed on as a regular cast member on the popular Australian soap ‘Neighbours’.
Dean played Ty Harper, a young musician who moves to the fictional Ramsey Street. His run on the Channel Ten show finished up just one year later, but his career in acting had only just begun.
Earlier this year Dean packed up his things and relocated his life to the ‘entertainment capital of the world’, Los Angeles, to pursue his acting dreams in the big time American market.
He wasn’t long over there before Dean’s good looks and raw talent started catching the eye of producers and casting directors and, before he knew it, he was cast in a minor role in Steven Spielberg’s hugely hyped sci-fi drama ‘Terra Nova’.
“The whole experience was a bit of a spin-out because I originally booked a guest star spot for the pilot [first episode] and the producers ended up writing my character, Mark Reynolds, in as a regular and involving him romantically with one of the female cast members,” Dean said.
“For me it was a spin-out that they called me back after the pilot episode because I did my first big American movie [‘Never Back Down 2’] just before that and that was the most exciting thing to me at the time, then I booked ‘Terra Nova’ and it seemed that everything sort of happened all at once.”
Screening on Channel Ten in Australia and the Fox Network in America, ‘Terra Nova’ begins in the year 2149, a time when all life on planet Earth is threatened with extinction due to dwindling worldwide air quality and overpopulation. It has become virtually impossible for humanity to survive and almost no vegetation exists.
At Hope Plaza, a massive ring shaped structure in Chicago, scientists discover a rift in space-time that allows people to travel 85 million years back in time to the late Cretaceous period of prehistoric Earth but in an alternative timeline offering a chance to save humanity.
The Shannon family join the 10th pilgrimage of settlers to Terra Nova, becoming part of the first human colony on the other side of the temporal doorway. The Shannon family starts a new life in Terra Nova while having to deal with carnivorous dinosaurs and other extreme obstacles.
While the series features mostly an all-star American cast, the show’s 13-episode first season run has been predominately filmed in Queensland.
“It’s ironic because I moved over to the States at the beginning of this year and then booked a job back in Australia and had to move back,” Dean laughed.
“It’s nice though because I’m just a flight away from my family in Melbourne and the crew out here are unreal.”
While Dean himself admits he’s still new to the acting world, he says he must ignore the critics and focus on continuing to become a better actor.
“I still get nervous on the set because people in Australia know me as ‘Dean the musician’ and I get tweets here and there saying ‘You should go back to music’,” he said.
“But you kind of just have to ignore that because for me I love doing what I’m doing right now and I wouldn’t have booked ‘Terra Nova’ if they didn’t think I was right for the role.
“It’s great getting to learn from people like Stephen Lang and Jason O’Mara [fellow cast members], guys who have been acting for a while now.”
Following his 12-month stint on ‘Neighbours’, Dean had a tough decision on his hands – continue a successful career in the music industry or pursue his new passion as an actor. All-in-all Dean says his decision to continue acting was a rather “easy” one.
“After ‘Neighbours’ I found a manager and he brought me over to the States to audition,” he said.
“Auditioning two or three times a day during pilot season over there forces you to mature and learn the art very quickly and I loved it.
“Music’s always going to be there for me and I’m always going to be a musician, I just feel at the time acting was taking me by the reigns and guiding me where I was supposed to be going.”
While a lot of Australians head over to ‘Tinseltown’ to try and make it big, many of them fail, with only a select few getting past audition stages on most occasions. Dean says no matter how keen or talented you are the industry is tough.
“It’s a time of hope for actors because there is so much going around that you almost feel you’re bound to get something,” he said.
Dean hopes his stint on ‘Terra Nova’ can propel him even further in Hollywood.
“The thing is I don’t really know what’s going to happen or what being on ‘Terra Nova’ is going to do for me until I get back there but one thing’s for sure: I’m very excited,” Dean said.
