AARON Glenane always dreamed he would be a sporting hero.
“I wanted to be an NBA basketball player like Michael Jordan when I was younger and then I started long distance running and wanted to be like Steve Moneghetti,” the former Ballarat High School student said.
“Then mum encouraged me to do speech and drama stuff because I was pretty shy as a kid.”
One day after a cross-country running event, Glenane found out his mother had set up an audition for the local production of Oliver.
“The only song I knew was the Olympic theme song, so I performed that for my audition and I got in,” Glenane said.
“When I was on stage, I experienced a similar adrenalin rush as when I played sport. It just clicked and I’ve been doing it since then.”
After graduating from high school, Glenane went on to complete a range of performance courses before taking on roles in short films, independent films and television shows.
The 26-year-old recently landed his first major role in a feature film, the soon-to-be-released surf flick Drift.
Set in the 1970s, the movie follows the story of two brothers battling killer waves, conservative society and ruthless bikers to kick-start the modern surf industry.
With a storyline based around the sport of surf, how could Glenane resist?
“I was given surfing lessons for a couple of weeks and even though we had doubles for the big wave scenes, I was able to do a lot of it on my own.”
Drift opens on May 2.
