There’s one problem with becoming famous for playing an iconic TV character – and Aussie actor Gyton Grantley, who played crime boss Carl Williams in Underbelly, knows it all too well.
“What’s frustrating is Underbelly was in 2008 and ever since then, I’ve been offered roles as fat guys and fat, bumbling morons – and I’m not actually that fat!” insists the 44-year-old. “I can play that character, but generally, I’m the opposite of that. I’m a reasonably fit, intelligent kind of human being!”
Gyton is speaking from Italy, where he lives with his wife and their three children. He’s currently appearing in the ThreeNow series Human Error as Allan Carter, a suburban dad who’s deep in debt and thinks he can get himself out of his trouble by becoming a hitman.
“Let’s just say this – the gun felt very familiar in my hand,” Gyton says of Allan, who is yet another bumbling criminal, but with his long hair and beard, he looks very different from Underbelly’s Carl.
One of Human Error’s directors, Mat King, encouraged the Brisbane-born actor, a former rower and rugby player, to get “as messy as possible” back when he was still living in Melbourne.
“Mat and I are friends – our kids went to the same school,” Gyton explains. “He’d run into me at drop-off and say, ‘Don’t cut your hair! Don’t change your beard!’ So I did hold off on the grooming for a while.”
But Gyton likes his hair long anyway. “I wear the mandatory middle-aged man bun at the moment,” he jokes. “I couldn’t afford a Porsche!”
The star has been living on the Italian island of Sardinia with his wife Alex Ortuso and their children, Rocco, eight, Sohi, five, and three-year-old Olive, for just over a year now. Alex is Italian-Australian and she has dual citizenship.
“We wanted to have the experience of living in another country, in another culture, learning the language,” Gyton explains. “I’m a Queenslander, so it’s been very nice to be in a warm climate.”
He says his kids love life in Italy, spending time at the beach and they’ve made plenty of friends.
“I was asking Olive the other day if she remembers home. She now doesn’t even remember our house back in Melbourne,” he says.
The food is “incredible” and the family regularly eats pasta for lunch, but Gyton says he’s not putting on weight.
“Everyone walks everywhere. We’re doing 20,000 steps a day. My son started telling me, ‘You’ve increased your exercise by 100%.’”
Gyton would like to get acting work in Italy and has met with an agent, but he accepts his “lack of Italian” might make that difficult. For now, he’s teaching acting, recording voiceovers in his bedroom studio and also occasionally returning to Australia for jobs.
A gig he recently returned for is a new reality show where teams of celebrities take a road trip across Oz. Gyton is paired up with comedian Nikki Osborne, whom he’s known for 25 years.
“We studied acting from 1999 to 2001, so we’re old friends,” he explains.
In his two-decade career, Gyton has appeared in Home And Away, All Saints, House Husbands, The Doctor Blake Mysteries and The Traitors Australia, as well as playing Ronald Weasley in a stage production of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child.
He was also cast alongside Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth and Rebecca Gibney in the film The Dressmaker. But there’s one thing he’s still hanging out to do – star in an action movie.
“I’d like to shave my head, put on 20 kilos of muscle and be a B-grade action star, driving fast cars and jumping off tall buildings,” he says. “That’d be fun.”
While Gyton and his family love Italy, there are things about Australia they miss, he admits. “We can’t find Blu-Tack anywhere and we miss Kmart. My wife asked me to FaceTime her and walk her through Kmart when I was back in Australia! And I miss drivers indicating at roundabouts.
“There are plenty of things we miss, for sure. We’re definitely coming back to Oz!”
Human Error is streaming on ThreeNow.
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