MULTI TALENT

We chat to London-based Australian actor, musician, voiceover guy and rising star, DEREK SIOW about his growing career...

- REILLY SULLIVAN

Congrats on the new film, Derek. What can you tell us about All The Old Knives and the filming experience?

It's hard for me to say too much at the moment. I had a great time on the film, it has a great cast - Chris Pine, Laurence Fishburne... I was a huge fan of [Laurence] growing up and shooting the breeze with him was mind blowing. I was so grateful for the opportunity to work with them.

You appear in a recurring TV role in the Stan series The Fear Index with Josh Hartnett. Tell us about your character.

I play a really cool character named Lin Ju-Long who's a CFO of a hedge fund. It's a really great, very character-driven show.

Where do you think your passion for acting start?

I've been into film since I was a kid. We used to go to the cinema and we'd see almost every movie released. It was the '90s so nobody cared about ratings, you'd just buy a ticket and go straight in. One of the first movies I ever saw was Police Academy 5 and the second was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Years later one of the very first films I did was Zero Dark Thirty in Petra, among the sandstone temples and tombs where The Last Crusade was shot - so it went full circle for me.

Along with your film and TV work, you've also done voiceover and podcast stuff. How does that differ from working on a set?

There's a lot of similarities. It's all in the voice - you can afford to go really big and do things you wouldn't necessarily do on screen. Voice work is loads of fun, man. I love being in the recording booth and there's nothing better than screaming something into a microphone... it's almost therapeutic.