Ryan Kwanten is Australia GQ's Man Of The Year

True Blood hunk Ryan Kwanten has been named GQ's Man of the Year in his native Australia.

The actor received the top award at the Sydney ceremony on Tuesday night, while The Twilight Saga: Eclipse star Xavier Samuel landed the Man of Style honor.

Chris Hemsworth was lauded with the Breakthrough of the Year award for his career success, which has seen him land roles in Star Trek and the lead in upcoming superhero epic Thor, while Ben Mendelsohn walked away with Actor of the Year.

Other winners at the annual prizegiving include Birds of Tokyo, who won Band of the Year, and Firass Dirani, named TV Actor of the Year.

Ryan Kwanten Praises Gay Brother for Coming Out

Many of you fell in love with Ryan Kwanten watching him on HBO’s True Blood on which he plays endearingly dim himbo Jason Stackhouse.

Prior to True Blood, Ryan starred in an episode of Law & Order: SVU as a military guy wrongly accused of rape. The 33-year-old Aussie actor was so good in that episode and his chemistry with series star Mariska Hargitay was off-the-charts.

Ryan recently chatted with Brandon Voss from The Advocate and they covered all kinds of gay ground.

Here are some highlights:

Before True Blood, you starred as a lifeguard in the Australian soap Home and Away. Were you aware of gay fans that early in your career?
Yes, they’ve always been very staunch supporters of me. The great thing is that it’s a loyal fan base — they’ll stick with you through thick and thin, and I like that. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty.

I read a story in Star that claimed you purposely keep your love life private in part because you’re so conscious of your gay following. Any truth to that?
Well, it’s in Star, so it’s got to be true. [Laughs] But yeah, and, to be honest, it’s more than my love life. It was Einstein who once said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” We almost know too much about far too many actors in this day and age — to the point where it becomes harder and harder to see them as a character. So I’ve always tried to maintain somewhat of an air of mystery.

Were you always comfortable with the idea of male admirers?
Oh, yeah. Australians are a very open-minded society, and I come from a very liberal, open family, so it’s something that I’ve embraced from the get-go. My youngest brother, Lloyd, is gay.

Tell me about him.
He’s a doctor, so he got every ounce of intelligence in the family. He was probably about 18 when he came out, and I can wholeheartedly tell you that from the day that he did, he was a changed man for the better. The sheer beauty of who he is really came through.

Let’s talk True Blood. With the exception of Jason, all the major male characters were involved in homoerotic action last season. Did you feel left out?
Well, there are more seasons to come, so there’s still many an opportunity. I’m sure Alan Ball’s concocting some road to take Jason down that he’s never been down before.

Your True Blood costar Stephen Moyer recently auctioned off his “modesty sock” for charity. Would you auction off your penis pouch for a gay charity like The Trevor Project?
Well, I’ve gone through more than one, so there might be a couple out there. I’ll have to speak to Audrey, our wardrobe designer, and see if she can track one down. There’s quite a collection, actually—one for every mood.

You wrote an upcoming satirical self-help book, The G-Strategy. Any chance the G stands for gay?
It’s stands for whatever you want it to, Brandon. That’s the beauty of it.

Go to Advocate.com to read the interview in its entirety.

True Blood's Ryan Kwanten Gives Cast Nudity Advice

Vampires, maenads, telepaths, shapeshifters — even the Fellowship of the Sun.

As True Blood‘s oft-shirtless — and ever clueless — resident mortal hunk Jason Stackhouse, Ryan Kwanten has just about seen it all –- and he’s done it without having to worry much about a wardrobe. But as the third season of the HBO hit series gears up for it’s June 13th premiere, Sookie’s older brother can breathe a slight sigh of relief (and maybe let himself go a bit) as the rest of the cast will be doing the bulk of the flesh-baring.

“I’ve passed the nudity mantel,” Kwanten said at Ubisoft’s launch of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. “Some of the others cast members have taken on the throne.”

And a sometimes chilly throne it is.

But even as it appears that the chiseled 33-year-old has momentarily relinquished his role as most likely to do a nude scene, the Aussie has found himself quickly filling an even more specific niche.

“I seem to be the go-to guy for any kind of nudity advice on the show because I came out of the gates pretty strong,” he says, chuckling.

His advice for the fellow Bon Temps players getting ready to bare it all?

“To tie the “modesty sock” on really tight,” Kwanten says, laughing, “because you don’t want that thing coming off, because there will be evidence of that forever.”

New Release Tuesday!

Here's a list of what's new on DVD, Blu-ray and CD today including the release of True Blood's second season on DVD starring Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Sam Trammell and Ryan Kwanten.

MOVIES
Dear John
Mystery Team
The Road
Tell Tale

MUSIC
Marc Anthony - Iconos
Sex And The City 2 - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Smashing Pumpkins - Teargarden By Kaleidyscope Vol. 1: Songs For A Sailor
Stopne Temple Pilots - Stone Temple Pilots
True Blood - Music From The HBO Original Series, Volume 2
Will Young - Leave Right Now

TV SHOWS
Flashpoint - 2nd Season
The Real Housewives of New York City - 1st & 2nd Seasons
Royal Pains - 1st Season
Top Chef Masters - 1st Season
True Blood - 2nd Season
The Virginians - 1st Season

Detail Magazine: The Men of True Blood

The recipe for TV's hottest show is simple: one part sex, two parts blood, and three parts played by actors Stephen Moyer, Ryan Kwanten, and Alexander Skarsgård.

Below is the article by Meghan Daum from Details Magazine on these three hot stars.

ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD

Three weeks before Alexander Skarsgård was scheduled to leave his native Stockholm, Sweden, for acting school in New York, he met a girl and fell in love. He went overseas anyway, promising to sustain the relationship from 4,000 miles away. This was back in 1997, before Skype and ubiquitous e-mail, and Skarsgård was broke. He couldn't afford to talk to his girlfriend for more than a few minutes at a time, much less bring her over for a visit, and he was too proud to ask his dad—who just happens to be the film star Stellan Skarsgård—for money. He loved his acting program at Marymount Manhattan College, but he found the city lonely and exhausting. He lived in a student-housing building with a permanently broken elevator, which forced him to walk nine flights up to his room. When he couldn't take that anymore, he moved into a "tiny closet" in Times Square that he calls "the worst possible location to live in New York City." In the meantime, the girlfriend across the Atlantic started making noises about going back to her old boyfriend.

"So I was like, 'Fuck it—I'm going back to Sweden,'" Skarsgård, now 33, recounts. "I quit school and went back, and it was like I had created her in my mind. We hung out for two weeks and we didn't get along at all."

Skarsgård is both self-deprecating and unapologetic as he tells the story. Sure, the girl was still in high school and living at home. Sure, it would be another seven years before he'd manage to move back to the States. Sure, he should have known better than to derail his American acting career before it began. But even Eric Northman, the 1,000-year-old Viking vampire Skarsgård plays on True Blood, was young once. And Skarsgård, imposing and statuesque at six feet four, is far more human than his appearance—and certainly his onscreen persona—suggests.

That's not to say he's not participating fully in the Hollywood mélange. Previously romantically linked to his second-season True Blood costar Evan Rachel Wood, he is reportedly dating Kate Bosworth, with whom he appears in the upcoming remake of the Peckinpah classic Straw Dogs. And there he is playing Lady Gaga's paramour—with smoldering, chiaroscuric mystery (he wears an eye patch)—in the music video for "Paparazzi." Then, of course, there's the fact that he's the son of a movie star; the elder Skarsgård has starred in art-house classics like Breaking the Waves and blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean and Mama Mia!

But let's put that in perspective. Until the younger Skarsgård was in his late teens, his dad was famous only in Sweden. "Being a star in Sweden is like being a star in Omaha," he says, adding that there are no paparazzi or big paychecks there (though there's enough of a media machine to have gotten Alexander voted Sweden's Sexiest Man five times). And while it's true Stellan's son was a child star in Sweden in the 1980s, he hated being a preteen heartthrob.

"He didn't like it at all," Stellan recalls. "At the age of 12, he had girls standing outside the house. They would ask his younger brother Gustaf to let them in, and sometimes it worked."

Alexander wanted to be a regular kid who hung out and played soccer. "My father was totally supportive of my quitting acting," he says. "He said, 'If you feel like there's any other option for you, I recommend that option.'"

That turned out to be studying English at Leeds Metropolitan University in England, followed by a 15-month stint in the Swedish marines. "Sweden is probably one of the three countries least likely to get in a war, so the military's pretty safe," he concedes. The flip side of that is that many missions were downright stultifying. Imagine conducting round-the-clock surveillance of a radio antenna for four days.

"You couldn't talk or move," Skarsgård recalls. "You had to piss in a bottle. It gave me a lot of time to think about things. I realized I missed being onstage and on a set."

Eventually, after his aborted attempt at acting school, he began finding his way into Swedish films and the occasional Hollywood movie, such as Zoolander, in which he had a small role as one of Ben Stiller's male-model roommates. But Skarsgård's real break came with the acclaimed 2008 HBO miniseries Generation Kill, in which he played Sergeant Brad "Iceman" Colbert. Just before leaving for Africa to shoot that project, he heard the network was developing True Blood.

"I thought, 'Oh, vampires—I don't know,'" he admits. "But then they said Alan Ball was behind it, and I was a huge fan of Six Feet Under and American Beauty. I auditioned on tape from my hotel room in Mozambique."

The audition was actually for the part of Bill Compton, which went to Stephen Moyer. "Alex wasn't quite right for Bill," recalls Ball, "but I remember that he was giant and also beautiful. So when it came time to cast Eric, I thought of him. He's got the most amazing eyes. Because of their color—they're an amazing greenish blue—he's able to do this thing with them where he loses focus but remains totally focused."

It's a technique Skarsgård picked up from assiduously studying Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Murnau's and Herzog's versions of Nosferatu and even The Lost Boys. But that look—and the inscrutability and coiled tension he gives Eric—is also something he learned from hours spent watching nature documentaries.

"It's, like, you see this big male lion, and he's chilling in the sun, and he sits up and he looks at something, and you don't know if he's going to pounce or if he's just going to go back to sleep," Skarsgård says, his steely gaze unwavering, looking like he could easily break into a yawn. "You never know if he's bored or he's frustrated or what."

RYAN KWANTEN

Believe it or not, Ryan Kwanten is not a dumbass. Of course, you'd never guess that: His True Blood character, Jason Stackhouse, is a good old boy writ large, a studly simpleton who thinks with his little head because his big head seems permanently encased in granite. The only one of the show's leading men who's not a vampire or other supernatural being, Jason is a stand-in not just for the average guy but also for his masculinity crisis. He's a red-blooded mortal in a world suddenly colonized by phantasmagoric sophisticates, an affable if dim Everyman whose horndog exterior and prodigious sexploits mask a deep human need for connection.

Kwanten, on the other hand, is an aspiring highbrow. The 33-year-old Australian, who grew up in what he calls a "beach shack" in Sydney, likes to read philosophy, doesn't own a television, and has been writing a novel for the past 19 years—it currently fills 290 pages of a notebook he's been carrying around since he was 13. Kwanten has the rippling physique of a comic-book superhero but insists he's more of a yogi than a gym rat. Moreover, he doesn't like to talk about his body or how often it's on display on True Blood.

"We have amazing computer-generated effects," Kwanten says, his Aussie accent revealing no trace of Jason's aw-shucks-isms. "It's my head on someone else's body."

Still, the fact is Kwanten, who like costars Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin lives in Venice, Calfornia, is sitting at one of his favorite cafés not far from Muscle Beach, ordering one of the "bodybuilder specials" for lunch. He chooses an egg-white-and-buffalo-meat scramble —"In the mornings I get pancakes and egg whites," he explains—and tries his best to steer the conversation away from anything to do with working out or acting. Wearing heavy black glasses and a newsboy cap, he's virtually unrecognizable as Jason or any of the other likable lugs he has played. Though he's close with his castmates, he doesn't hang out with them and he certainly won't be found in Hollywood clubs or, as he puts it, "anywhere a paparazzo in his right mind would go."

Kwanten became famous in Australia in his early twenties, thanks to a prime-time soap called Home and Away, on which he played a lifeguard. He's quick to add that for part of his time on the show he was also working a public-relations job ("You need to cover your bases," he says). He went on to star in an American film called Junction Boys, coming to L.A. for a few days of vacation around its premiere and deciding to stay. He spent the next three months in a converted storage closet in a grungy Venice hotel, sleeping on his yoga mat and riding his bicycle and the city bus to auditions. Finally, after a few small TV roles, he was cast as an Australian surfer in the TV series Summerland and then landed a part in the 2006 girl-and-her-horse movie Flicka, in which he caught the eye of Alan Ball, who was casting True Blood.

"He played the lead character's hot, sweet, dimwit older brother," Ball recalls. "So when I was casting for Jason, I thought of him. He has almost zero vanity as an actor. He's not afraid to play stupid—a lot of actors that play dumb characters have to do subtle things to show they're not stupid. But Ryan doesn't have that hang-up. And he is so unlike his character that it's almost shocking."

As for Kwanten's physical attributes, Ball insists he didn't see him shirtless until they were shooting the pilot. "He came on to the set and I thought, 'What the hell is that?'" Ball says. "But it was a total asset. Part of what makes the whole Jason package attractive is that he's so comfortable in his own skin."

Good thing, since no one on True Blood, a show in which over-the-top carnal activity is the norm, has more onscreen sex than Jason. "I'm very comfortable with my body. Most of the time the girl is going to be more scared of the scene than me," he says. "So I make a pact with them like, 'Let's be in this together. I've got your back and you have mine.'" Though Jason is often described as a sex addict, Kwanten's deep character analysis has yielded a more forgiving interpretation. "He lost his parents at a very early age," he says. "So there are a whole host of things he's making up for, whether it be a mother figure or someone to hold."

This may sound like pop psychology, but Kwanten's been in that mode lately. He's busy writing a new book—this one a self-help book of sorts. "It's a satire of self-help books," he says, chewing his buffalo meat. "It's called The G Strategy. I am 'The G.' There are steps. The first is 'Ask yourself the question.' The second is 'Give yourself a G name.'"

Kwanten doesn't specify what "the question" is, but "the G name," he clarifies, needn't start with a g. It simply refers to a new name we can assign ourselves if our given name comes with excessive emotional baggage. "Say there's the name Ryan," he continues. "That name might have a stigma attached to it due to the years of abuse I've suffered as a child. But as, say, Ace, I can do anything. I can associate myself with a mythological creature or a made-up word. And through the invention of that word, it makes you want to break into a smile."

Kwanten's earnest tone and poker face make one wonder whether he might be engaged in an elaborate send-up not just of books like The Secret but also of popular culture, of the whole rather embarrassing enterprise of an actor sitting down to pontificate, and most of all of himself. When he trots out platitudinous nuggets like "I like playing ordinary characters and seeing what makes them extraordinary," you have to hope he really is putting you on. But then there are times when his humor is so laceratingly dry that all is forgiven.

"There are 11 steps," he says, returning to the tao of The G Strategy. "Normally there are 10, but I added one. I'm not going to tell you all of them. But one is that one and one doesn't equal two."

He holds his two index fingers close together and, eyes wide with faux mysticism, adds, "It equals 11."

STEPHEN MOYER

Stephen Moyer, at 40 years old, refers to himself as an "older bloke." Though he's often facetious, this characterization doesn't carry a trace of irony. Maybe it's that his two kids, Lilac and Billy, are now 7 and 10, respectively. Maybe it's that his fiancée—costar Anna Paquin—is just 27. Or maybe it's that the British actor has grown accustomed to playing the 173-year-old vampire Bill Compton. Granted, as vampires go, Bill's a mere lad compared with his 1,000-year-old nemesis, Eric Northman (played by Alexander Skarsgård). But whereas the tracksuited, club-owning Eric is youthful beyond his centuries, Bill is the epitome of a throwback. A laconic farmer turned Confederate soldier who was returning home to his wife and children when a female vampire "turned" him (don't you hate when that happens?), he has led a life mired in tragedy that's mapped itself across his face. And even though Moyer declares his life to be "fantastic," he somehow exudes a kind of personal ballast—a seasoned quality that suggests he's seen enough to know a thing or two.

Moyer grew up in the working-class county of Essex, about an hour outside London, where his father sold glass for a living. "He's 69 and still doing it," Moyer says. "No pension—it's the kind of job you just keep doing until you drop." When Moyer was 11 he played Tom Sawyer in a school play and knew he wanted to be an actor.

"I didn't want to do film or commercials or television," he says of his early days, first as a student at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and then as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. "That was cheap. That was selling out. I was the classic liberal, left-wing, 'Theater is going to change the world' kind of person. You know, very, very boring."

He was serious, mind you, for quite a while. But then he was offered a commercial ("It was for coffee—fucking cheesy shit"), which he agreed to do because it would run exclusively in Scandinavia and no one he knew would see it (though Skarsgård grew up watching it in Sweden and likes to tease him about it). Moyer was well compensated for his trouble ("1,000 quid, which was shitloads back then") and used the money to buy a boat moored on the canals of London's Little Venice, where he lived for seven years. Today he and Paquin live on the canals of Venice, California—albeit in a house on terra firma.

"I have to live in places that are called Venice," he says. "I'm a Venice-zuelan."

Moyer takes a sip of the water he's ordered at an airy café—art gallery not far from his home. He compulsively taps out the rhythm to the Dave Brubeck tune playing over the stereo—"I'm really enjoying this musical selection," he says—stopping only to wave through the window at a friend passing by. Unlike Bill, whom he plays as a composed, almost motionless figure ("He doesn't have a pulse, so he wouldn't twitch or make unnecessary movement," he explains), Moyer is animated and charmingly revved-up, perhaps even a tiny bit hyper. He likes to swear, though his English accent makes this sound salty rather than crass (he also likes to call women "luv" and use words like chuffed, which is British for stoked). And he's talkative. Despite endless tabloid scrutiny, he has no qualms about discussing his relationship with Paquin, which he entered into with great caution. "To get a pilot that runs to a series, it's big shit to people," Moyer says. "And so to come along and go, 'Oh, let's have a quick fuck,' and then risk arguing and being a nightmare when you're playing the two people who are together the whole time—that would be immature."

Which is the opposite of how things worked out. Moyer, whose children are from two different relationships, has never been married, but he and Paquin publicly announced their engagement in August 2009 (just don't ask him if they've set a date; he's taken to saying it'll be in 2020). "It's HBO's fault," Moyer says of their hookup. "They put us in the same hotel." Not the same room—at least "not to begin with," he snickers. "No, I'm joking. They put us in these hotel suites, and we hung out for a while and got to know each other. The attraction was there, so it was a matter of whether we acted on it or not."

"When it got back to me that they were an item, I admit I thought, Oh boy," says Alan Ball, True Blood's creator. "But I trusted them to be adult about it, and they have been. And when they got engaged, Anna said to me, 'I've never been so happy in my life.' So how can you not be happy about that?"

If Moyer's relationship with Paquin seems both organic and infused with courtly devotion, the relationship between their characters is no different—despite the fact that Moyers gorges himself on her blood (it's a sugarcane mixture that tastes, he says, like "strawberry-flavored corn syrup").

"He's in many ways an old-fashioned romantic, like Mr. Rochester or Heathcliff," Ball says of Moyer. "A lot of people auditioning thought playing a vampire meant acting insane. I was looking for someone who brought a dignity and gravitas to the role."

And yet, like all the vampires on the show, Moyer delivers a primordial charisma. If Skarsgård plays it to ethereal, almost sylph-like effect, Moyer conveys a brand of sex appeal that's brooding, clenched, and so earthy you can almost feel its scabrous texture. And then, of course, there's that voice—husky and clipped and heavy on the consonants, particularly when he utters the name of Paquin's character, Sookie. For reasons that baffle Moyer, his pronunciation has become a subject of public fascination.

"We were given that pronunciation very early on by Charlaine Harris herself," says Moyer, referring to the author of the True Blood books, as we get up to leave. "Sookie rhymes with cookie. It doesn't rhyme with kooky."

I ask him if he calls Paquin that at home.

"All the time," Moyer deadpans. "When she's chained up."

Ryan Kwanten Covers 'August Man' March 2010

True Blood hunk Ryan Kwanten suits up for the cover of August Man magazine’s March 2010 issue.

The 33-year-old Aussie actor posed for celeb photographer Mitchell McCormack and spoke about life as an actor. Check it:

On making sure he keeps a life outside acting: “I don’t mean to sound preachy, but I think it is a mistake that a lot of actors make. They just surround themselves with the world of acting and therefore that is all they know.”

On watching his passion for the craft grow: “It wasn’t until the roles started getting bigger and the storylines more complex that I realized there was a true profession behind this. As the roles got deeper that passion for the craft was cemented in my veins.”

On leaving behind his life in Australia:“It was never a planned move to Hollywood, but once I arrived in L.A. it sunk its teeth into me and no matter how hard I tried it wouldn’t let go.”

True Blood’s Hunks Are Happy to Get Naked

True Blood fans with a taste for male eye-candy can breathe easy: stars Ryan Kwanten and Sam Trammell promise they’ll spend very little time in wardrobe for the show’s upcoming third season.

“We joke about it — and who has the record for the most disrobes,” says Trammell, who plays the shape-shifting Sam Merlot. “I think Ryan does. But I’m close behind him at this point because I’ve already disrobed like four or five times this year and I don’t think he has at all. I’ve got to fight that out with him. Ryan is definitely ready to show up and flaunt it, because he’s got the bod to back it up. He’s probably the least bashful.”

“I tend to think that I live my life relatively fearlessly,” admits Kwanten, who plays the heroic if not always clear-headed Jason Stackhouse. “If HBO knew half the things that I do in my personal life they probably wouldn’t be too happy about it … I have no fear. I sort of hide behind the guise that I am playing a character … Personally, I’m quite restrained and almost introverted. But as Mr. Stackhouse, I can’t afford to have any of those sensitivities.”

Trammell says the show’s producers don’t exactly help the cast stay in top shape for their frequent nude scenes. There is no exercise equipment on set, but plenty of tempting food on the craft services table. “[Working out is] up to us,” he says. “They’ve got the cookies out.”

He said the cast has gradually gotten used to performing in the buff. “Some of the ladies are kind of shy sometimes … Pretty much the process is: You’re shy, you take off your clothes once and then it’s done.”

Ryan Kwanten: From True Blood to Superhero

True Blood and ex-Home and Away star Ryan Kwanten has returned to Australia to begin filming on Griff, a superhero movie ‘with a difference." Ryan is playing the title role, and will spend the next two months in Sydney filming on location.

Ryan decribes his role in Griff the Invisible:

“By day, Griff works in an office. By night, he is a superhero - or is he? It was this question that attracted me to the role. Griff is such an original and boundless character to play.

“Every boy dreams of being a superhero and I’ve accepted my mission to bring this one to life.”

Filming in Sydney for Griff the Invisible kicked off yesterday.

Griff the Invisible is the debut feature from writer/director Leon Ford, who says that “Griff is a super hero movie and it is a comedy, but at its core it’s a simple love story about two very unique individuals finding each other and giving the other the strength to be what they want to be.”

The film is co-produced by Jan Chapman (The Piano, Lantana, Bright Star) and Griff the Invisible is expected to release in Australia in late 2010.

True Blood Costar Unaware of On-Set Romance

The onscreen brother is always the last to know.

Speaking at the Entertainment Tonight/People Emmy party after Sunday's big event, Ryan Kwanten – the hottie who plays dumb-as-a-rock but well-meaning Bon Temps good ol' boy Jason Stackhouse on HBO's True Blood – said he may have been the only person not to have figured out that his costars Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer were in a relationship.

"I'm always the last to know. My ear is not very close to the ground," he said. "Stephen actually had to come up to me and tell me. He said, 'Ryan I know you're not really up with the gossip side of things. but before you hear from anyone else, we've been dating for the last 10 months.' "

But Kwanten, 32, said it made perfect sense once he did know.

"They just know who they are," he said. "There are no facades or egos. They are just down-to-earth people."

On the show, Kwanten's character is the brother of Paquin's character, one who often tries (and fails) to act as a caring older brother. Kwanten said feels like a friend more than a brother to Paquin in real life, but that he's confident Moyer will make a fine husband.

"You look out for them and make sure that anyone who is the close circle has their best interest at heart, and Stephen does," he said.

He's even already got the perfect wedding gift picked out.

"I guess [I'd give them] privacy," he said. "I'd just wave my magic wand."

True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten on Playing Jason Stackhouse

From battling addiction to vampire blood to getting mixed up with a fanatical religious group and then sleeping with the preacher’s wife, Ryan Kwanten’s True Blood character, Jason Stackhouse, is always getting into trouble on HBO’s hit show. Luckily for the 32-year-old Australian actor, who has lived in Los Angeles for seven years, he’s nothing like his rural Louisianan alter ego.

“We look the same to a certain degree,” he jokes. “But my jeans aren’t as tight.” Before True Blood’s finale on September 13th, which Kwanten calls “the amalgamation of pretty much the entire season,” the actor spoke with People about his character, Louisiana cooking and how he stays so darn ripped

Congrats on the success of True Blood. How does it feel?
It’s is not something that you set out expecting [because of] the amount of factors that have to fall into place for a show to even be picked up … True Blood was already a pretty tasty cake before and then now it’s just a nice little cherry on top.

Do you notice a difference between when the first season aired and now?
I’ve really noticed a difference in how people are aware of the show and of me. It’s certainly a new thing to me.

Were you familiar with the Sookie Stackhouse books before you started playing her brother Jason?
It was only after I got the role that I started reading the books to catch up with it, but even then [creator] Alan Ball made us aware that it wouldn’t be following word-for-word, story-for story with the books.

How far into the books have you read?
Two-and-half books. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I’m particularly the demographic. It’s just not my thing.

What do you like about Jason Stackhouse?
He’s taught me not to think so much and not over analyze because he’s the type of guy who just sort of jumps into things without really thinking about them and obviously that gets him into trouble.

How did you get the accent down?
I wish I could say it was a long process of learning and arduous kind of hours. I obviously do my research of where it’s shooting and the various types of accents within Louisiana and in discussions with the director and with Alan you hang on something. They seemed to like what I had in the beginning so I stuck with that and refined it if need be.

Most of the show is shot around Los Angeles but you do get down to Louisiana, right?
[We go there to] slide in a couple scenes or even shots here and there to make it look like it was all there, to add to the Louisiana. Hopefully, we can get the audience sweating while they watch it.

Do you like going there?
I actually have a soft spot for people from the South or even just from Louisiana just because they tend to tell it like it is and I think quite often in L.A., people are a little scared to do that … Also, I found it quite extraordinarily beautiful. People complain about the heat but I don’t mind the heat at all.

What about the food?
You just have to be prepared for a lot of fried food and the seafood’s really good. The crawfish are amazing.

We see a lot of Jason Stackhouse in this show. What do you do to stay in such great shape?
I don’t have trainers or anything like that. Whether it’s running on the beach or swimming in the ocean, yoga, tennis — I could go through a whole list of things — I just pretty much keep myself on my toes and try not to get bored. I probably do an hour every day.

Do you watch what you eat?
I’m never going to be one of those people at a restaurant looking at someone else’s meal and wishing they were eating it. I love my food too much to be doing that.

What do you hope for Jason next season? Would you like to see him in a relationship?
I don’t care what they do. I really just love receiving the script and seeing what happens. I don’t care if he’s in a relationship or not because either way he’s just fun to play and dive into his skin.

Speaking of relationships, are you in one?
I’m single. I’m not really looking right now. Unfortunately, I just can’t devote enormous amount of time to women right now. I’m concentrated right now on working but I like a woman who’s not afraid to be herself.

Are Australian audiences and American audiences different in how they receive a show like True Blood with all its sex and gore?
Australians are a little more open-minded when it comes to things like sex and body. But Americans, I feel, are probably more used to the violence and even the supernatural elements, so the great thing about this show is it doesn’t limit itself to one particular genre. It can go from comedy to supernatural to thriller to drama all in the space of an episode. Catering to not just different demographics but different cultures too.

Ryan Kwanten Heats Up GQ!

Ryan Kwanten is one of several hotties heating up HBO’s True Blood these days but he was definitely the most exposed! The actor was naked (at least partially) in eleven of twelve episodes during season one.

He keeps his clothes on in a fashion spread in the new issue of GQ magazine.

The article accompanying the pics notes that in the first season of Blood alone, his character had sex by a dumpster, suffered a drug-induced perma-erection, was accused of murdering four women, and got swept up by a religious cult.

And he looked terrific while doing it!