All-format cricketer Travis Head has made Australia proud with his devil-may-care approach which helps him free his arms without second thought, using the depth of the crease to disptach the ball via the aerial route to the fence on either side. Never mind his vulnerability to good length deliveries, he is one force to reckon with, whichever the opposition, whichever the pitch.
Well, Australians have another Travis to be proud of, but sadly they don't talk about him as much as they should, when they should be going gaga over him, especially given that:
one, the native film industry lacks the wherewithal of Hollywood to nurture home-grown cinema and export it far and wide, and,
two, many Americans relish ridiculing Aussie actors as desperate contenders with phoney accents and bad acting that sticks out on screen, never mind the recurrent fear of the Aussies haunting the Yankees that had Micheal Doughlas voice this clumsy lament sometime back, which is perhaps an outburst stemming from one of his basic instincts:
"With the Aussies, particularly with the males, it’s the masculinity. In the US we have this relatively asexual or unisex area with sensitive young men and we don’t have many Channing Tatums or Chris Pratts, while the Aussies do. It’s a phenomena.”
Travis Fimmel, best known as Rangar Lothbrok, is the perfect example of the specimen Doughlas is worried about but there's more to Fimmel than muscle. He is one hell of a great actor.
Born in Victoria and brought up in Lockington, both Victoria regions, Fimmel grew up in a cattle farming family {this seems destined in the context of a dream role that was to come his way down the line} and aspired to become a fulltime footballer in Melbourne but a leg injury crushed his dream forever. After a brief fling with architecture at the Royal Melborne Institute of Technology University, he decided to become a globe trotter when he was spotted, while he was working out furiously at a Hawthorn gym, by a friend of a talent agency professional.
Before he could come to terms with the twist in the tale, he found himself in the US of A where he was signed by LA Models and soon won a princely deal and worldwide attention as a Calvin Klein model for underwear and perfumes. After appearing on the covers of several marquee magazines, he began his tryst with acting via the rather flippant music video route. It was perhaps acting coach Ivana Chubbuck who saw the spark in Fimmel and would have pushed him to convert his latent ability into demonstrated talent.
What followed was a brief TV stint replete with stunt-rich roles (including Tarzan) which made way for both trivial and towering bit roles in Australian and American films. His role as a pianist in an indie venture called 'Ivory' won him critical acclaim, so did his work in 'The Beast' with the late Patrick Swayze, but it was the immensely likeable character Ragnar Lothbrok in Michael Hirst's 2013 History channel TV series "Vikings" that won him stardom, and deservedly so.
The series was loosely based on the life and times of the Norsemen of the Middle Ages, and the first-rate background score and music, art direction, cinematography, production design, costumes, make up, and casting made it an epic TV creation, so did support players like Gustaf Skarsgård (Floki), George Blagden (Athelstan) , Nathan O'Toole and Alexander Ludwig (Bjorn junior and senior), Clive Standen (Rollo), Katheryn Winnick (Lagertha), and King Ecbert (Linus Roache) among others.
Above all, Fimmel steered the show on his broad shoulders across four seasons, being and becoming Ragnar with aplomb and subtly highlighting the ace warrior's ambition, aggression, vulnerabilities and insecurities, carnal escapades and cathartic contemplations, holistic approach and humane ways, besides his daredevilry and disillusionment running on paralllel tracks. It was his presence that helped us overlook the silly side - for instance Rollo's abrupt change of intent and character when he stays back at Paris, the outcome of an algebra and geometry problem of the screenplay.
We can understand the mute hatred for his brother born out of envy and insecurity, as also his intrinsic vulnerability but his transformation from a sensitive individual to a savage beast needed a better preface; implying it as the fallout of simply being in a distant land of people speaking a foreign language and practising a diametrically different culture and customs was a ludicrous idea.
Can we ever forget the magic he spun, especially in the poignant frames - farewell to daugther Gyda, homage to Athelstan, reaction to Rollo's betrayal, encounters wih King Ecbert, and of course the 'who wants to be king' outburst.
The farmer from Kattegat who said "Power is only given to those who are prepared to lower themselves to pick it up" is now part of the TV folklore for his peach of a performance which ideally should have loomed large on the silver screen which is sadly dominated by the terribly uninspired and yet hugely overrated Oppenheimers and Interstellars.