Hollywood export: Why I will always call Australia home

He may have made it big with a blockbuster film which has an exclusively LGBTIQ+ cast, but one Aussie star is determined that Down Under will always be home.

AFTER several years based overseas, top Aussie export to Hollywood Keiynan Lonsdale is basing himself at home.

Lonsdale, 30, who grew up in Sydney’s western suburb of St Marys, intends to spend at least 50 per cent of his time in Australia and the rest working wherever his acting takes him.

Pictured in Darlinghurst is Prime Video’s My Fake Boyfriend actor Keiynan Lonsdale. Picture: Tim Hunter.

“There is a certain level of random mix of life that only makes sense here for me,” Lonsdale told Confidential. “I am an adventurer and I am so curious so I always love to go out and learn and ingest and take things in, create something, come home and then reap the benefits in the sense of seeing my family happy or being able to help if I can.”

Lonsdale has had an unconventional rise to fame. He started as a kid performer, singing and dancing, and went on to star in Dance Academy before landing a gig as a VJ on MTV.

Lonsdale, who is also a successful singer, scored his first Hollywood job as Uriah in the Divergent movies and subsequently starred in films The Finest Hours, Love, Simon and Work It. On TV, he was Wally West on CW’s The Flash.

My Fake Boyfriend

Actor Keiynan Lonsdale is in Prime Video’s My Fake Boyfriend. Picture: Tim Hunter.

His latest movie is a Prime Video queer rom-com called My Fake Boyfriend that is released June 10 and also stars Sarah Hyland and Dylan Sprouse.

Social media, and specifically the idea around what is real and what isn’t, is a theme of the movie.

“You can create worlds on social media and the whole world can get engaged in that,” Lonsdale explained. “It can change your personal world even if you’ve created something that is completely not real.”

Meanwhile, in another queer film release out of Hollywood is upcoming comedy, Bros.

Straight, gay, young and old, comedian Billy Eichner expects a broad audience will take to the film.

With industry heavyweights Judd Apatow and Nicholas Stoller producing alongside Eichner, Bros is the first major studio film to be cast entirely with LGBTIQ+ actors.

While not released in cinemas until October, the first look trailer created a lot of buzz online when it was released this month.

“It’s the same audience for any great comedy,” Eichner tells Insider.

“It’s the same audience that watched Bridesmaids. It’s the same audience that watched Dirty Dancing and Pretty Woman or the same that watches When Harry Met Sally or Borat or anything that is smart and funny.

Comedian Billy Eichner in Hollywood film, Bros. Picture: Universal Pictures

Obviously, I would imagine a particular curiosity among LGBTIQ people only because we have got so few movies like this. I’m not going to burden myself with what straight people will and won’t relate to, I just wanted to make a great movie.”

The romantic comedy stars Eichner in the lead as Bobby Lieber and Luke Macfarlane as love interest, Aaron.

Bros, directed by Nicholas Stoller.

Diversity in all its forms – gender, sexuality, skin colour, heritage – is a hot-button issue in Hollywood with major studios under pressure to reflect society more accurately.

“There has been such an imbalance in Hollywood in terms of the opportunities that openly LGBTIQ actors and actresses and trans actors and non-binary actors get,” Eichner says.

“Everyone applauds you for coming out of the closet and then all of a sudden your opportunities start to narrow for the same thing they are applauding you for. So many of the great gay roles, especially in high-profile movies, end up going to straight actors.

Bros, directed by Nicholas Stoller.

Director Nicholas Stoller and Luke Macfarlane on the set of Bros. Picture: Universal

“They want to prove they are great actors and show everyone their range and that they are courageous and that they are willing to play gay roles and win awards and all of that. Some of those performances have been fantastic, no one is arguing with that.

But in terms of equal opportunity, we don’t get those same opportunities even to play characters from our own community so this was an opportunity flip the script on that and show the world that we can entirely populate the cast of a mainstream major studio movie and that it would still work.

We need to restore the opportunities for everyone so that we are all playing each other.”

Eichner started in comedy more than two decades ago and has “always been an openly gay performer”. He is best known for his work in Difficult People, Billy On The Street and The Lion King.

“No one is saying that only straight people should play straight characters and only gay people should play gay characters because that is not art and that is not creativity.

Bros, directed by Nicholas Stoller.

“However, we need equal opportunity. Sean Penn played (gay politician) Harvey Milk and two straight guys starred in Brokeback Mountain. When HBO made the movie version of Angels in America, which is a seminal work about queer people, there was not a single openly gay man in the cast. That is shocking.”

Some might see Bros as a game changer in the same way Crazy Rich Asians was for representation of Asians in Hollywood film.

Eichner though doesn’t feel comparisons are helpful.

“Marginalised people get so few mainstream works about themselves made by major studios so in a way I think it is unfair to pit the other rom-com about a marginalised group of people against the most recent rom-com about a marginalised group of people,” he explains.

“They are very different movies. I didn’t want to paint the characters in broad strokes. We have had a lot of sitcomy gay characters over the years, who have been very entertaining sometimes but very two dimensional and that is not what I wanted here.”

* My Fake Boyfriend is released Friday, June 10, on Prime Video while Bros will be out later in the year.