Game of Thrones star recalls days as a Sydney dancer, stripper and street performer

WHICH Game of Thrones star spent seven years as a Sydney street performer and stripper before finding fame on the hit show?

Game of Thrones star a stripper

WHILE the sex and nudity will again no doubt headline reviews of Game of Thrones, one newbie actor to Season 5 is pretty comfortable with it, after all he learned about getting his kit off as a male stripper in Sydney.

The imposing 6’6 tall British actor Deobia Oparei is a well known stage and screen actor in the UK with bit roles dating back to Alien 3 in 1992 and culminating in blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean in 2011.

But unknown to many was he got his confidence in acting as a professional male stripper and drag queen in Sydney in the mid 1990s where he lived for seven years.

Oparei — who takes the role as Areo Hotah, captain of Prince Doran Martell’s guards in the new season — initially blanked when asked about his striptease days but then laughed and admitted he didn’t mind “getting out my booty”.

The `Witchdoctor’ ... Indira Varma as Ellaria Sand and Deobia Opaeri as Areo Hotah. Picture: Supplied.

“I did everything, I use to be a drag queen, I use to be a stripper,” he told News Corp Australia.

“I am an actor and I started here (in the UK) and I was working at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the national theatre and I was like 22 years old and I felt like I had started when I was 16 or 17 acting and I hadn’t seen, I hadn’t lived, I hadn’t seen anything of life. I went on tour to Sydney with a theatre company and I thought I want to live here and I want to stop acting and I want to learn to dance and I want to learn to become a writer to become a dancer and become a stripper, I want to do all the things, I thought I want to do all the things I couldn’t do.

“So I was 22 I got to Sydney and I became all of those things. And I had these seven years where I lived this incredible maverick lifestyle of being a street performer, I use to have this character called ‘The Witchdoctor’ that was based at The Rocks in Sydney where I would dance half naked and then I got invited to do hens nights and whatever and a stripper. I just thought if I want to be an actor, how could I be an actor and not have experienced different parts of life, experience what it’s like to live so I spent seven years doing all these different kinds of jobs.”

When asked why he gave that life up, he laughed and replied “why do you think I have?”

More blood, more sex, more nudity. Game of Thrones Season 5, Sunday TV Guide, today