Heart of the Nation: Springbok National Parl 4213

KAI Pantano was having a rotten day. It was "a girl thing", he says - someone he'd been dating and was really keen on had broken up with him.

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KAI Pantano was having a rotten day. It was "a girl thing", he says - someone he'd been dating and was really keen on had broken up with him.

He knew what would take his mind off the pain: hooking up with his best mate, photographer Lachlan Gardiner, and going bush. It had been the default setting for their friendship since they were young boys growing up near Nambour; they'd spent countless hours exploring creeks and forests, scaling cliffs, jumping in waterholes. So they drove out to Springbrook National Park in the Gold Coast hinterland and went off-track through the wilderness. Pantano is pictured standing in a sudden downpour - a "cleansing moment", he says, after all the emotional turmoil he'd been going through.

The 26-year-old has ambitions to be a film star. It took root a few years ago when he was in Wellington, New Zealand, and heard that James Cameron was in town shooting a movie called Avatar. Pantano rocked up on set and they gave him a fortnight's work as an extra. He's in three battle scenes, playing one of the human soldiers, but the galling thing is they were all wearing face masks so he can't pinpoint himself on screen. He has since had other extra roles - notably as a "guard/drunk man" in The Great Gatsby - and is about to finish a one-year acting course at the New York Film Academy on the Gold Coast.

A vegetarian since birth, he's paid the bills by working as a landscaper and unloading lorries at Myer, which half explains his ripped torso; he has also been pumping iron six times a week, to help his professional prospects. He's changed his name too. He was christened Imran, after Imran Khan, but started going by Kai - "a better ring to it" - three years ago, which has caused a bit of confusion. Why was he named after the Pakistani cricketer anyway? That, at least, is simple. "Dad was watching the Test match on telly while I was being born," he says.