But while auditioning usually becomes less and less relevant to actors
with the kind of momentum that Fimmel now has, publicity skews the
other way. As Fimmel, the formerly reluctant underwear model, and
presently reluctant actor, becomes more prominent, studios, television
producers and magazine editors only get hungrier for his face and time.
“You just have to do it. But it doesn’t get easier,” he says. “You get
a bit more selective about what things you do. You try to do one thing
that gets seen, so you don’t have to do five.” Count GQ flattered.
“It’s always uncomfortable,” he adds, singling out head-scratchingly
incongruent product endorsements that have nothing to do with his
work. “That’s the worst thing, you have to promote stuff that you
don’t like at all. Yeah. You’re just lying the whole time, mate.”
The panacea for all this, according to Fimmel? Isolation. Hence
the ranch. Hence the commute.
About an hour north of LA, he has a plot of land, a few horses,
a motorbike. It’s a little more mountainous, but still comfortingly
similar to his childhood in the little town of Lockington, Victoria,
near Echuca. “I don’t love living in town. I’d rather be home.
I hopefully won’t be doing it for too much longer. I just want
to make a bit of money and get home.”
This becomes a recurring motif of our conversation – Fimmel
would, and will, go back to Victoria as soon as his career allows it.
He says this over and over, without a hint of disingenuousness.
“Shit mate, if I had the money, I’d have been home two years ago.
You need a fair bit of money now to get a big farm in Australia – it’s
so expensive. Unbelievably expensive. I’d love to be back – but I’ll
be here for a few more years.”
With the conversation becoming more and more concise, it’s
a worthy time to take stock of Travis Fimmel, the man.
With gentle probing, he says this much – he’s not afraid of being
typecast. He loves his TV crew. He despises social media – those
around him learned to stop asking “long ago” if he’d start using it
(shout-out to his 700k Instagram followers: that’s not him posting).
The last two things to deeply frustrate him were the tools missing from
his woodwork shed, and the fact that his dog refuses to come to him
when called (“embarrasses me in front of friends, every time”). He’s
still maddeningly bashful about his modelling past (“I just did that
modelling thing to get a visa over here. It’s really embarrassing mate,
but what am I gonna do – not get a visa and make money?”)
One thing Fimmel makes unmistakably clear is his current passion:
renovating his ranch, solo.
“I’m fixing it all up. The shed. Renovating the house. Putting up
fences,” he says. He started renovating the house itself a while back.
“I’m down to doing exterior stuff – the trees, building stuff on the deck.”
When we ask what he enjoys so much about it, Fimmel
inadvertently stumbles into his real mission; his actual raison d’être.
You know, the kind of thing that keeps a reluctant actor acting.
“I enjoy doing that stuff,” he says, stomping around the grounds,
bathed in mid-afternoon sun. “I enjoy seeing nothing there, doing it,
then seeing something that wasn’t there before.” nJacket, $6855, (sold
as part of a tuxedo), as part of a tuxedo),
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ZegnaZegna; jeans, $1350, by ; jeans, $1350, by
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168 GQ.COM.AU MEN OF THE YEAR 2017