Paul Mercurio - hot new sensation from Down Under? Australian superstar and sex symbol? The next Mel Gibson?
"Um, I don't mind if they say that," the Australian dancer-actor says with a smile. "I certainly don't mind if they say that 'cause that means I'll work, I would hope."Chances for future employment look pretty good for Mercurio, the 30-year-old star of the breakthrough hit movie, "Strictly Ball-room."
Made for just $2 million, the goofy melodrama was the biggest thing in Australia since "`Crocodile' Dundee." In 10 weeks of limited release here, the film has earned $6.4 million, fueled in large part by Mercurio's smoldering sex appeal. It already has earned $18 million in Australia.
Miramax opened "Strictly Ballroom" in more U.S. cities in April.
And Mercurio is already plotting to ride the wave of publicity surrounding the film across the Pacific to Hollywood.
"I'm very keen to do more films," he said during a recent interview, lounging barefoot in a Manhattan hotel room. "I've been given a fantastic opportunity and I've love to keep it going."
On the surface, he seems to have all the right stuff.
With his piercing eyes, high cheekbones and Pepsodent smile, Mercurio resembles a young Tra-volta (before the extra weight) or Schwarzenegger (before he really pumped up). His Mediterranean roots (a Sicilian grandfather) show in his dark coloring.
He's also used to the spotlight. A dancer and choreographer with the Sydney Dance Company for more than a decade, Mercurio formed his own contemporary dance theater group last year, the Australian Choreographic Ensemble.
He won generally good reviews for his intensity and earnestness as Scott Hastings, the would-be ballroom dance champion who defies tradition to dance his own steps in "Strictly Ballroom."
Of course, Mercurio concedes, the character was not that much of a stretch.
The son of a veteran character actor, Mercurio started dance training in Perth when he was 9. "I used to get a hard time a lot," he says. "I didn't go out and shop for a year because the local gang wanted to beat me up 'cause I did ballet."
He left school to take a full-time scholarship with the Western Australian Ballet Company. A year later, he was accepted into the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne but soon was chafing at the constraints the school imposed.
"The mentality of classical ballet is not my cup of tea," he says. "They thought I was a rebel."
He quit after a year, joined the Sydney company in 1982 "and took off really from there."
In 1989, director Baz Luhrmann approached Mercurio after seeing him dance and asked him to contribute some choreography to "Strictly Ballroom," then in the planning stages.
"A year later he rang me up and said, `I've got some money now and I'd actually like you to play the part,"' Mercurio says. After a few more auditions to persuade the producers he wasn't too old, Mer-curio got the job.
Despite his lack of formal training, Mercurio insists he had no problems calling forth the actor inside him.
"I think that's why I was a principal dancer and why I'd get acclaim for what I did," he says. "Not because I was a good dancer. That's part of it. But because I also acted. So you put the two together and it becomes a complete performance."
Married with two young children, Mercurio says what he'd most like now is a break to spend time with his family.
His wife, Andrea, is a little perturbed by all that accompanies his new sex symbol status. "She doesn't like it that much, especially some of the letters I get," he says.
Mercurio is sorting through several scripts for his next film - as well as working on his own screenplay, "a suspense-comedy-thriller-contemporary dance-thing." He's thinking of taking voice lessons to lose his Aussie accent and singing lessons to improve his tone.
And while he professes to be committed only to producing good art, he talks about planning his next move with the savvy of a Hollywood veteran.
"I was thinking about doing a film about a drag queen," he says. "It was a good script, and it was a good story, but it was the film I should do for my fourth or fifth film, not my second, you know?
"If I hit someone full on in a second film with something that I think is full of value but is just too much of a change for an audience to be able to accept, then it's not going to work. And I'm very interested in making it work."