Sullivan Stapleton does something completely new in Cut Snake, a riveting crime drama from Tony Ayres. He pashes a man.

"He was hilarious," says Ayres of his star, who is fast becoming one of the hottest properties in Australian acting. "He was walking around the set saying, 'I'm gay for pay, I'm gay for pay'.

"He's never kissed a bloke before," the director adds, "though he did tell me a few have tried."

You might question the judgment of those would-be paramours, but not their bravery. Stapleton is, as Ayres puts it, "a big butch guy" who has made a name for himself as something of a beefcake action hero in the swords-and-sandals sequel 300: Rise of an Empire and the TV series Strike Back, in which he divides his time about evenly between blowing away bad guys and bedding gorgeous women.

He was also one of the criminal Cody clan in Animal Kingdom, which has turned out to be perhaps the single most effective introduction to Hollywood imaginable for a whole generation of Australian filmmaking talent (Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Jacki Weaver and director David Michod among them).

He's been a member of Equity since the age of 10, when he got his card after making a biscuit commercial; he's been acting since the age of 14, when he took the advice of the director of a short film to not bother with drama school, but to just keep doing it.

"Of course any teenager hearing 'skip school', it was, 'Yeah, good, I'll take that advice'. So I did," Stapleton, who is now 38, said  on the Cut Snake set in a break during filming.

"I never did any drama school; I tried to finish [high] school but I kept getting jobs." He was rarely the leading man, though. "I was always the crim or the troubled youth. Now I'm the troubled adult."

In Cut Snake, that's an understatement.

His Pommie is a recently released jailbird with a mean streak a mile wide. As soon as he gets back into civvies, he's on the hunt for his old cellmate Sparra (Alex Russell). He wants to drag Sparra back into a life of crime – but he's also interested in rekindling the special something they had on the inside.

But Sparra has moved on. He's about to get married and is busy playing house with Paula (Jessica de Gouw) in the run-down property her father has set them up in. Tensions ensue.

Much of the film was shot in a real house, high up a hill overlooking a beautiful patch of forest near Warrandyte, north-east of Melbourne, Stapleton's home town.

Coming back to make the film was an absolute treat, he says. "I woke up with kookaburras and kangaroos, literally. Outside my trailer, two kangaroos started boxing on. It's a really great start to the day."

He'd long wanted to work with Ayres – the director of Home Song Stories and the creative force behind The Slap and Nowhere Boys – and he loved the script, which has been kicking around since 2003 and is loosely based on the infamous Whiskey Au Go Go fire in Brisbane in 1973, in which 15 people died when a nightclub was firebombed. But there were some unexpected bonuses to working at home, too.

"I've worked with a lot of these guys as a crew member," Stapleton says. "To come home and work with them, to speak in my own accent and to wear some f---ing awesome outfits…"

That's the thing about Stapleton: he's grateful for the momentum his career has recently gained, but he is mindful that it's a business of ups and downs and it pays to remember where you've come from.

In 2013, the LA-based Australians in Film gave him its Breakthrough Award – albeit shared with Jacki Weaver. He was honoured but equally amused.

"I finally broke through after 26 years," he says, chuckling. "But I did beat Jacki at least – she took about 50 years."

In the lean times between roles, Stapleton worked as a grip (the guys who set up the camera rigs) and as a carpenter. "It's hard work," he says, but he acknowledges that some of what is clicking with audiences and filmmakers may be the fact that he's got a rough edge that sets him apart from the typical pretty-boy actor.

"I think some of the roles I've been lucky enough to get, they have a bit of that masculinity," he says. "I guess that is the path my career has gone, to play those characters that have emotional layers, the vulnerability, yet are aggressive. They're great roles to play."

At any rate, it's been a while since he had to pick up the tools and, with a major role in the US series Blindspot (which is coming to Seven soon, after a massive debut in the US this week) it looks as though  he won't have to get his hands dirty any time soon.

"I was just saying to the boys today I miss it," he says.

Yes, but you don't get a trailer when you're a grip do you?

"No," he counters. "But you do get a truck."

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