CANBERRA actor Rob Shiells may look as if he’s living the life in Los Angeles, but he’s got one big message for aspiring actors – you have to work hard.

For while the four younger housemates with whom he crams into a three-bedroom LA apartment, are waiting for the jobs to come in, he’s out day after day auditioning, doing screen tests and making connections — they regard him as a bit of a conch, but they do so admiringly.

It’s all paid off, with a small, featured-extra role in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans”, due out next year, and while because of a non-disclosure agreement he can’t say more than that he “got to meet him a couple of times, he’s a really amazing director”, it’s led to more work. He tells me confidently: “I’ve got some fires over here that are about to burn.” 

Shiells was born in Ballarat, but moved to Isabella Plains with his family aged one, so can rightly consider himself a proper Canberran. Though doing drama at Trinity Christian School, he says, “I never thought I’d be an actor, ever”.

With school teacher parents, he was supposed to go on to an education degree, but instead, enrolled in consecutive diplomas at Canberra Academy of Dramatic Art, now Perform Australia.

In 2017, Canberra dancer Ethan Hart was heading for the ARTS conference in California and needed an actor-presenter. Shiells won the spot and soon found himself performing in front of 400 people in LA. Better still, the New York Film Academy offered him a scholarship to study at its Los Angeles campus. 

But he wasn’t sure he could afford to live in LA, so deferred, returned to Canberra and worked four jobs to save up, even becoming the “Bloody Good Mattresses” facts man on TV.

Enter Kirsty Budding, of Budding Theatre, for whom Shiells played Mr Bingley in “Pride and Prejudice” and taught four classes a week.

In 2019 he snapped his tibia and was patched up with metal, but went on stage as Young Scrooge in Budding Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol Goes Horribly, Terribly Wrong” with Christmas lights around his moon boots. He also got his first directing gig for Budding Theatre’s “Cheeky Cabaret.”

Still hobbling, Shiells moved to LA in January, 2020, just before covid struck, completing his one-year Acting for Film course at NYFA, much of it on Zoom, a good thing because it taught him how to react in a more subtle way. 

“I was always too energetic and NYFA helped me learn a more subtle approach,” he says.

While studying, he scored the stage role of the Fire Chief in Ionesco’s seminal play “The Bald Prima Donna” after someone dropped out and he still nurtures a dream to perform live on Broadway. 

By now some Aussie friends were flying home, but he decided to stay and, on graduating, got a role in the NYC-based Amazon Prime Series “Streets & Avenues”, followed by the same part in the feature, “There’s No Other One” – “low budget, but I loved the chance to see New York City,” he says.

After first auditioning with an American accent, he discovered that an Aussie accent was far more enticing to directors, who were prepared to adapt the roles. Then he got an audition for a TV “Mystical” series,  involving demons and vampires, which is in negotiation.

In Los Angeles he came to realise that there is union work and non-union work, but now he’s eligible to join the American actors’ union, which will make a big difference and he’s also signed with a manager. Being fully vaccinated helps, too.

Shiells’ long-term objective is to live comfortably from his acting and at almost 25 he tells me, “I’m getting there, maybe next year I can”.

He’s a fan of Hugh Jackman, who has succeeded on screen and stage, but his all-time favourite actor is Heath Ledger. 

But first he needs to get as much work in the US as he can, “to prove that I’m an expert in my field”. 

Underlying it all is his wish to show that you can come from a town like Canberra and do something really creative – ”It would be a dream for me to come back and perform on stage at the Canberra Theatre,” he says.