Henderson a Hollywood hottie - and a real sweetie too

Kiwi actor Martin Henderson is in New Zealand to promote his new movie Little Fish. Picture / Richard Robinson

For artistic reasons, the photographer would like us to sit outside. It is blowing a gale so presumably he has the wind-swept look in mind. This will prove a good early test of whether Martin Henderson has turned into one of those precious Hollywood types. I ask whether he'd mind because, "Your hair might get mucked up". "Too late," he says, grinning.

My, what white teeth he has, I think. And, "what happened to that pretty, fresh-faced lad some of us (ahem) may have had a crush on when he was on Shortland Street all those years ago?"

He's got a scraggly beard and he's right about the hair. It looks - in the way of expensive haircuts designed to make the wearer look nonchalant about said expensive haircut - already wind-tossed.

I ask if he'd like a drink and he says he'll have a scotch: "A bottle". It is 10.30am and he is, ha ha, just joking.

But it is quite a good joke because when he was that pretty, fresh-faced lad it is on the cards he would have had a drink. And now that he looks like a bum, albeit a good-looking bum, he doesn't drink. He gave it up four years ago along with the fags.

This is a shame because, I remind him, back when he was playing Stuart Neilson in the early '90s, he bludged a fag from me one day on the set of Shortland Street. He said he'd pay me back and never did. He wants to know whether I still smoke, and "what brand?" This, I think, is because he's tossing up whether he'd like to bludge another one. The next day a courier arrives with a packet of my brand of fags and a note saying: "Ciggie returned - with interest added".

Talk about knowing the way to a hack's heart. How clever of him, and how sweet. I already liked him very much, quite aside, of course, from the fact that he is, as the publicist said a "hottie". But after the package I overheard a colleague say from the other side of the room, "Is she still going on about Martin bloody Henderson?"

Well, yes, I was. And now I'm going to go on about him for quite a lot longer.

Before I met him this time, I read some of those bland interviews Hollywood stars do for publicity departments. These make him, and everyone who does such things, sound like crashing bores, going on about the "work" and so on.

But what made me think he might turn out to be awful was a story about how he had joined, or taken up, or whatever it is you do, the Kabbalah. Towards the end of our hour - I've long ago decided he's not remotely awful - I ask about it. He laughs and says "This is getting tabloid now, isn't it? This is so Women's Weekly. Umm, no. I'm not a Kabbalah." And then, "actually, I just saw Guy Ritchie's opted out. Much to Madonna's annoyance ... This is tabloidy, isn't it?"

Anyway, he did wear that red string for a while because, he says, a little wearily, he was dating "someone who was part Jewish ... and I was interested in her spirituality. I mean, I'm very open-minded ... I'm not religious at all but I think there are many paths so I'm always open to someone else's interpretation and hers was quite an impassioned one." Well, he is an actor and actors do tend to talk like that about "paths" and so on.

He has not only taken on the accent but the Hollywood way of talking about acting. Some New Zealand actors do this too, but usually the not very good ones.

He's too bright to persevere with such tosh. I'm sure he'll grow out of it.

I thought I should ask whether he was in a relationship and he says, "Yeah" and I say "To an actor?" "Aah, yeah." And her name is? He gives me a bit of a pissed-off look and says, "I don't want to talk about that shit". Oh, I say, how Hollywood. "I just don't," he says. "It's just so irrelevant, isn't it? You don't really care. What do you care?" Which is a very good response, and honest too, and I like him all the more for it. He doesn't sulk about it, either.

Or about my insistence on referring to him, at 31, as "the youngish actor". "Thank you," he says. "The once young and virile Martin Henderson."

We're meant to be talking about his new film, Little Fish, in which he plays Ray, a small-time drug dealer who is a loser and an amputee. As soon as he was told Cate Blanchett was in it, he knew he wanted to be too. He's very good in it, which is a relief, because he's had some stinker reviews in the past. "I've had a couple, yeah. I try not to read them in the first place because I feel like it's all kind of relative. I've had things written about me that are so glowing, that I'm so great. Then I've had things written about me that are really horrible and I think the truth lies in the middle. So there's not too much point in getting attached to either opinion."

So we try to talk about acting for a while and he talks about the self-doubt that actors are riddled with, and how it's a wonder "any movie ever gets completed without a bunch of nervous breakdowns and severed relationships". And, earlier, about how "You're given an opportunity to explore parts of yourself that Fate didn't actually deal you" and how "In the last few years I've been a lot more conscious and self-examining".

I ask him what he's like to work with, whether he's nice or difficult, and he says I'll have to ask some directors. "Well, as I can't," I say, "and as you're so into self-examination you can tell me." "Right," he says, "I'm starting to sound like a right wanker."

"Actually," I say a bit later, "it's hard to talk about acting without sounding like a wanker, isn't it?" He says, "Yeah" and then, "Are you saying I'm sounding like a wanker? You're right. You're right. I mean, it's a weird thing and it's all about you so, yeah, it is strange. I try not to think about it too much."

When he was in Shortland Street, for three years from the age of 17, he got fed up with being told he was a teen heart-throb. He got grumpy and "It made me really restless and rebellious". He says he was "pretty self-destructive in those times. I didn't like the labels that were put on me." It was the enforced intimacy of being in living rooms five nights a week that got to him. "I hated it. Everywhere I went people sort of knowing who I was."

So you'd think he might be grumpy still about being forever associated with the soap here at home. But he isn't at all. "That's all right," he says, soothingly, while I'm banging on about it. "I honestly don't mind. There's something really sweet about that. There's something very comforting about it. No matter what you do or who you work with or what you achieve outside of that, that's what New Zealanders identify you as because that's theirs. It's home. Somehow there's something nice about it."

See what a sweetie he is? And, truly, I would have said that even if he hadn't sent the fags.