Breakers: profiles


Simon

Simon Munro…

Simon is a trained classical ballet and contemporary dancer, and has been dancing now for around nine years, six of those as a professional. He also does acrobatics and was part of the Olympic closing ceremony in Atlanta in 1996. Just before Breakers, he has been working with the Australian Ballet for six months.

The weekend before his first day in front of the Breakers cameras, however, Simon was hit by car and was told he wouldn't be able to dance for another six months. Up until then, Simon was wrestling with the choice between his two careers: dancing and acting. "It pushed me to do the acting," say Simon. "It was a hard choice for me to make but because I'd snapped ligaments in my leg, I couldn't dance, anyway."

With his other injuries including four stitches on his eye and grazes to his head, they had to be written into the Breakers script, which made Simon feel even more welcome.

"Now I'm here, I'm loving it," he says. "Every day is so different. In dance, you tell your story through movement. Now I've got the chance to get up and speak, which is very exciting.

"Vince is a challenge too because he turns out to give the audience a lot of surprises: he is not as he seems. It's great, because I didn't want to end up in something that would put me in a box forever."

Simon's acting portfolio includes roles in the TV series Police Rescue and Seven Deadly Sins, with theatre productions including A Midsummer Night's Dream.

…as Vince Donnelly

Vince, 15, first enters Breakers as a new student at BMS. He is good-looking and keen, with Paul and Monique delighted to sign him up. Vince, however, is less than happy to discover that his school mate Danny is the son of BMS's part-owner Paul. Vince swears Danny to secrecy, telling him that he is only there because his mother forces him to go and that he fears abuse and humiliation from the guys at school.

But as Vince and Danny's friendship grows, we discover he has not been telling the truth about his mother's part in this, and is covering up a much bigger question that both he and Danny will find confronting, to say the least.