He really is a battler kinda like Wayno ...oh wait Wayno is...

He really is a battler kinda like Wayno ...oh wait Wayno is filthy rich ehehehehehe


The Castle put Caton back on the map,
The film came into Michael Caton's life at exactly the right time. The 1990s had not been kind to him until then.

"In the 12 months preceding that I'd really had to clean up my act," he says. "I'd gotten quite depressed, so I cleaned up my act. I didn't have a drink for 12 months, I had a bit of counselling because I was feeling so black. I was really in good order when I got the phone call from Jane (Kennedy, co-writer and casting director of The Castle), and I was so ready for The Castle.

"Prior to that I think my taxable income had been under $10,000. I was trying to pay off the flat and I'm doing painting jobs. It's very difficult when your face is well known to be able to get a job where you don't get hassled.

"It's very hard to work behind the counter of a shop or do any of those things, because people expect that you're going to be rich and famous. I was famous with the arse hanging out of my jeans."

Apart from painting, Caton did repair work and flipped burgers at the Colonial diner in Sydney.

"That was really hard on the psyche, because people just don't expect to see you there doing that," he says. "People don't mean to be cruel, but they can be very, very cruel. They don't realise the old psyche can get pretty fragile at times. 'What are you doing here?' 'Well, what I'm doing here, mate, is trying to pay the rent!' It's a double-edged sword, fame. It can open doors for you, and at the same time, when you're doing it tough, your fame doesn't do you much good."

Caton tried getting jobs that would minimise contact with people to avoid such encounters. Sometimes that was impossible.

Oh the irony

Life post-Castle included a short stint in irony jail - "You're in this huge hit and you're broke!" Caton recalls with a laugh. "It's so Australian!" - but his career gradually found its feet. And although The Castle only earned Caton the industry minimum plus a small bonus, "it was worth much more than money to me - I don't whinge about the money".

"It was the first time I'd ever had a lead," he says. "I'm always the supporting actor. I was always the little guy over here on the left who comes in, tries to upstage everybody and gets off again. When you never really get a chance to strut your stuff you start to doubt yourself, you peg yourself back.

"But with The Castle it reinforced my belief in myself again, because it gets chipped away doing second-rate television, and you're doing it not because you want to, but because you need a job. You wouldn't believe how many actors in Australia are in that position."

It comes as something of a shock to hear the man who embodied the working-class Aussie everyman in The Castle admit how one of those iconic catchphrases he so effortlessly recited was news to him.

"The funny thing was, being mainly a Queenslander and a New South Welshman, I'd never heard 'Suffer in your jocks'," he says.

"Noah Taylor came up to me and said, 'Mate, love the way you did 'Suffer in your jocks', and I said, 'Mate, I'd never heard the phrase before I said it!'

"And 'Get your hand off it, Darryl', which I loved, I'd never heard that