Aden Young
Canadian-Australian Actor
Date of Birth | : | 30 Nov, 1971 |
Place of Birth | : | Toronto, Canada |
Profession | : | Australian Actor, Canadian Actor |
Nationality | : | Canadian, Australian |
Aden Young is a Canadian-Australian actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Daniel Holden in the SundanceTV drama Rectify, for which he was twice nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series. He has appeared in American, Canadian and Australian productions.
Early Life
Young was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His father Chip Young, an American born in Missouri, was a well-known CBC broadcaster and children's book author, as well as composer of Canadian classic 'Honky The Christmas Goose', while his mother is a nurse from Newcastle, Australia. His family left Toronto for Australia in 1981. Young attended Galston High and Australian Theatre For Young People as a teenager.
Personal Life
Young has two sons, Dutch (born 2007) and Chester (born 2011), with his longtime partner, Australian singer-songwriter-musician-actress Loene Carmen. They married in Zebulon, Georgia while filming season 2 of Rectify in 2014. A portrait of Young by artist James Powditch was a 2008 Archibald Prize finalist. Young also appears in Powditch's 2012 work Berserk Warriors.
Career
Handsome Australian actor Aden Young was identified as a hot property early in his career, but shied away from roles that would earn him greater fame, instead opting for parts in smaller Australian films. Brown-haired, with pleasant features and a suggestive mischief in his eyes, Young's charisma and charm shone through his portrayals and gave even the nastiest of characters a compelling dimensionality, rendering them almost likable. The young actor made his big screen debut co-starring as a 17th Century French carpenter boy working as translator and guide to a Jesuit missionary priest in the Canadian wilderness in Bruce Beresford's "Black Robe" (1991). This debut performance exhibited his intuitive approach to acting, and garnered notice and acclaim. The following year, he was featured in the Australian production "Over the Hill," a movie chronicling the cross-country travels of a freewheeling grandmother.
Young's next project was the more mainstream action thriller "Sniper" (1993), co-starring alongside American actors Tom Berenger, Billy Zane and J T Walsh. That same year he amassed credits with featured roles in the Australian films "Love in Limbo," "Broken Highway," and "Shotgun Wedding," which gained him experience and domestic recognition if not worldwide fame. In 1994, he starred in the odd drama "Exile," playing a man sentenced to an isolated island after being convicted of stealing sheep. There he is joined by a young woman with whom he falls in love and awaits a child, only to be found out and persecuted. That same year the love quadrangle drama "Metal Skin" was released to raves in Australia (although its US release was held up until 1999).1996 saw the actor turn in several notable performances, including his acclaimed turn in "River Street" as an ambitious and somewhat ruthless real estate executive. Young took a supporting role in the touching comedy "Cosi," playing the spiteful friend of an aspiring theater director ("Metal Skin" co-star Ben Mendelsohn) hired to steer a production of Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" in a mental hospital. Young's role was relatively small but his appealing portrayal of a two-faced pal was among the most memorable in the film. He then took the lead in "Hotel de Love," starring as Rick Dunne, the jaded manager of an especially tacky Australian honeymoon hotel who becomes reacquainted with a former lover (Saffron Burrows). Young went on to co-star in the period drama "Cousin Bette" (1998), a strangely comedic adaptation of Honore de Balzac's classic novel. As Wencenslas, the down-on-his-luck sculptor rescued by Jessica Lange's spinster title character, he serves at the catalyst of Bette's dramatic rage. After being redeemed by Bette (who fancies that he should become her lover), Wencenslas becomes quite the playboy, falling in love with the young and privileged Hortense Hulot (a member of Bette's own family), and taking up with courtesan Jenny, Bette's only friend. That same year he again tackled an adaptation of a literary classic, this time as star of "Under Heaven," a modern reworking of Henry James' "The Wings of the Dove." Co-starring Joely Richardson and Molly Parker, the film was a capable retelling, served well by Young's consistently multidimensional portrayals of men of ambiguous morality.
Quotes
Total 11 Quotes
My two kids take a lot of my focus, which I'm grateful for.
You mortgage yourself sometimes. You know what you want to do, then you balance it against paying the rent.
The world isn't what you think it is.
On the last day of every character I've ever played, I lay the clothes out on the floor with the shoes and socks, so that it looks like the character has literally vanished. That's the way you have to leave them.
It's easy to actually get the ink on the page, but somehow I've gotta find a way to play this. And I have to find a way to emotionally survive playing this.
A series is a big deal, and there are a lot of people out there writing stuff that don't know what art is.
An actor always wants to sink his teeth into something.
I've never bought a boxed set DVD or anything like that.
As an actor, often you're stuck with these scenes in which a great period of time is in between them - for example, if you do a biopic, it might be a year, it might be a decade, you never know.
I'm only the messenger.