Act, Surf, Study: Samson Coulter Talks Making Tim Winton and Simon Baker’s "Breath"

"Oh, s***… I don’t actually know how to act."

'Surfer' and 'actor' are two dream careers, equally unattainable. For most.

But Samson Coulter, one year out of high school, is already trying to find a way to balance both.

"Surfing has always been my main goal," he tells Student Edge.

"That’s always been what I love doing and I still love doing it. I’m competing all through this year. I’m heading to Chile in May for a couple of competitions."

Before then, he just has the minor business of promoting Breath, the Tim Winton adaptation he stars in. It’s directed by The Mentalist himself, Simon Baker, who handpicked the amateur actor after specifically seeking someone who could handle themselves on a surfboard to play the coming-of-age tale’s fearful hero, Pikelet. The similarly inexperienced Ben Spence was cast as Pikelet’s troublemaking mate, Loonie.

"I’ve always been a bit too scared to ask [Baker why]," Samson laughed.

"I’ve just always accepted that he knows what he’s doing, and he’s obviously got a clear vision of what he wants to achieve; of how he wants the film to play out."

That meant Coulter, who already knew his way around the board but had never actually tread the boards, would be thrown into the deep end, learning through rehearsals and opposite established actors like Baker, Elizabeth Debicki, Richard Roxburgh and Rachael Blake.

(Baker plays Sando, Pike and Loonie’s Zen surfing master in 1970s Western Australia, while Debicki, armed with an American accent, is Sando's depressed, live-in girlfriend, Eva. Roxburgh and Blake star as Pike’s parents.)

"Simon would always tell me to stop acting, which didn’t really make any sense until the end of the shoot," he says.

"I think he just wanted me to be myself and he wanted the relationship between me and Loonie as natural as possible, because off camera we were just mucking around anyway. He didn’t want either of us to get too serious when the camera was rolling, because he wanted that same energy we had when we were off the set."

The journey to the role of Pikelet was an unlikely one for Coulter, who initially dismissed the idea when his mum and dad brought up the open audition callout at the dinner table.

"You know what it’s like with your parents," he laughed.

"It’s kind of funny, because I never sort of sat down and contemplated that I might actually get the part. The whole journey was just a bit of fun. Every time I would make it to another audition, me and mum and dad would laugh and say, 'At least we made it this far.'

"It wasn’t really until that last audition, I actually went, 'Oh, s***, I don’t know what I’m actually gonna do if I get the part, because I don’t actually know how to act.'"

(Pictured: Baker, Coulter and Spence.)

It took Samson a while to feel comfortable inside Pikelet’s… well, not shoes, exactly, because the character spends most of his time in the surf. Let’s say: wetsuit.

"Realistically, it probably wasn’t until the very end of the shoot that I was completely confident that I knew exactly who that person was and felt comfortable playing that role," he says.

"The thing that I found [hard] was maintaining the energy and finding those emotions within myself, because they were places I don’t usually go to.

"That’s all part of the fun, and that’s what’s rewarding when you do finish a scene and you go, 'Yeah, I think I felt the feelings that I should’ve.'"

His character, Pikelet, not only endures the life-risking, sometimes paralysing terror of facing heavy waves in shark-infested waters, but also the emotional torment of a disastrous, dangerous romantic relationship and the splintering of his friendship with Loonie.

"I sort of thought that actors had it pretty good there for a while, but I was getting home from work and just collapsing," he said.

And he did all this while still at school.

"I was in those last two terms of Year 11, so it was a bit of a setback [to my studies], but I tried to catch up as best I could and ended up fine," he explains.

Now, however, he worries about kids being forced to watch his performance over and over again, when Breath, the film, inevitably becomes a “related text” on the curriculum, where many of Winton's books and adaptations already sit.

"I’m just going, 'Oh, no,'" he laughs.

"I just remember, when I was in school, every text that we studied, you overanalyse so much to the point where you don’t enjoy the film anymore. So, I’m just going, 'Don’t do it.'"

Still, Samson enjoyed the acting experience enough to want another opportunity to try it all again, while also continuing to surf.

"I figured, why not give them both a crack and hopefully I can stumble along something similar in the future where I can try and do both in front of the camera," he says.

Breath arrives in Australian cinemas 3 May.

Photo: Roadshow