Hard work is paying off for former Perth concreter and Dancing With The Stars champ Johnny Ruffo with a recurring role on Home And Away, as Kerry Harvey reports.
Johnny Ruffo, who made his debut on Home And Away on April 1, is no fool.
Joining the cast of Australia’s most popular soap might be the former Perth concreter’s first foray into acting, but he appears to have nailed it, turning his 16-episode guest stint as womanising larrikin Chris Harrington into a permanent recurring role.
“Chris is coming back very soon,” says the 25 year old who became a household name in Australia after finishing third in the 2011 series of The X Factor.
Johnny cemented his position as one of the country’s rising stars by then going on to win last year’s Dancing With The Stars.
Although he is keeping mum on just how and why Chris returns to Summer Bay, he is more than happy to talk about his apparently charmed career.
The secret behind his success, he reveals, is hard work.
“I love working hard,” Ruffo says. “I get it from Mum and Dad. I think the work ethic is something you can’t really teach people. They either have it or they don’t. If people are prepared to work hard at what they do they’ll be successful.”
Ruffo says he is no overnight success. After deciding at 10 that he wanted to be a performer, he studied drama at school for five years and earned a place at the highly regarded Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts.
“I constantly say to people that X Factor, Australia’s Got Talent, The Voice, all these reality shows don’t give you a career; they just offer you a platform. It’s what you do with it that changes things,” he says.
“If you’re going to sit there and wait for people to come to you and offer you this that and the other, then you’re not going to get anywhere.
