Orange man Mark Furze talks Home and Away and Stonelove music career

An Orange man born and bred, Mr Furze has opened up about the highs and lows of a world he described as "not anywhere near as glamourous as people would think."

The 36-year-old's love affair with acting began when he was a child and he would watch his father - retired Orange dentist Dr Edward Furze - at the Orange Theatre Company.

"When I was old enough I thought it would be pretty cool to try it out as well," Mr Furze said.

"The first thing I did was Oliver. I was about ten and dad was in that as well and that's what started the acting thing.

"I guess I hadn't realised that you could really make a career out of it at that point, but it's a fun thing to do. You get a real sense of family when everybody is working together to create a show."

Four years would go by where Mr Furze would take up any and all roles he could. But it was one particular high school play which set him on a course that would change his life.

"I was doing a production and the mother of a casting director for a television show called Outriders saw this high school show and told her daughter there were a couple of kids that had some promise," Mr Furze said.

"They invited me and another girl to audition for Outriders and they liked me. That's just a miracle, it's fate."

The teenager would feature in all 26 episodes of the 2001 show. This appearance also landed him an agent, which in a few years time, would prove crucial to the next stage of his career as Mr Furze, as a 17-year-old, auditioned for a part in Home and Away.

"I remember getting the audition and thinking this was a big thing," he said.

"I got the part as a guest role, so I did that for about six months and I don't think they intended to, but after doing it for six months, they wrote me in as a regular and offered me a regular role."

There was one problem though.

"I was doing my HSC so I asked if I could take six months to do my school and start as a regular after that," Mr Furze added.

"It was pretty wild. The day after I finished my HSC exams I moved to Sydney to start full time on Home and Away which was a real shock."

So for the next four years and 372 episodes, Mr Furze would also be known as Ric Dalby on the iconic Australian soap opera.

"Home and Away was a wonderful experience, but it was hard work," he added.

"They shoot so fast. I remember one day I shot 17 scenes, where if you do a movie, they'll shoot one, maybe two scenes a day. It's about the equivalent of an episode a day, so it's a brutal training scene in that sense."

But all good things must come to an end and that was the case for Mr Furze as his character would make his last appearance on Home and Away in 2008.

This left the Orange man at a crossroads.

"It's not anywhere near as glamourous as people would think because they don't see the in-between parts," he said.

"Once you get to the end of it, you're back to the auditioning world and even though I had the credibility of Home and Away on my side, that doesn't guarantee work.

"It's a very vulnerable position you put yourself in to go through an audition. There's a lot of rejection. You put a lot of work in and just wait for the phone to ring and 99 per cent of the time it doesn't. It's brutal."

To pay the bills, Mr Furze would take on work as a voiceover artist and also start his transition into the music world, something he still does to this day with his band Stonelove.

Asked what advice he had for anyone who was looking at trying to crack the entertainment industry, Mr Furze noted that "it would be a very long conversation."

"The industry has changed so much because of social media," he said.

"It really helps to have a following on social media, but then you can fall into the trap of trying to be a social media celebrity and that's a completely different thing to being a musician or an actor.

"It's something that I certainly haven't mastered. I'm a firm believer in the cream always rises to the top. Be really good at what you do and be easy to work with and the rest will come. That's not glamourous and that's not easy though."

While he still considers himself an actor, Mr Furze has been more focused on his music as well as his writing projects on recent years.

"I'm working on getting a film I wrote funded, which at this point of my career is really exciting to be part of a story that I wrote and am emotionally invested in telling.

"We also just did a gig supporting Darryl Braithwaite at the Encore Festival in Manly and that was a lot of fun."

So what does the future hold for him? We'll just have to wait and find out.