When Dan Falzon played Neighbours’ floppy-haired Rick Alessi in the mid-1990s, nobody could have guessed the career path he’d end up taking, or how different he’d now look
Departing Neighbours actors have gone on to all kinds of incredible futures over the years following their exits from Ramsay Street. One star who left the soap 29 years ago looks completely unrecognisable today and runs a sanctuary with his brothers. Margot Robbie, who played Donna Freedman from 2008 to 2011, and Guy Pearce, who starred as Mike Young from 1986 to 1989, became major Hollywood actors, while Guy is known for films including LA Confidential and Memento.
Kylie Minogue, who played tomboy mechanic Charlene Mitchell from 1986 to 1988, of course, became a huge chart success. Then there’s Craig McLachlan, who played Henry Ramsay in the late 1980s before going on to have a short-lived pop career. He then trod the boards in musicals before being accused and then acquitted of sexual assault.
Not to mention the Alessi twins, played by Gayle and Gillian Blakeney in the 1990s, who now live in California with their partners and children. But one Neighbours star who’s trodden a far less star-studded path since leaving the soap in 1995, is Dan Falzon, who starred as floppy-haired high school student Rick Alessi, cousin to the twins.
Dan joined the show in 1992, with Rick arriving in Erinsborough after being thrown out of school. A practical joker who disliked authority, Rick went on to be ostracised by his friends after a pal was killed in a drag race which he’d organised.
He turned his back on Ramsay Street in 1995 when a job opportunity at Lassiter’s in Darwin beckoned. In real life, Dan formed a band with his brother after leaving Neighbours, and Milk released a single called Seventeen in 1997.
He then went on to become a paramedic for St John Ambulance in Alice Springs, along with his brothers Tom and Ben. Amazingly, the brothers used their earnings from their paramedic jobs to help set up and fund Earth Sanctuary, an eco-tourism, culture and astronomy business based near Alice Springs, with all three working as managing directors.
Dan, who’s now 52, is married to Alana, and they share a daughter together. But it seems he hasn’t totally quit the showbiz life as the brothers have starred in two of their own TV shows in Australia.
Outback Paramedic followed their work for St John Ambulance, while Outback Brothers, filmed over a period of 10 years, looked at their work with the sanctuary.