Photography Liz Ham | Styling Jolyon Mason | Grooming Sophie Roberts

When Sean Keenan and I catch up for this interview, the actor’s fan-base – notably of young teenage girls – is in meltdown. See, Mr Keenan has become somewhat famous for his shoulder-length blonde locks – initially grown for his breakout role in Puberty Blues, and then kept for some three years as he appeared in various coastal-based films, like Drift alongside Xavier Samuel – and in his most recent Instagram post, he’s seen holding the snipped-off pony tail in his hand. As Mr Keenan’s acting career continues to evolve, so too does he, the chop coming as he prepares to play a World War One digger in the forthcoming ABC supernatural series Glitch.

“I’ve just stopped planning what will come next,” says Mr Keenan. “I’ve got short hair for the first time in years and I look at myself in the mirror and I’m someone completely different. I always tried to map out what role I’d take on next, but I’ve learned that you can keep evolving and exploring.” For this shoot, Mr Keenan evokes the grungy spirit of the nineties rock music milieu – he himself a big fan of Nirvana – and explains that the process of a stills shoot is no different to preparing for the Silver Screen. “It’s about accepting the chaos. When the make-up is off I’m back to being Sean, but whatever the character is I just get into it and it accentuates a certain part of my personality. By the end of this shoot I was dancing around the beach in the dresses.”

Audiences can expect to see Mr Keenan on the big screen opposite Nicole Kidman and Hugo Weaving in early 2015 in the feature-length thriller Strangerland. Set in the remote Australian desert, Mr Keenan plays a somewhat troubled youth and endured two hours in the make-up chair each morning as he transformed into the heavily tattooed, greasy character. “It’s so weird to sit there and see yourself transformed in the mirror,” he says of the experience. “I don’t know how much about the film I can tell, but it was really cool to do something quite removed. It’s the first thing I’ve done for a while where you don’t see the ocean, and that’s part of the excitement. I really want to see how far I can go.”

Sean Keenan/Shanahan Management | Pre Production Christina Dietze