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LOS ANGELES - One of Hollywood's hot young actors is escaping to Australia so he can throw a couple of shrimp on the barbie for Christmas lunch.
Wentworth Miller, the star of the hit American TV series, Prison Break, will be spending the holiday season in Australia.
"My
youngest sister is living down in Australia," Miller told AAP from the Dallas set of Prison Break.
"I thought I'd kill three birds with one stone and get down to Australia.
"I can spend some time with loved ones over the holidays, visit a place I've always wanted to visit and do a little press for the show."
Miller's sister, Leigh, is living in Melbourne for a year.
"My sister just came back from Uluru with tales of kangaroos and the beauty of the area and she has a number of other day trips planned," Miller said.
"She and her friends have been very good about organising road trips and helping me explore what Australia has to offer.
"Half of my fascination with Australia is it seems to have the largest concentration of deadly creatures in and out of the water."
Miller, 34, who was born in England but has lived most of his life in the US, has had to deal with plenty of slippery characters in Prison Break, which has become an international hit.
Miller plays an engineering wizard who attempts to break out of a Chicago prison with his brother, played by Australian actor Dominic Purcell, and a band of other crooks.
The series is aired in NZ on TV3.
Some of the show's biggest fans are inmates who watch Prison Break in jail.
"From what I've heard there are certain prisons where they are not allowed to watch the show because the prison is worried inmates may get the wrong idea," Miller said.
"But, in other prisons I hear inmates rearrange their work details so they can be in their cells to watch our show every week.
"I've also received a lot of requests for headshots from inmates which I understand will get them a pack of smokes or two on the black market."
The first season of the show was shot in and around Chicago, but the second season has moved to Dallas where the cast and crew have been battling nature.
Miller, while shooting in swamps and bushland, has become a victim of chiggers, a parasitic mite.
If Australians see Miller relaxing on a beach over Christmas, they should not be concerned if his legs look in bad shape.
Blame the chiggers.
"Chiggers are a bug that bites you and then burrows underneath your skin and stays there," Miller explained.
"There's no way of getting them out.
"You have to buy nail polish and cover the inflamed spot with a dab of the nail polish.
"That seals the pores of your skin, which denies the chiggers oxygen.
"They suffocate, die, eventually dissolve and disperse into your bloodstream.
"I have had about 20 of them up and down my legs.
"We were shooting out in the woods and I neglected to coat my ankles in sulphur which was the only thing that keeps them at bay.
"I went home looking like a pizza from the legs down."
Miller will likely have his legs covered when he attends a cocktail Sydney Harbour cruise on December 27 to celebrate Foxtel's new long term deal with the Hollywood studio that makes Prison Break, Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox.
- AAP