PAUL LEYDEN: Actually, it wasn't in New York. I haven't really gotten out of the city too much - I haven't had a chance - but I went up to Newport in Rhode Island and that was beautiful. A really, really beautiful spot.

PAUL LEYDEN: Yes. I went and saw the Breakers, which I guess is the main mansion that everyone seems to visit there. It was the most incredibly built house ever. The fact that it was just their summerhouse was kind of freaky. [I was] just blown away by all of the ridiculous architecture inside. In New York, I love rollerblading around Central Park and down the West Side Highway into Battery Park. I get a real kick out of that. That's when I can stay on my feet. [Laughs] I love rollerblading around the city. It's a real good way to get around and it's a lot of fun. All the bars - you could probably go out every single night of your life to about ten different bars, and you still wouldn't even come close to discovering every new bar and restaurant and club in the city. It's quite amazing.

PAUL LEYDEN: Yes.

PAUL LEYDEN: I did. It's kind of difficult to maintain a relationship when you're 20,000 miles away and there's no foreseeable time that you're going to see each other. When I first got here, I was living with one foot in Australia and one foot in New York. And you can't really appreciate or enjoy where you are if you do that, because you're constantly going to feel homesick. So, I needed to kind of take my foot out of Australia and fully plant it here. Since I've done that, I've just gotten so much more out of the city and feel really relaxed. I met some great people and I'm really enjoying it.

PAUL LEYDEN: Yes, I do. I live with an Australian girl who's an architect. Ironically enough, she was a roommate of my sister's in Melbourne for about a year or so, and her sister is one of my sister's best friends. So, I didn't actually meet her until I got [to New York]. This apartment came up, and it was too expensive for me to have myself, and she wasn't happy with where she was living. It worked out well.

PAUL LEYDEN: Second. I've got an older brother who's a doctor, and then there's me, and then a sister who's in sports management, another sister who's in publications, like advertising, and a younger brother who studies law in university.

PAUL LEYDEN: Yes. Most of the family, mom and dad, my two younger sisters and younger brother are in Melbourne, and my older brother is married and lives in Sydney.

PAUL LEYDEN: Yeah. We're an incredibly tight family. There's nothing that our family doesn't share with each other. We're one of these kind of frighteningly tight knit groups. There's never really any fighting; we get along so well. Going out to a family dinner is kind of scary because we all kind of compete for the most attention. We have to purposely go to restaurants that are so loud that we kind of get drowned out. Otherwise, I think we'd get kicked out of most quiet restaurants. But it was really sad, actually, leaving them behind. I lived in Sydney for four years before I came over here, so I only saw my family back home every few months anyway. But I got to speak to them all at least once a week. So, it was really sad even being out of the country and knowing you could speak to them all really infrequently. Even though everyone's on the e-mail and I can e-mail them every so often to get the updates of what's going on. I still try to speak to Mum once a week. Mum freaks out if I don't speak to her once a week. [Laughs]

PAUL LEYDEN: About an hour and ten minutes by plane. It's about a twelve-hour drive.

PAUL LEYDEN: It's so far away; it's a twenty-five hour flight. That's daunting enough. I guess a lot of Americans don't even get out of America, so the last place they'd go is Australia because it's so far away. There's not a lot of exposure in the States to good Australian television, and you don't get a lot of our films on general release over here either. Which is a shame, because I think good Australian drama is as good as the good American drama. Our primetime shows can be just as good as NYPD Blue or Law & Order. It's just very Australian. I think a lot of people don't know that the majority of people in Australia live on the coast, that we don't all live in the Outback and ride kangaroos around. And we aren't all like the Crocodile Hunter, you know? I can't remember the last time I actually had to wrestle a crocodile or caught a brown snake in my hand. [Laughs] I've met people here [who've asked], "Have you stuck you're head in a croc?" I'm like, "Uh, no." People don't know that we live on the coast. Sydney and Melbourne and Perth and Brisbane, they're major metropolitan and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Especially Sydney and Melbourne. They're easily two of the most livable beautiful cities that I've ever been to.

PAUL LEYDEN: Well, I haven't actually done enough traveling to know. While I'm here, now that my schedule has quieted a little bit, I plan on doing weekend trips here and there around the States, and just really make it a working holiday while I'm here. And get to Europe and do as much of that as I can as well. New York's an amazing place, but I don't think once I get to that point when I want to settle down and have a few rugrats whether New York is the place to really raise them. There's no place like Sydney or Melbourne to raise kids. Not that I really want to raise kids right now - I can't believe I'm even talking about kids! [Laughs]

PAUL LEYDEN: No, I haven't been to L.A. yet. I was actually planning a trip [there to] catch up with a couple of people I know out there. It'll be nice, I think, as an actor to see L.A. when you don't feel the pressure of having to go and find work. I've heard so many things. People seem to have a love/hate relationship with L.A. I think they love it when they're working and they hate it when they're not. It'll be nice to go visit the beaches and hang out a little bit when I know that there's not that pressure of going to do auditions, although I look forward to that opportunity as well.

PAUL LEYDEN: No. [Laughs] If you find out what he is, let me know. At the moment he's a bit of everything. He pretends to be an architect, so he could obviously pretend to do blueprints. He's an artist, so he can obviously paint portraits. He can crack safes, he can build rafts on an island, he can fish for food...I don't know. Whatever. I think he's one of those characters that are fairly easy to write for because it's like, "Okay, we need to build a sixteen-story skyscraper entirely out of bark. Yeah, I reckon Simon can do that." [Laughs]

PAUL LEYDEN: Yeah, exactly. You just have to suspend your disbelief sometimes.

PAUL LEYDEN: I have. I have to say I'm kind of addicted to it! [Laughs]

PAUL LEYDEN: I think it's coincidental that [Simon and Lily] ended up there and Survivor has hit its peak. I don't think we're going to bump into too many of those guys [from Survivor] while we're out there! [Laughs]

PAUL LEYDEN: A couple of times. Before I got my laptop, I was down at an Internet Café and I was e-mailing a friend back home. This girl came up to me and said, "So when are you going to finish painting Lily's portrait?" I was like, "Sorry?" I had no idea what she was talking about. She goes, "You're Simon, right?" She sat down and started to read the e-mail I was writing. [Laughs]

PAUL LEYDEN: Yeah. That's the thing. Some of them don't delineate between you as a person and an actor and the character you're meant to be portraying. That's kind of frustrating. When you get fan mail saying, "I can't believe you're doing this. You must be a really awful person, Paul!" Do you not realize this is pretend? [Laughs]

PAUL LEYDEN: No, no, no. I haven't had a chance for a 25-hour flight back home. And if I'm going to go back home, it's got to be for at least two weeks because by the time you get over jet lag and adjust back to the time difference, it's not worth going for anything less than a couple of weeks. I don't know if I'll get there this year. Depending on the schedule, I might try to get back for Christmas and have myself a couple more weeks of summer. If I do have only a week off, I may visit a place I've never been before.

PAUL LEYDEN: Thank you.