Filming in the wilds of Sydney’s Manly Dam seemed like a daunting prospect for some of the actors in the BBC TV drama Banished. Ryan Corr remembers his English castmates believing everything in Australia could kill them. “They were asking legit questions about things that live under the toilet seat and what spiders you could touch in the corner of your room or couldn’t.”

It proved too much of a temptation for Corr and his fellow Aussies, who delighted in teasing the Brits during the outdoor bushland scenes. An on-set safety officer didn’t help: “He said, Yes, we are at Manly Dam, it is a contained environment, but there are things that can kill you. There are eight species of spider and nine species of snake that can kill you.” He adds: “Even me and [David] Wenham were sitting there thinking, shit, I haven’t thought about this in nearly enough detail.”

Filmed partly in Sydney, partly in Manchester, the seven-part BBC series is based on the 1788 landings of the First Fleet. Corr plays Private McDonald, one of the soldiers led by Governor Phillip (Wenham) who set up a penal colony in Botany Bay along with a group of English convicts.

Initially, the actor auditioned for the role of the dislikeable Major Ross, but was cast as the put-upon McDonald: in love with convict Kitty McVitie (Joanna Vanderham) but forced to share her with one of his superiors. “He’s a complete victim,” says Corr of his character. “I found it fun being a little bit too desperate, or trying a little bit too hard. Poor McDonald seems to be constantly putting his foot in it, and his love for Kitty is the same thing that alienates her and pushes her away.”

The actor was keen to work with series creator Jimmy McGovern (of Cracker and Redfern Now fame) – “He writes fully formed characters that speak to you off the page” – but, as an Australian, he did question the lack of Indigenous characters in the script. Corr is at pains to point out the show is not intended to be historically accurate, but says McGovern acknowledged his – and other people’s – concerns.

“It wasn’t like he was trying to cover up or make an excuse. He said, ‘If I’m going to tell the story about Indigenous people in Australia and what happened, I certainly can’t do that over seven one-hour episodes.’ [The story covers] only two weeks into the supposed landings and he said ‘I have to devote enough time to the story of the Aboriginal people to do it justice’.”

Corr’s concerns were allayed, but there has already been an outcry about the lack of Indigenous characters, despite the show’s popularity when it screened in the UK. He is now filming Project CM, an Australian sci-fi TV series he describes as “District 9 meets [the] Dreaming”, directed by Wayne Blair and Leah Purcell.

A former child actor who starred in the teen dramas Blue Water High, Silversun and the Sleepover Club, Corr opted out of the tried-and-tested route to soap opera glory and instead headed to drama school when he was 17. Since graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, he has appeared in the Russell Crowe-helmed The Water Diviner, Wolf Creek 2 and Not Suitable for Children, as well as Packed to the Rafters and Lovechild on the small screen.

He also picked up the prestigious Heath Ledger scholarship in 2011.

But that early promise was nearly engulfed in scandal last year, when Corr was arrested in Bondi for possessing a small quantity of heroin. He pleaded guilty and no conviction was recorded. He was placed on a 12-month good behaviour bond in September.

It was a narrow escape: a conviction would have spelled the end of his Hollywood ambitions. Asked what advice his Water Diviner director, who has his own run–ins with the law, gave him, he says Crowe told him to go to Los Angeles.

“Russell said: ‘When you are not working, you should be in LA, trying to work, which is where you belong. LA is known as the City of Angels and it will open its arms warmly and openly if you know what you want.’”

Corr says he looked to Crowe’s career and Guy Pearce, his co-star in the forthcoming Holding the Man, and has concluded there is no obvious path to success. “Not everyone can go, take their top off, have a Level 6 jawline and they’ll say: ‘What job would you like?’ I think it’s different for everyone.”

Holding the Man is sure to get him noticed: Corr plays actor and Aids activist Timothy Conigrave in Neil Armfield’s eagerly awaited film, based on Conigrave’s memoir of his long relationship with John Caleo. It was a role Corr actively pursued: “There was a lot about its politics that I really believe in.”

By his own count, he auditioned 20 times for the role, though Armfield later revealed he’d had it from the first one. The actor saw it as an opportunity to continue Conigrave’s legacy. “Everyone knew that it was a really important piece, it was a quintessentially Australian piece, a quintessentially Sydney piece.”

Corr is outspoken about gay marriage, one of the issues raised in the film. “I think, I hope it’s inevitable,” he says. “Who someone chooses to love is their right and it should be acknowledged in the society we live in. I think we are backwards as a country if we don’t start to do something about that now. Look how long it took to do something about Indigenous rights and the apology. The rest of the world is moving past us in a number of ways, both racially and within gender and sexual equality and I think we need to work on it.”

• Banished airs in Australia on BBC First on Foxtel on 25 June at 8.30pm