For Ryan Corr, one of the most indelible moments shooting the gay romantic drama Holding the Man did not actually make the film.
Playing playwright and gay activist Tim Conigrave, he gave his emaciated lover John Caleo (played by Craig Stott) a last wash as he was dying of AIDS in a hospice.
"It stopped being acting," Corr says. "Craig was really underweight and it took around 45 minutes. By the end of it, we'd sort of forgotten we were in a scene.
"Tom [Hobbs, who played a nurse] said, 'Can anyone else not feel their arms and legs?' We had to have a debrief and say that that was one of the most profound things we'd been a part of. It felt like you were caring for someone in their last days."
Holding the Man, director Neil Armfield's adaptation of Conigrave's memoir about the couple's 15-year relationship, was clearly an emotional experience for its makers. And it has also proven to be an emotional experience for audiences during festival screenings.
"The gay community has real ownership over this story," says Corr. "The response is usually the same, people are coming out heartbroken and a lot of the time full of hope.
"Hopefully we've struck a balance of light and shade in the film but they're often coming out saying, 'Thank you' through tears."
With a script by Tommy Murphy, who has previously adapted the memoir into a successful play, Holding the Man covers the couple's meeting at Melbourne's Xavier College in the 1970s, their struggles to come out and the ups-and-downs of their relationship until the devastation of the AIDS epidemic.
Corr thinks the story has connected so widely over years, including stage productions in London, San Francisco and Los Angeles, for one simple reason.
"It's about love," he says. "It's a very specific story about Tim and John's relationship - in the final few months of his life, Tim willed himself to live to get this story down - but it transcends their particular relationship and speaks widely and broadly to a range of people."
After playing Joshua Connor's son in The Water Diviner and TV roles in Banished, Love Child and the yet-to-screen futuristic drama Cleverman, the former Packed to the Rafters star is putting a difficult time behind him. Last year he faced court after being caught with 0.26 grams of heroin in a Bondi laneway. He was given a 12-month good behaviour bond with no conviction recorded.
"It just seems forever ago now," Corr says. "I stand by my mistake and accept responsibility for it.
"But I've been moving on and just not thinking about it since that point. Holding the Man happened after all that stuff and it's been a great showing of work since. I've really enjoyed myself."
But before being cast, Corr had to get through an intense series of auditions as Armfield tried out different combinations of actors.
Knowing Conigrave's story from his drama school days - they both studied at Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art - Corr fought for the role.
"With the play at Griffin, it was being spoken about throughout the school and throughout the arts circles of Sydney," he says. "I was made aware of the ripple effect of its power and where it had come from and Tim's story through the '80s.
"When Neil Armfield was attached - jump ahead seven years - it was a no brainer. I said to my agent, 'I'm going to get this'.
"It's an example of a film that comes along so rarely. It falls in line with what I believe in. It's rare to be able to work on pieces like that in this country."
During filming, Corr had the challenge of playing Conigrave from his teens to his early 30s.
"We'd often be shooting three decades in one day," he says. "We were shooting a film at a television pace.
"So we'd be 17-year-olds in the morning, mid-20s in the afternoon then have to go and do something in the 30s in the later part of the schedule, which was mind-boggling.
The pure busyness of what we were trying to achieve in that set time, spanning three decades, was probably the biggest challenge in the film."
A strong advocate for marriage equality reforms - he has invited the prime minister Tony Abbott to watch the film to "open his mind" - Corr says it was no different playing a gay romance than a straight one.
"It's intimacy," he says. "It's having to formulate a chemistry and a trust with the person you're playing with.
"What is different is playing someone who's lived as opposed to making the character from the ground up. It shifts the focus of all the work you have to do."
Corr says that making the film was trying to do justice to the memories of Conigrave and Caleo's families and friends.
"Playing love, it doesn't matter whether it's heterosexual or gay. It certainly doesn't make the love scenes any different. There's still a boom hanging over your head and 30 people in the room. It's about love and showing another person you care about them and listening."
