What Home and Away heartthrob Beau Brady looks like today

When Beau Brady burst onto the small screen as Noah Lawson in Home and Away it was pretty obvious he was going to be a star, especially given his first scene was saving Aussie sweetheart Bec Cartwright's character Hayley.

It wasn't long before Hayley and Noah were Home and Away's golden couple (with all the ups and downs we expect of soap opera couples) but their chemistry spilt over and they became a couple off-screen, giving the show's audience the ultimate celebrity pairing.

When the young couple got together, no one on the set of the soap was shocked.

"They could see it coming so they weren't surprised. I think they all said, 'What took you so long?'. Everyone has been really supportive," Bec revealed at the time.

The pair dated for four years before Beau asked Bec to marry him. But the fairytale wasn't to last as Bec broke Beau's heart, leaving him for tennis star Lleyton Hewitt.

Just six weeks after Bec and Lleyton's first date, the tennis champion got down on one knee and proposed, and Bec accepted.

"I look back at it now and realise proposing to Bec was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made," Beau told Woman's Day in 2010. "It was just a stupid, young mistake and if I had my time over, I would never, ever have proposed."

But it was obvious that seven years later Beau was still deeply hurt by Bec's betrayal. He told the magazine that Bec had developed a friendship with Lleyton over text while he and Bec had been planning their own wedding.

"I'm only speculating, but in the end I’m still not really sure why Bec broke it off – maybe it was because I didn't own a Ferrari," he added.

After leaving Home And Away, Beau went on to roles in Aussie films such as The Sapphires, The King and Voodoo Lagoon before trying his luck in the UK and Hollywood.

But apart from a couple of guest roles and advertisements, his career didn't really take off abroad.

And while Home and Away earned Beau four Logie Award nominations for best actor, he hasn't looked back on the experience fondly.

"I don't want anything to do with Home And Away or anything like that," the former actor told TV Week.

"Any advice I'd give to an actor who was going on Home And Away is to stay for one year and then get out.

"I had some fun, but there are a lot of things I'd go back and change if I could. If a soap came up again, I'd probably say no, because I'm just not that way inclined anymore.

"[But] if it was a series, for sure, because they're just different. With a soap, they blow your whole private life and everything out, but with a series, you keep a little bit more integrity."

Beau has kept his private life pretty private in recent years, staying pretty low-key and even adopting the pseudonym Johnny Brady.

However, Beau will return to the screen, as Johnny Brady, in the forthcoming (though much delayed) sci-fi series We Were Tomorrow.

Since filming that series, the actor enlisted in the Australian Army Reserves in 2018, following in the footsteps of his father, who was an army commando.

When he's not working in the marine yard, the now-40-year-old is making custom guitars and industrial furniture, and dabbling in Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Only time will tell if the acting bug will bite him once again.

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