Man, tattoos are cool! They’re something that started in the folly of youth and there’s been a progression ever since.
— Alex O’Loughlin, GQ Australia, November 2011
There I was in 2011, watching The Back-Up Plan for the first time on Television. Needless to say, the leading man fascinated me – Alex O’Loughlin.
Who was he? Why haven’t I heard of him before? Did he just appear out of thin air, or has he done anything else worth watching?
Some days I think, maybe I should have just left it there and not explored any further! Now I just can’t stop my need to know even more about him ………
Anybody else have that same problem? 😆
As soon as I started watching his other work, I found myself in total confusion about all of his tattoos. Different tattoos and different versions of tattoos appeared.
So there I was, not a real big lover of tattoos, wondering what is real and what is not?
This is what I saw in Oyster Farmer:
Something else I was not big on, was surfing the internet, looking up celebrities and making friends out of strangers on the internet. But Alex and his tattoos inspired me to do so …..
Well the rest is history and here I am writing a story on Alex’s tattoos for the internet, together with a friend I have never met in person, who lives thousands of miles away.
Up until today I haven’t found a good understandable answer to this very first question of mine – How many tattoos does Alex have and what do they look like?
So this is my gift to any new fans looking for answers about the body art and hopefully some of the old fans will also enjoy just looking at all once more.
The Real Tattoos:
There are five (5) tattoos clearly visible on Alex at the moment I am writing this. One on each of his biceps, one above each of his nipples and one on his lower back, that wraps around his hips and is visible from the front. (Also read Part 2 & Part 3 where we explore them further)
1 May 2012. Photos: Splash
BTS photo’s of 3:03 Filmed August 2012. Thanks to @MyMaximus, as always you are the Genie of New Pictures!
From this behind the scenes picture filmed during August 2012, it looks like not only does the new Back Tattoo wrap around to the front, it also extends down the thigh.
My guess would be that it has been there since the Tattoo has been redone in 2011.
Whatever else he has hidden in some dark private corners of his body, I can unfortunately not report on. 😥
The Faded Tattoos:
In the past he used to have two more tattoos that have been removed and are now faded. Sometimes glimpses of their existence are still there to be seen. There used to be one on each of his forearms as seen in these pictures.
The Added/ Temporary Tattoos:
Some of the confusion about his tattoos may arise from the fact that for certain characters he played, it was deemed necessary to add even more tattoos.
Please remember the following tattoos are all fake!!
- The biggest and most prominent one was for ‘FEED’. A beautiful cross on Michael’s back.
- For ‘The Invisible, a swallow on Marcus’s neck.
- Also for The Invisible, some words written on the left side of his abdomen. (It looks like 4 names underneath each other)
(Thank you to Mary from the old .org site for providing the information about the abdomen tattoos 🙂 )
- And another one from ‘The Invisible‘ – some sort of weird symbol at the back of Marcus’s head
- And for ‘BlackJack: Sweet Science’ Luke needed a little cross on his neck.
To be honest, I am glad these were only temporary tattoos and were just added for those roles – but then again anything looks good on this man and we will most probably accept anything he adds.
This is not where our story ends, because for specific roles they cover up some or all of his tattoos and we explore that further in our next post.
We continue our research herewith all the cover-ups and maybe find some hidden treasures as well…….
UPDATE:
We made a update to the tattoos post in 2019:
#AlexOLoughlin and his Tattoos
and here
The Mystery of the ‘New’ #AlexOloughlin Tattoo Unfolds
(Just click on the links)
Alex O´Loughlin ~ An Intense Study 