For a guy whose idea of heaven is a beach in California, actor Paul Walker had good things to say about Manitoba when we caught up with him last week.

His only complaint? The lack of sand, sun and surf, of course.

“The only thing you guys are missing is a beach,” the 33-year-old Fast and the Furious heartthrob (even better looking in person, BTW) told us last week on the Birds Hill Park set of the upcoming indie thriller The Heaven Project, in which he plays an ex-con who gets another shot at life.

Not a “lake beach,” an ocean beach, explains Walker, who calls Huntington Beach, Calif., home. Although there is one local Beach he’s quite fond of.

“I love him,” Walker says when we mention homegrown actor Adam Beach, with whom he co-starred with in Clint Eastwood war drama Flags of Our Fathers. “The guy’s got a heart of gold. He’s one of my true actor friends. I have acquaintances, but he’s one of the few. He’s just a good guy — I like him a lot. He’s fun to party with, too.”

With no ocean in sight, Walker found a home in the province’s cottage country during Heaven’s six-week shoot, which was set to wrap yesterday. Along with Winnipeg, the flick — in which Manitoba poses for rural Oregon — was shot in Brandon, Stonewall and the Whiteshell. Walker spent time off bonding with the local crew in the great outdoors.

“It’s a different sensibility here, I guess,” he says. “With a lot of the guys, they’re all into fishing and camping and I grew up doing all that stuff, so I get along with these guys pretty well. They all have their little cottages and we’d go down to on the weekends.”

Naturally, he didn’t escape the woods unscathed.

“As you can see, from (bow) hunting the other day, I just got attacked on my hands,” Walker says, pulling at his shirt sleeves. “I had got home that night and I counted six woodticks. I had four in my head and a couple in my body, and a couple hundred mosquito bites.”

The movie itself — which began shooting here in April — called for a woodsy set. A cabin for Walker’s character Ben, along with a driving scene co-starring Bob Gunton (24’s latest Secretary of Defence), were set up for a day-long shoot in Birds Hill Park last week. The directorial debut for screenwriter John Glenn also stars Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly) as Ben’s love interest and Winnipeg youngster Ty Wood as a young Ben.

While he’s typically the hunky hero in manly action flicks (see sidebar), Heaven’s more cerebral plotline has Walker — once voted to People’s coveted Most Beautiful People list — digging a little deeper.

“It’s definitely more internal, but I read it and I liked it, and then I started looking at it and I started adding up the similarities between myself and the character, and his priorities and his perspectives in terms of family,” says Walker, who has a daughter named Meadow Rain from an ex-girlfriend. “He’s just loyal and hard-working — and we both have an eight-year-old daughter. She makes everything make sense for him, you know?”

The actor proved he also has a real-life soft side during his stay by meeting with a Stonewall woman whose terminal ill brother he had given $5,000 to back in 2002. He also didn’t object to signing autographs on Heaven’s set.

“I like the people here,” he says, adding an upcoming project could bring him back up to our neck of the woods next year.

Until then, we can keep an eye out for him in actioner The Death and Life of Bobby Z, hitting theatres in fall. The Heaven Project is slated for release next year.

Walker’s big-screen highlights

The Fast and The Furious (2001): Walker breaks out as an undercover cop who keeps up to speed with underground L.A. drag racing ringleader Vin Diesel.

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003): Like the first, but set in Miami, with ex-supermodel Tyrese Gibson in the criminal driver’s seat.

Into the Blue (2005): A shirtless Walker hooks up with a bikini-clad Jessica Alba. No plot necessary.

Eight Below (2006): Walker gets cred with the underage set by rescuing a gang of frozen huskies in this Disney venture.

Flags of Our Fathers (2006): As U.S. soldier Hank Hansen, Walker has few lines, but finds a friend in star Adam Beach.

The Death and Life of Bobby Z (2007): This fall, Walker plays an incarcerated Marine who is offered freedom by a DEA agent (Laurence Fishburne) if he will impersonate a dead drug lord (Jason Lewis).