Ben Mendelsohn
Ben Mendelsohn
Paul Benjamin "Ben" Mendelsohnis an Australian actor, who first rose to prominence for his role in the Australian film The Year My Voice Brokeand continued to have major roles in Australian films such as The Big Steal, Metal Skin, Cosi, Mulletand Australia...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth3 April 1969
CountryAustralia
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There are always dimensions, and the way they get expressed is through the writing and the actors and the director you get to work with on that day. But there are always dimensions, outside of really basic stuff for very young people where it needs to be very clear.
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The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.
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The very rough story is this: Melbourne boy, out of both my parents' houses at a young age, lived with my grandmother, drama teacher twisted me into doing this TV thing that I thought my mates were doing, too.
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The thing about home is that it's a tough place to sustain a career, just by dent of the size of the place. I had about as good a run there as anybody, but it's still a tough ask. I mean, the person I think with the best career in Australia is Ray Meagher, in 'Home and Away.'
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The first 'Star Wars' film was enormously important. I grew up right smack-bang in the sweet spot of all of those. It's true cinema magic. It's fair to say that, as a kid, I would have been very happy to be Han Solo, and I would have been happy to have gone out with Princess Leia.
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Once upon a time, they thought I was a sweet, wide-eyed boy that was just trying to figure out how to kiss the girl. Lots of comic relief and adolescent yearnings.
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It's got a lot more room for nuance and an assumption that people have started from the beginning. 'Bloodline' ends up being like a really good novel.
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It's a tougher gig than what people think it is. The proper, real, genuine, worldwide movie stars don't get a lot of downtime from the world outside. That's a tougher price, I think, than what people's fantasy of fame account for.
In a very real sense, all you do when you're shooting film or television is you shoot a scene, and then you shoot another scene, and then you shoot another scene.
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If you've been working since you were a teenager and working at a reasonably decent level, then you don't expect that you're going to be firmly in your 40s and start moving up in the world, if you like.
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I was with my grandmother, while one of my brothers lived with my dad, and one lived with my mom. It wasn't a great situation. Acting was the one good thing I was involved in.
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I wanted to keep working because work was essentially fantastic - you got to be around people, you got to be in a family, and that family changed from job to job. It was like being in the circus.
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I think some of my favorite Australian films were shot by people that are not Australian. And I think when Dean Semler did 'Dances with Wolves,' for instance, that's a very different-looking Western than what you've seen much of before. It's very rich, color-wise. But we've got our own very proud thing going on.
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I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching.