Guy Pearce

Guy Pearce
Guy Edward Pearceis an Australian actor and musician. He is well known for having starred in the role of Mike Young in the Australian television series Neighbours and in films such as The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, L.A. Confidential, Memento, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Road, The King's Speech, Prometheus, and Iron Man 3. In Australian cinema, he has appeared in The Proposition, Animal Kingdom, The Rover, Holding the Manand The Wizards of Aus. He has...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth5 October 1967
CityCambridgeshir, England
It's hard to pinpoint why all of a sudden a group of Australian films will be doing well and why they perhaps are better made than some from the past.
Working on films where the money's more important than the creativity, I just get a bit freaked out by that. I just don't feel comfortable.
I have real dilemmas at times in trying to understand what I really think about the things that are in films and how people respond to them. I flip back and forth from going, "It's a slice of life. This happens in life. A film is an artistic venture. It's expressing life, so why not?
I don't want to make a habit of just playing small roles, because I really enjoy the process of being part of a film and staying on it for the length of time that everybody else is as well.
You can have a great time on a film and the chemistry can seem great but then you look at the finished film and it just doesn't quite gel, something doesn't quite work.
It's really interesting making films and actually seeing the life that they have in the subsequent years and seeing which ones stand up over time and which ones sort of fade away.
You do feel kind of nervous about any film you take on.
If it's a great role or a great film, then you're happy to be a part of it.
The thing I've come to learn is that what's great about small independent films is the intimacy and the communication that occurs when you're making them.
I'm never there enough to really keep up with what's going on in the Australian film industry. I just try and be part of it as much as I can.
They actually came to me over a year ago, and I was having an ever-so-mild nervous breakdown at that point, and felt I needed to just stop. So I went, "I can't look at anything right now, I need to stop." I wasn't really having a nervous breakdown, I'd just done too much stuff back to back. And so a whole lot of time went by, and they called and said, "Are you ready now to take a look at this script?" So I did and then met with him in the UK.
Even though we all speak English here in America, you all speak a very different language. So it's really enjoyable for me to work at home. It's more cathartic, I suppose. To work in America or other places is more about curiosity, because I'm dealing with cultures and sensibilities that I don't really know.
I've always been resistant to parties and schmoozing.
I don't understand the actor who plays the same role from movie to movie. Maybe it's because I worked on long-running television when I was in my teens, and so the idea of playing the same role just bores me intensely. I'd rather not do it at all.