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
The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.
I think a lot of actors take on fun roles and then they're lazy or flippant with them. I just can't do that.
Funny enough, if you are looking at people these days who are putting Botox in their face and getting all sorts of plastic surgery, we look at them and go, I can tell you've had Botox. I can tell you've had plastic surgery. You look really strange to me. But no one's saying anything. We're just accepting the fact that they're strange-looking.
It's funny, though, with films, because you can incorporate a variety of elements, and sometimes that can work for you and sometimes I think it can work against you.
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.
On stage, you've got dialogue you've learned. You've got a paying audience. It couldn't be better, you know?
Men often still expect women to be under their thumb.
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.
The reality is that we have all these awards and all these festivals that give out awards, so you sort of go, 'okay, well, people liked the film, and I think it's a good film, and it's up for an award - well, I guess it should win the award then.'
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.
The movie industry is very competitive, and if you're like me and you suffer from your own insecurities about whether or not you're any good, that can be troubling.