•NPR Fresh Air Interview with Guy Pearce

This is fresh air, I’m Terry Gross. My guest, Guy Pearce, first became known to Americans for his role as a drag queen in the comedy Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The Australian actor went on to star in the cop drama LA Confidential and last year’s independent film hit, Memento. He played a man with a rare form of amnesia. Now Pearce is in two films currently in theatres, the count of Monte Cristo and the Time Machine.

Describes a clip from Time Machine. – Clip where Alexander talks to Vox in the NYC Library.

TG: Now one of the things I imagine you don’t learn in acting classes is how to wrestle with monsters or creatures in a movie..

GP: If I had, I wouldn’t have broken my rib doing it. (laughing)

TG: Oh, did you break a rib doing it?

GP: (Laughing) Yes, I did!

TG: What happened?

GP: Well, I just have to run in and attack one of these monsters, one of these moorlocks and after having done it about 15 or 20 times, I started to realize that I was in a serious amount of pain and uh, and had actually cracked one of my left front ribs so uh, it was most uncomfortable for a while after that.

TG: Could you keep shooting?

GP: Uh, well, yeah we did, I mean I had to sort of pair down what I had to do and uh, ironically it was around the time that Simon our director, needed to sort of step away from the shoot and so when he did that we ended up having a two week break while the replacement, sort of temporary replacement director came in you know, so it actually worked out quite well, though I had two weeks of sitting around at home without trying to climb towers and wrestle more moorlocks

TG: I was reading some article about the making of the Time Machine, and it was some studio executive maybe, who said that they had a feeling that although you hadn’t done this kind of film before they really felt you could be the “hero”. (Laughs) I thought ok, well you take on a role and you really are the “hero” in this, you save a whole race of people um, how do you prepare yourself to play the part of the pure hero?

GP: It’s stepping out of, I suppose, the reality of what a person does. It’s funny in a way because I don’t consider myself at all to be heroic and I think it’s a term that gets used far more in the US than it does in Australia and so it’s an unusual term for me – hero. I remember in LAC, in that final sort of speech that I had when I’m sitting in the interrogation room, I have to say to the guys, you’ll have to find another hero, and I’m talking about myself and I remember having to try to really understand what that meant, and I guess it’s about cultivating that childlike quality within your mind or yourimagination, or your perspective, that enables you to be able too look at people as heroes or bad guys or whatever, you know to me it’s there is a naive childlike quality to that viewpoint.

TG: Let me ask you about Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, this is the movie that Americans first got to know you through.

GP: Yes, I guess so.

TG: In this part you play a drag queen. The premise of the movies is that one of your friends who is a drag queen gets a part in a drag show at a resort in a town in the remote Australian desert. So this friend invites you and another friend who’s a transsexual played by Terence Stamp to go with him. So the movie is like your journey across the outback in this old bus you named Priscilla. Describes the clip from Priscilla.

TG: So Guy Pearce, what are the favorite costumes that you had to wear for Priscilla?

GP: (Laughing) I think one of the funniest ones or the funniest situation, really was the, when we finally arrive in Kings’ canyon and we are there on the top of the uh, this precipice which was really quite high., We weren’t able to hike up there, we had to actually be flown up there by a helicopter and dropped off and I was wearing a fluffy white g-string and a funny fluffy hat and sitting on the outside of the helicopter. I wasn’t even inside the helicopter, I had to sit outside on this bar on the outside of the thing flown up into Kings Canyon, so I have a really unusual memory of that costume and how uncomfortable it is to sit on the outside of a helicopter in a fluffy white g-string. But they were all brilliant, really they were such fab additions I suppose and helpful elements to our characters, they were great.

TG: What was it like for you to wear drag, did it bring out different parts of your personality? Did you automatically start walking differently, talking differently?

GP: Yeah, I think so, I mean we uh, in some ways it’s about needing to shed any masculinity, in a way, when you’re wearing that garb, because that then becomes kind of comical, I suppose. We actually, when we first did our camera tests, and makeup and wardrobe tests, we had all decided prior to that, we were going to go out in Sydney in drag that night go to some clubs, get drunk and have a fab old time, you know. And we did and it was really the first time, we’d been in rehearsal for a couple of weeks, but we’d been wearing jeans and track suits, whatever, you know, and it was the first time that it really came to life and so much of that is about in wearing those costumes, those shoes and the wigs and everything and just I suppose, you know, being and actor in Australia and being recognized, when you’re in drag, you’re in disguise as well, so you suddenly feel inconspicuous, so you can get away with doing whatever you want.

(Short Break)

TG: My guest is Guy Pearce and he’s now starring in the time machine. Well, Guy Pearce let me go to another one of your roles and this is in the film LAC, and in this you play Ed Exley, a cop who is pretty clean cut and very self righteous and uh, very butch, not at all like your role in Pricilla, and you’re very ambitious and your willing to do anything to get ahead, as long as it’s by the book and you’re ambition and kind of political know how make you unpopular with a lot of your colleagues.

Describes clip from LAC

TG: That’s my guest Guy Pearce, along with Kevin spacey in a scene from LAC, now Russell Crowe was also in this movie with you, so here you have this movie set in LA and two of the stars are Australia, you and Russell Crowe. How did that happen?

GP: If you really want to get technical about it I’m actually English and Russell is from New Zealand, so…(laughs)

TG: So, you were born in England

GP: Yes, I was born in England, Russell was born in New Zealand admittedly Well, I actually, I grew up in Australia from the age of three and I think Russell came to Australia when he was about 21. So yes, we’re Aussies.

TG: Huh, right, so um, did you have to convince Curtis Hanson, the director of LAC that you could sound quite American?

GP: Well, uh, I mean obviously, I had to in that just occurred in the original reading that I went to. I was literally just one of however many people coming in to screen test, and I found by that point, I mean that was early 96, and I’d spent a couple of visits throughout 95, um, going to meetings and auditioning for people and this that and the other, and one of the interesting things was that every time I went to a meeting and spoke the way I normally speak um, it seemed to cause a bit of difficulty for people because they would say “oh, well, you might be able to work in this country but you’re going to have to lose that accent”. So I started going to meetings and readings and just affecting an American accent

TG: So what for you what defines an American sound? I mean to me as someone who only speaks English, all I know is American English and so uh, that seems to be like the basic to me, for you it’s something different that you have to learn. What defines American English to you as opposed Australian English?

GP: Um, well there are so many different kinds of American accents and different kind of Australian accents it’s hard to say. The first and most obvious general thing is the “R” sound, I mean, you would say car (speaks in American accent) and we would say car (speaks in Australian accent). And that is the most basic, as I say, simple difference. Funnily enough, there are some similarities I guess in tone and pitch and melody between southern American accents, you know, sort of Texas slang slow, kind of, you know the laconic kind of quality to some of the northern Australian accents. The Queeenslanders up there kinda talk like that (imitates northern Australian accent). You know, there are different shapes of words and sounds but um, there are many places that actually have great similarities, but its could be that simple thing as I say, of saying “R” instead of “R” (exaggerates the different accents)…

TG: Did you have a language coach or did you pick this up on your own?

GP: Oh look, we watch so much American TV as kids in Australia and so many American films that you become quite attune to it, you know?

TG: Did you know Russell Crowe before LAC

GP: Not very well. Russell had come and done a guest spot on a TV show that I did back in 85, and then the last time I’d seen Russell, he’d head butted me in a bar in Sydney in about 1992, I think. I didn’t know him very well (laughs)

TG: Right (laughs), Why did Russell Crowe head butt you?

GP: I asked him that very same question and he said he was trying to get my attention (laughs)

TG: There are other ways…. (laughs)

GP: (laughs) Yes, but not as unpredictable as a head butt. (laughs)

TG: You were born in England but you grew up in Australia. What brought your family from England to Australia?

GP: My father was a, um, fairly world renown test pilot in the UK. He’d worked in the Royal Air Force and uh, worked for Hawker Sidley (SIC), he was the chief test pilot for the Harrier Jump Jet and had also worked as a test pilot for the Camberra and lightning and various other fairly world renown aircraft. I think at the time, we were in the UK, living in Bristol, he was offered a job as the chief test pilot for the government aircraft factories in Australia, to test the new aircraft which was the short take off and landing aircraft called the Nomad. We took the job, he took the job, it was really just for a two year stint but after that two years, Mum, who is from England and my dad, who is originally from New Zealand, didn’t want to go back to England. They decided that, you know, Australia was more in line with the kind of life they wanted to live, so we stayed in Australia and then – that was in about 1971 - and dad was then killed testing an aircraft in 76, but we obviously still stayed in Australia.

TG: When your father was killed testing an aircraft, what happened? The plane crashed?

GP: Yeah um, they were testing a new long version of the aircraft, ah, it literally took off, it was in the air for about 90 sec and um due to sort of government pressures they had to test these aircraft prior to them actually being ready to be tested. They usually go thru a series of wind tunnel test etc, before they take them up in the air, so they took this aircraft up in the air, 90 sec in the air, most of the tail came off and of course, the aircraft just plummeted immediately and uh, my father and the designer were killed and the navigator, he’s still alive but unfortunately he’s a paraplegic.

TG: Had you braced yourself for something like that?

GP: No, I was eight..(laughs)..I hadn’t really conceived of such a notion I suppose, until it actually occurred

TG: What impact, did it leave you very afraid, obviously you were shaken up that you’d lost your father, but in terms of your own actions, did it leave you afraid to try new things, cause like look what happened to your father, he was killed on the job, doing something adventurous?

GP: I think it actually, in a rather morbid way, probably makes one more of a daredevil in, when it comes to taking risks or whatever, and that’s as I say, from a sort of morbid perspective. I mean, there’s a desperate part of me that is trying to understand who my father was and the fact that he went to that extreme and uh, ended up dying because of it. I guess it does kinda make you have a rather morbid fascination with extremes. I certainly don’t have a fear of flying, I fly all the time and I really enjoy it and funnily enough after dad died, I remember my mother saying to me you’re such as responsible young boy, you’re so responsible, and I’ve got and intellectually disabled sister and there’s really just the three of us, my mum and, Tracy, my sister and I and so from a very young age I was placed in the seat of responsibility, I suppose, in regard to taking care of myself and taking care of my sister, and I don’t know, I guess in conjunction with that or as a balance to that there’s a part of me that wants to let go of that responsibility and actually and go and take risks and of course, being on stage in front of people or being in films that are presented to lots of people is not life threatening , but it’s certainly risk taking. (laughs) To a certain extent (laughs)

(Short Break)

TG: He starred in last years independent film hit Memento…. Describes a scene from memento.

TG: How did you know you wanted to act?

GP: Uh the only recollection I really have was from a very young age. Probably about that time, about 8, 9, 10. My mother used to take me to a lot of theatre, she was a big fan of theatre, and we would go and see all sorts of, a variety of stuff and I feel like I have this memory as a kid watching these production and wanting to be up there affecting people the way I was being affected by the characters on stage wanting to, I just, I supposed was so moved by the conviction that those characters had in the performance that they were doing and found that incredibly appealing.

TG: But at the age of 16 you won the state bodybuilding championship, why were you heading in that direction and how big were those muscles?

GP: (Laughs) Not so big, umm, I stated going, yet again this is another influence of my mother, she started going to the gym when I was about 14 or 15 and I just went along with her. I played group sports at school but, I was very much an individual and very much spent a lot of time on my own or with my sister. So I started going to this gym and just started working out and just trying to get fit, you know and the gym we went to was owned and was run by a couple, by a married couple, one she was a runner up miss universe a couple of times and the husband, Joe was a judge for the IFBB, the International Federation of Body Building. So I was quite exposed to the world of bodybuilding at a pretty young age, and he basically would say to me the work that you’re doing, the physical work you’re doing is having quite an amazing immediate response and you know, if you want to consider it then, we should enter you in some competitions and I saw competitions and I would see the videos of the competitions and to me it was kind of, I guess yet another form of being on stage and performing, you know, and I was fascinated with the whole notion of creating yourself, and I still am, not so much in actually bodybuilding, but I’m more interested in spiritually creating or developing yourself or physically creating yourself in the characters that I play, I suppose.

TG: Yah, but if you spiritually develop yourself you can’t show off like if you have lots of muscles.

GP: No that’s right, it’s the reason I’m not so interested in bodybuilding anymore. (Laughs)

TG: So do you have muscles as big as they were then or did you let them…

GP: No, well, you saw Memento (laughs) I didn’t have my shirt on much in that

TG: Well after seeing your cheekbones I was going to tell you, you need to eat more.

GP: (Laughs)..I get told that all the time. So I’m kind of used to that now

TG: Now when you were 18 you were cast in a nighttime soap opera in Australia called Neighbours. I have not seen the show, I doubt many Americans have. I read that you became a teen “heart throb” Fair description?

GP: (Laughs), Um well, to a certain extent, I mean, I think the dog on the show was really popular as well! It’s just that thing of being on a show that’s watched by lots of teenagers, they tend to get a bit excited about seeing you in real life, or there’s obviously a lot of stuff with us on magazines covers, etc. There was bunch of us in the show, it wasn’t like it was just me or anything.

TG: Right, when you’re a star at that age and teenagers fantasize about you I'm sure they fantasize about this incredibly interesting constantly very sexy kind of life. Did you ever think about what real life was like compared to what your fans were probably imagining your life was like?

GP: Ah, yeah, I was a complete loner, you know, I spent a lot of time at home on my own and really didn’t have a great social life and I found that going out in public was even more difficult then, than it was when I was even younger because suddenly, I would get recognized and hassled and confronted, or just questioned or…. I just didn’t deal with the attention very well, I suppose and so, I then started to cultivate a really sort of, small intimate group of friends and I would spend a lot of time at home on my own and I had, music has been a really important part of my life so I really spent a lot of time recording music at home and working in my studio and rehearsing music, etc so, that’s what I did! (laughs)

TG: And is this music singing, playing, both?

GP: Singing, primarily um, but playing, dabbling in a variety of instruments and I became very interested in the notion of recording and the sort of technical aspect of recording and arranging and I would have other musicians come over and play and um, you know, that still goes on, really. It’s like a glorified hobby.

TG: But you don’t have a cd, a professional cd, right?

GP: No, no, I don’t, it’s funny, as the years go on, the need to actually get it out publicly like that, it sort of diminishes I guess. I mean, I play gigs at home and um, different random stuff, you know, um the nice thing about it is it makes one really question why music is such an import part of one’s life and why one feels the need to express…, why I need to express myself through music. And it is just about that, expressing myself through music and playing music with other people and rehearsing with other people or recording, but not turning it into, not taking it into that public arena and sort of turning yourself into a known entity because of it.

TG: Well, Guy Pearce thank you so much for talking with us

GP: Pleasure, thank you.

TG: Guy Pearce is now starring in the Time Machine and the Count of Monte Cristo