Guy Pearce has picked up his first Oscar nomination for The Brutalist. He most certainly will not win, especially because Keiran Culkin is marching through the awards season like Sherman through Georgia. But Guy is definitely enjoying the awards season and, weirdly enough, I feel like I’ve seen more interviews from him than Adrien Brody (the lead in the film). Guy is at an age (57) where he really doesn’t give a sh-t and he barely censors himself about politics, his thoughts on America and which films he’s done for the money. Guy recently spoke to the Times of London, and you can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
He got his start on the Aussie soap opera Neighbors: ‘I’ve many feelings about that show. In the old days you were either a theatre actor or a film actor, and if you got stuck in a soap you were the lowest of the low — but what an opportunity. I had no clue what I was doing but learnt a lot. When young actors ask me for advice, I shrug and say, ‘Get lucky?’ Because I got lucky. That said, it really was frowned upon. I did a play a year after I left and this snobby actress said, ‘How could you even do that?’ I wanted to punch her! Now, obviously, I didn’t punch her. But it was such a horrible attitude.” He smiles. “And then, five years later, I saw her on some sh-t ad on TV. I so wanted to go and find her and say, ‘OK …’”
He’s taken a lot of roles for the money: “Yeah — I did a bunch of sh-t during my divorce because I needed the money,” he shrugs. Pearce divorced Kate Mestitz, his wife of 18 years, in 2015. “It was my divorce period, 2016, ’17 and ’18. I’d read scripts thinking, no, this is pretty good actually, I could do this … But a year earlier I would have said no. You’re forced to expand your tolerance of things when you need dough, so it was a real relief once I paid off my divorce. But it blurred my vision. I’d read something that I felt was good and then question myself. Is it good? Or just in the camp of paying off my divorce?”
He has an 8-year-old son with his ex, Carice van Houten: “And I have an eight-year-old son now… So sometimes I say no, because I’ve just been away for three months and there’s no way I’m going to leave Carice and Monte on their own again.”
He recently rewatched Memento: “I need to add something. Because I’m having an existential crisis. I watched Memento the other day and I’m still depressed. I’m sh-t in that movie. I’d never thought that before, but I did this Q&A of Memento earlier this month and decided to actually watch the film again. But while it was playing I realised I hate what I did. And so all this stuff about an exec at Warners being why I’ve not worked with Chris again? It came crashing down. I know why I didn’t work with Chris again — it’s because I’m no good in Memento.”
Whether ‘The Brutalist’ is making a political statement: “It may be, with Trump back in and a number of things that feel precarious. You know, there’s a few things that I want to say publicly, but I also want to maintain a career. And I most likely won’t be called up to say anything anyway.”
How he feels about America: “Well, there’s a Stockholm syndrome with America. There’s a domination, yet that presence that America has is fraught with questionable ethics, morals and behaviours. Why does that country feel a need to say it’s the best? To meddle? Well, America’s a bully. It just steamrolls in and announces its stature and says we should all be thankful for it — and we all feed off it. My mother really recognised this. She was all about taste, my mum, and saw a lot of American culture as gaudy and loud. So when I had an opportunity to work there, I met it with trepidation, whereas others were like, ‘I’m going to Hollywood! To be famous!’ I felt that was gross. I had a reluctance to get on board.”
But he ended up chilling out about America: “Well, I changed my attitude, because I was turning into a grumpy old man before I was 28. I was bringing all this stuff my mother taught me when I was younger, and I was going to implode. So I came back to the States with an attitude change. I just don’t take it so seriously any more.”
I’ll never understand the snide attitude towards actors taking jobs for the money. Some of that snideness is coming from the actors themselves, and I’m just like… these are all first world problems. Like, normalize having a job and working for a paycheck even if you think you’re too artsy for it. As for what he says about America… eh. This was obviously done after the election, although his commentary about America doesn’t seem to be solely about Trump. On one side, America IS a big, dumb bully. On the other side, American culture is so dominant for a reason, and it didn’t stop him from cashing those paychecks, did it?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
