Banal chase scenes, trained shooters missing their targets. I was playing an over-the-top queen who likes to dress up in drag and has his own insecurities and problems with women. Adam is a misogynistic little brat, anyway, so I wasn't playing someone who is openly a woman. He is less open about being a woman than I, Guy, could be. Often, when playing other characters, you look to your feminine side to find out what you might be wanting to play.
But this is not a real perception of a female character, because it is an exaggerated, colored, colorful view of a female. It was a very liberating experience for me. The boundaries were completely left at home and a lot of that was to do with the nature of Stephan Elliott.
I think what he wanted to do was to bring along with him and with us this openness, this complete life experience rather than saying, 'This is the film crew, you are the actors and we are filming now'. It wasn't like that at all. Some of Stephan's direction was incredible. He would stop the camera, tell us we were awful and demand we ham it up. We had to get into a completely different way of thinking. But once we got on the merry-go-round, it was great. As an actor, you are constantly trying to get away from yourself, which is the same as trying to find yourself.
This thing that you're trapped in, you get to leave behind, and do stuff that you would normally get arrested for. It's really complex because you can see yourself but it's female. I can really see my mother. I didn't feel like a woman as such, but getting into touch with your feminine side was really at the forefront. It was an amazing experience, it was actually fantastic, I really enjoyed it. But I'm not sure if I'm good-looking.
I don't think I'd fancy myself if I saw myself walking down the street looking like that. I would probably look twice because I looked more odd than anything.
There's a certain sort of aim that certain actors have, which is to get yourself in a No. I'm just happy to flit around in the background and find stuff that interests me.
It's not necessarily about a career choice, it's finding stuff I'm interested in. Interesting and unusual films, because I really get off on doing it and I feel much more confident in that sort of surrounding. Confidential , I had a lot of people say to me, 'Right, so you're now an A-list American actor? There is a competitive quality to LA, and by the time I leave I always feel a bit anxious.
I never really realized what it was about Melbourne I liked until I spent time away. I don't like the smog in LA, I don't like the fact that there is no real community anywhere, I don't like the fact that people don't look at you when they are talking to you and get so frustrated with you because you have an Australian accent.
They're very narrow-minded as far as other cultures go and I don't have the energy to play the game. I won the Junior Mr. Victoria bodybuilding competition when I was 15, which is a really odd claim to fame. Confidential It was probably stranger for me because it was my first American film, while Russell [ Russell Crowe ] had experience working in the States prior to that.
For me, it was all sort of new, and I was just trying to understand this new culture that I was submerged in. But it pretty quickly becomes about the internal stuff that's going on with these characters for an actor, and that's what you focus on.
Fortunately for us, we had many, many weeks of marked rehearsal while they were still casting other people, so there were a few weeks there where it was only Curtis Hanson , Brian Helgeland -the scriptwriter-Russell, and I in a room together. Then Kim Basinger came along when she was cast, and then Danny DeVito would come along when he was cast. So they had a slow-building process going on outside that room, and we had a process of familiarization in that room, which really was great for me.
It wasn't like I stepped off a plane and stepped on set and suddenly had to understand what I was doing. Obviously, having James Ellroy 's book was the quintessential piece of research material, as well as everything else that Curtis and the team pulled together.
Because even though our film only covered that Christmas period and the few months after in , the book covers a nine-year period, so there's so much detail there about the nuances and minutiae of these various characters. There was a great wealth of material to work with. And you forget once you're in it that you're playing a character as iconic as an American cop. You get caught up in the emotional stuff.
So that again was a great delight. Curtis Hanson is like Chris Nolan He has a great handle on the technical and visual aspects of filmmaking as well as the importance of performance. We all felt pretty good about what we managed to do.
I've fortunately been involved in some really great films, like Memento and L. Confidential , but the personal aspect of The Proposition Look, I think The Proposition is a really exquisite piece of work by John Hillcoat , but the experience we had with that, being out in that location, being out in the wilderness-when you live in Australia, you can't help but be highly aware of the Aboriginal people and their history, so being out in that country where you see more people than you would here in Melbourne, for example, there is a vibe or a spirit or whatever you want to call it to that land, that culture, that is unbelievably powerful.
I don't even know how to explain it, but it's awesome and overwhelming. I had a strange experience on that movie, because in the middle of the film, I had to go to Adelaide to do this conference, so in the schedule, they gave me almost two weeks off, primarily when they were filming the scenes between Ray Winstone and Emily Watson in the house. There were lots of scenes that we weren't in, so I took that opportunity to go to Adelaide and do the conference, and I thought, "Well, I'll come back to Melbourne on the way and catch up with things in Melbourne for a week before I go back to Queensland and carry on with the movie".
And it was a really terrible thing to do. It was so odd and jarring that I really wished I hadn't done it. It didn't affect the film, but I was in such a zone up there that I regretted I did it, because breaking from that was really strange, and getting back into it was strange. I had underestimated what it would be like to do that.
So I would say the experience of spending time with Aboriginal people and having their presence be quite prominent in that film was quite extraordinary.
After we finished the film, I stayed up there for a few days, and some of the local people took me to some very remote places. We looked at cave paintings from many thousands of years ago, and places people wouldn't normally get to go. His sister has had a profound influence on his life, not least keeping him grounded — almost, it seems, to the point of being wary of enjoying his own success too much.
That keeps things in perspective for me. Fame, to me, is completely out of whack. Reports that he had slumped into debilitating drug use were not true. In that, he has been largely successful — there have been big-budget films, including Prometheus and Iron Man 3 , a role in the upcoming British film Mary Queen of Scots and a directorial debut in the pipeline.
This year, he also released an album of his music, written in the painful aftermath of the breakdown of his year marriage in early In many ways, a shape-shifter. The Innocents is available on Netflix from 24 August.
He was right. Work and life commitments may make that difficult, with Pearce living between Amsterdam, Australia and Los Angeles. I can just calm down and be more patient, take a break if I need to, and everything will just sort of fall into place. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies.
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Already subscribed? Log in. Mare of Easttown looks fantastic. I find her just an incredible human being. Funnily enough, it was March the 12th when I shot my first day on that show and then we got shut down after one day.
So I went back in September, October, and did the rest of it. I was happy to drag out the process. When Curtis Hanson and I did L. Confidential , it was like being at film school. I can be a very anxious person and I have been a very anxious person in my life. One of the best things for me is to watch dailies and rushes. And Curtis was very good at reminding me of that. I always have to remind myself of it, and I always think of Curtis.
I might meet another actor and work with them and start to realize that my relationship with that other actor is very similar to a friend that I have at home. And maybe that friend is troubled or whatever, and I start to view my relationship with my friend at home differently because of that experience with that actor.
So I do find that every film that I do ends up being quite informative. So I always end up going home with a bit more objectivity.
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