TWO BROTHERS Continued from page 1

Do you see any of the old NEIGHBOURS crowd? GUY PEARCE: I haven’t seen Kylie for ages. I catch up with Jason Donovan every now and then. We have a laugh about how crazy it all was. Are you competitive? GUY PEARCE: I feel like I must be, in a way, but why can’t it be fair? Why does it have to be about outdoing someone, you know? Why can’t it be ‘I’ll give you this and you give me that’? Does that mean you find it hard to go after a part you really want? GUY PEARCE: I take an honest approach. I’ll go and meet a director and talk to him about how I think the role should be played. When I spoke to Chris Nolan about MEMENTO I just said ‘I really love the script and I’d like to do the movie’ and he gave me the part. You hear about actors banging on directors’ doors going ‘I’m the only person for the role’ but I can’t do that. I’m not that desperate. My attitude is ‘If I’m what you want, great’. What are your views on hunting? GUY PEARCE: I suppose it depends on your reasons for hunting. There are understandable reasons for it but, when it’s done simply for sport, there’s a lot of ignorance involved. People need to waken up to that. When I was a kid my stepbrother would take me fishing, but there came a point when I thought: ‘This doesn’t feel right. That poor fish looks like it’s having a horrible time.’ He said ‘Fish don’t feel any pain’, but it looked like it was in pain to me. Are you a vegetarian? GUY PEARCE: No, but I’m gearing towards becoming one. I don’t cook meat and I don’t eat meat at home, but I will treat myself to it if I go out to dinner. I know I can get protein in other ways, but it’s a bit of a habit, like I should eat meat because I’m so skinny. Then I remind myself about tofu. How did your dad’s death affect you? GUY PEARCE: I’m not a psychologist and I’m just theorising here, but I do wonder whether my stoic, let’s-get-on-with-life attitude after Dad died forced me to kind of act like everything was PK. Maybe that’s how I learned how to act. When did the acting bug bite? GUY PEARCE: My mum used to take me to the theatre and I flipped out. I loved it. In a way I was envious of the actors. I wanted to be up there on stage affecting people the way they were affecting me. Most of the actors you play on screen are pretty intense and also pretty miserable. Are you like that off-screen? GUY PEARCE: I have my darker moments, definitely. I’m always struggling to keep my head above water. Being happy is never an accident for me – it’s something I have to work at. I get frustrated easily. I’ve started to learn to meditate to slow myself down and it’s been fantastic. I’ve got a great deal of sadness in me that is connected to my dad dying. I feel a real empathy for people who are sad and so I relate to characters who are unhappy and dark. I’m not great at playing happy, floppy people. I’m not great at being happy and floppy full-stop. Is acting like therapy for you? GUY PEARCE: Yes, it is. I look at acting as therapy. Every time I do a job it helps me work through stuff. As I become more stable, I wonder if I might lose the urge to be an actor. I may not. The desire to experience playing other people will probably always be there. But my desire to sort of sort myself out through acting may not be so full-on. What would you do if you walked away from acting? GUY PEARCE: I’d probably make music. I’m very serious about it. But I’m not so sure about the whole thing of getting a record deal and getting an album in stores. I think it’s important for me to record an album and solidify something rather than keeping everything in demo form and never doing anything with it. Then if I was to release it I’d do it through the internet and give the money to charity. How many demos do I have? Zillions! I’m 36 years old and have been writing songs for years. I guess I should just release a box set and get it all out there in one go. Question & Answer Text Copyright Pathé Distribution Two Brothers - movie information PHASE9 movie review Back to movie interviews

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