NEW YORK (AP) — Over the years, Guy Pearce Has been good at most things. But he’s been particularly good at playing characters with a refined temperament that carries a deep undercurrent of influence.
That was true of his breakout performance in “LA Undercover” as a clean-cut police detective whose ambitions trump his morals. This was true of her uptight upper-class bachelor in “Mildred Pierce.” And that’s certainly true of his mid-Atlantic tycoon “Brutal.”
“I’m really aware of how uncertain we are as human beings,” Pierce says. “Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. Moment by moment, we’re just trying to get through the day. We are trying to be good. And we can do good things for ourselves and for other people, but we can be thrown off course very easily.
This sense of stereotyping lends itself well to Pearce’s characters, especially the men of her class who appear to her. His Harrison Lee Van Buren in “The Brutal” may be Pierce’s most two-faced twist yet. If Brady Corbett’s movie, which was Nominated for 10 Oscars on Thursdayone of the best films of the year, it’s Pearce’s performance that gives the film its unsettling shivers.
Pearce’s Van Buren is a recognizable type of villain: a well-bred aristocrat who is, at first, a benefactor to Adrien Brody’s architect Loosely Teeth. But what begins as a friendship – Teth, after surviving the Holocaust, turns ugly when they meet – as Van Buren’s patronage, jealousy and privilege, lead to ownership. It turns into a wonderful feeling. The psychodrama ultimately boils down to a grim, climactic scene in which Van Buren describes Tet as “just a lady of the night.”
“What was great about talking with Brady is that he’s actually a guy of taste,” Pierce said in a recent interview. “He’s a man of class and a man of sophistication. He’s not just a bull in a china shop. He’s not just about greed, taking, taking, taking. That’s probably as much a curse as he can recognize beauty. And he can recognize other people’s artistry.
For her performance, Pearce, 57, landed her first Oscar nomination on Thursday. A long-overdue and perhaps overdue honor for the actor of “Memento,” “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The King’s Speech,” such recognition is as strange as it is for the Australian-born Pearce. are beneficial. He decided long ago that Hollywood stardom was not for him.
“I get nervous about it, honestly,” he says. “I’m really happy to do well. I can genuinely say within myself that I’ve done a good job. Equally, I know when I’ve done a (bad) job. But I I am very aware of how a performance can look purely good because of the tone of the film. I would have done the same in another film with a less good director, and people might have walked away would be, ‘It was complete but whatever.’ Whereas in this film, we are all better off because the film has integrity that lifts us all up.
Like F. Murray Abraham’s Salieri in “Amadeus,” Pace’s Van Buren has quickly joined the ranks of great cinematic villains to artists. Likewise the character has some grounding in reality, albeit transcended from a far different time and place. Corbett and Mona Fastwald, who are married and co-wrote “The Brutal,” fueled their struggles with financiers on their previous film, 2018’s “Vox Lux.”
“We didn’t have Van Buren, but we certainly had complicated relationships with the people who hold the purse strings,” Fastvold says. “It makes sense: I own the project because I’m paying for it, and I almost own you.”
(Photo by Rebecca Cabbage/Invoice/AP)
Pearce has been around in the movie business working with a lot of wealthy men to put money into producing a movie. But he says none of his own experiences have gone “brutal.”
“There are always these producers at a much higher level than us who come on set,” Pearce says. “I’m polite and I go, ‘Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks. ‘ But I’m a little stuck in what I’m doing. Then three years later you meet someone who Says, ‘You know, I was a producer on “LA Secret.” Ah, were you?”
Pearce, who lives in the Netherlands with her partner, actor Karis van Houten, and their son, has typically kept most of Hollywood at arm’s length. In conversation, he is tight-lipped and polite – more interested in discussing Aussie rules football than the Oscar race. “Any chance to kick, I’ll kick,” he says with a smile.
This youthful spirit Paris also applies to her acting. Pearce, who began performing in the mid-’80s on the Australian soap opera “Neighbors,” doesn’t like to be precious about performing.
“If I’m hanging on to it all day, it’s tired,” Pierce says. “What’s still there for me is using our imagination, which is a childlike project. I think there’s something valuable about that as an adult. I think you can be all ages, all the time. are
Pearce compares the script to Corbett’s “brutal” since Christopher Nolan Contacted him 25 years ago. Both times, he went back to look at the director’s previous films and quickly decided it was a good opportunity.
In digging into Van Buren, Pearce was guided less by real-life experience than by the script. He says that the most difficult way to get into the role was the voice. “Thankfully,” Pearce says, “I’m friends with Danny Huston and he’s got a wonderfully old-fashioned voice.” He and Corbett didn’t talk much about the director’s difficulties on “Vox Lux.”
“I know it was upsetting. Brady gets into trouble in every movie he does, I think, because he’s such a visionary, Pierce says. “I know the producers were trying to cut the time on it. Of course, now all those producers are going, ‘I was with him all the way.’
Pearce says that to a certain extent, he doesn’t fully understand a performance when he’s doing it. You are then more likely to fully understand it while watching it. Take this “lady of the night scene”. During filming, Pearce realized he was asking to keep the line in place. “But when I saw it, I went: ‘I’m just telling myself. I’m totally telling myself,'” he says. thing.”
It’s ironic, in a way, that Van Buren, a man bent on control, is played so precariously by an actor who himself tries to impose so little on him.
“There’s a performance element to Van Buren. He wears himself out because he’s trying to dominate, be the one in charge, be Mr. Charming,” Pierce says. “I don’t think he could ever walk into a room without being selfish. It’s a tedious method, I understand.
