Guy Pearce has bounced back.
The year 2015 was a bad one for him. And he brought that up at the start of this interview.
Unlike most movie stars, he’s not at all shy of bringing a bit of personal truth to the table.
But having written a whole album about his journey to hell and back that year, it actually was quite appropriate to talk about it.
Nevertheless, his candour and approachable demeanour, which this writer has encountered several times before, sets him apart from so many of his peers.
Then again, he was back here on home soil and relishing the chance to “slip back into” that Australian way of dropping airs and graces.
His new show The Innocents is coming up on Netflix, he’s currently on air on the ABC and iView in the second run at Jack Irish and he’s just launched his second music album, The Nomad, written and performed by him.
INTERVIEW
This new album is quite moody, not exactly happy.
[Laughs] Not a barrel of laughs, no.
Looking at the cover, it’s clearly about a guy on a journey, but he looks a bit lost.
The chap on that journey in 2015 was a bit lost, to be honest. Thankfully, he's found his way a bit now and he’s not wandering aimlessly down country roads around Los Angeles any more.
The album is a nod to your dad, in fact I assume it's more than just a nod. You say in the liner notes you forgive him. As a father myself I know all us parents have a lot that needs forgiving. Why did you need to forgive your dad – for losing him early?
Yeah, that’s it. I never knew I needed to forgive him. I never knew he wanted to apologise for leaving. As you know he was killed in an aircraft accident in 1976. When someone dies we who are left are very aware of our own grief. It was made clear to me during therapy that his grief was just as profound as ours even though he's not here to express it.
I realised he was also grieving and he wanted to say sorry. The first thing I wanted to do was forgive him. That was eye-opening for me. He was as much a victim as we were.
Did you and your ex-wife [Kate Mestitz] have kids?
No, we never wanted to. So it's quite a left-turn for me now. Like those giant ocean liners that take months to turn around. It's taking me a while to get my head around the fact I now actually have a child [Monte, 2 next month] with my new partner [Carice van Houten, Game of Thrones].
Did forgiving your dad play into your becoming a father?
Um, no. I think us having a child all happened at the same time but it wasn't so logical. 2015 was a year for me when all sorts of things happened out of my grasp. It was about me relinquishing control, which started at the beginning of the year with the end of my marriage and at the end of the year finding out Carice and I were having a baby. It was really a tumultuous year.
You allude to your dad being a nomad – do you see yourself that way? There you are on the album cover.
That's right. I was very much wandering aimlessly through 2015 and the reason I also referenced my dad is the aircraft he was killed in was the Nomad, the aircraft on The Flying Doctors. That plane is why we came to Australia in 1971 when I was 4 'cos Dad was offered the job as chief test pilot for the government aircraft factory.
He would’ve had to test for safety, which is just dripping with irony.
Yep. Absolutely. That's the task for any test pilot, I s’pose. Really fraught with all sorts of danger. The Nomad has been very prominent for me ever since.
You've got the luxury of being able to write an album of songs to process these things, the rest of us work through grief and divorce in more usual ways. What’s been the key to finding equilibrium?
It's an interesting question. I guess it's a belief. I remember telling my wife this in the middle of 2015. It was important for me to let her know I knew I was going to be OK.
Deep down somewhere in there, as devastating as the start of the year was, there's some survival thing in me I s’pose. We’d hope everyone has that ability, obviously, but for lots of us we don't. I'm more than OK now. I have a child in my life, this lovely gift.
What do you want to pass onto him?
What always held me back from having kids was I felt very aware they needed consistency and stability and I always thought in my years of travelling round the world working I’d never be able to offer that to a child. And because of my own emotional fluctuation. I didn’t know how consistent I could be for a child. I mean as great as my mother has been as a mother she's quite, you know, colourful emotionally. I'd like to offer my child something stable [laughs].
Yeah, well good luck with that mate [I laugh wryly].
[He laughs out loud with me.] No, I have a feeling it's not going to work like that at all but, you know, that's what I'd like to offer! I really think honesty. To find the courage to be honest.
You've worked with amazing people on both sides of the ocean, and done some amazing work. What have you enjoyed most these last years?
Jack Irish is a big one for me. It really is. Because it's at home and I love the script and I can slip into Jack with great confidence.
Last year I did The Innocents, a Netflix miniseries out the end of next month. A wonderful group of people to work with and to be honest a lot of it’s really about the people I work with.
Getting back to honesty, if we find out we're short on days or we're short on budget I'd rather know that and work out the best way to solve it. Often as an actor you're kept in the dark, people don't want to freak the actors out so they don't tell them things. The only people who don’t go to production meetings are actors which I always find, ah, fascinating.
What's The Innocents about?
It's tricky to explain. It looks at this genetic malfunction in the female line in some Scandinavian women. It follows a young girl eloping with a young boy in England but she has a Norwegian mother and I play a doctor who's discovered a few women with this genetic malfunction so I've set up a little commune on an island on the west coast of Norway and we try to get the daughter to come to the commune so we can help her. It's a bit science-fiction. When one of these women has a highly emotional experience they shift into the person they're with, they become that person. Very unusual but quite brilliant. I can't explain it very well to be honest, but the way they treat it and shoot it is very real. Powerful and emotional and we got to work with some great Scandinavian actresses.
Hasn't Netflix changed the face of TV!
It's changing the face of the world! Netflix handed the money over to the English team making it and said: “OK, good luck, see ya'!” We said to the producers: “Are you happy with what we're doing?” And they’re like: “Oh, yeah, yep, it's great, bye.” Nothing like the usual studio coming down on every full stop that's changed in the script.
You prefer working with Australians or Americans?
If I had to choose – Australians. Primarily because Americans speak a different language. No offence to them but this humour we have as Aussies, the sardonic and sarcastic way we look at things, is so beautiful and easy to slip back into. When I'm in the States you have to work harder at communication.
It's just so much more satisfying to work at home because it's all so easy to slip back into. It's me. It's who I am. That's one of the things I love about Jack. He can't help but go after the crime and try to solve it. But he’d rather just go to the pub.
- The Nomad now on iTunes.
- Jack Irish series 2 now on ABC and iView.
- The Innocents on Netflix on August 24.