Guy Pearce on his role in ‘The Brutalist’ and why he's drawn to playing powerful people

Guy Pearce is an intriguing performer. Prolific, versatile, frequently daring, he has worked with a slew of world-class directors, including Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, Todd Haynes, Curtis Hanson and Kathryn Bigelow. But for decades now the Australian actor has kept a low‑key profile.

His performance as a quixotic industrialist in The Brutalist may make that reticence a little harder to maintain. Brady Corbet’s epic tale of capitalism, immigration and the corruption of the American Dream is centred on a Hungarian Jewish architect’s efforts to rekindle his career in the US after the Second World War, with Adrien Brody as the titular visionary and Felicity Jones as his wife, each scarred by the Holocaust. And Pearce has been receiving some of the best reviews of his career as their combustible, exceedingly complex patron and nemesis.

“I was taken by the density of it,” he says, via Zoom from his home in the Netherlands, of first reading Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s script. “And when I say that, I mean everything we feel when we watch the film, a sort of grandeur and gravitas.”

Pearce quickly viewed Corbet’s earlier films, The Childhood Of A Leader and Vox Lux. “I watched one straight after the other,” he recounts.  “And now I’m having that feeling I had with Chris Nolan [for Memento], where I’m scared I’m not going to get this job. I really, really want it. This guy is amazing. This guy has a voice as a filmmaker that others don’t. He is unique.”

His appraisal of Corbet was borne out by the Silver Lion for best director on the film’s premiere in Venice this year. Pearce himself has gone on to earn a supporting performance Gotham nomination for The Brutalist, which releases via A24 in the US on December 20 and via Universal Pictures/Focus Features for international.

“This is one of those great jobs where I don’t have to do any work to cobble a character together, try and find who this person is,” says Pearce of his character Harrison Lee Van Buren. “He’s just leaping off the page like in a great book.

“I immediately found interesting that he’s trying to identify himself through power and this capitalistic world he builds for himself, but at the same time is sophisticated enough to recognise great art,” he continues. “I loved the push-pull between those two things. The first time we see him, I’m vile, I’m exploding; the second time, in the café with Adrien, I’m in absolute adoration of who this man is, his artistry and skill. And that probably leaves the audience going, ‘Okay, we don’t know what we’re going to get with this guy.’ There’s a sense of unpredictability.”

Pearce has played a magnate before — the recurring role of Peter Weyland, whose nefarious attempt to beat death fuels later entries in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus/Alien saga. “I’m drawn to these people,” he explains. “I’m pretty insecure. I’m more secure these days, in myself, but I can’t hold a room and have that kind of chutzpah, and I’m fascinated by people who can. Peter Weyland, Van Buren, they have an incredible self-confidence.” 

Pearce warms to his theme. “It was funny when we did [ITV/Sony spy TV series] A Spy Among Friends. There I was playing Kim Philby, who could hold a room, working with Damian Lewis, who can hold a room… The whole time I was going, ‘He should be playing Philby.’ It’s real work for me to play these kinds of guys.”

Giving voice

As with all of his characters, the starting point for Van Buren was the voice. “If I feel I’ve got the voice right, then I’m home and no-one can take anything away from me. I’m pretty good with my voice — I can sing, I’ve got a good ear, I’m pretty good with accents. So that’s my comfort zone.” He “kind of pinched” Van Buren’s voice from his work on Todd Haynes’ Mildred Pierce, for which the actor won a Primetime Emmy for a performance opposite Kate Winslet as a Depression-­era, upper-class slacker. 

“There’s an old-fashioned sense of articulation,” says Pearce. “Strangely, I know [actor] Danny Huston quite well, and that’s exactly how he talks, ‘Guy, so delightful to see you. Oh my gosh. You fill my heart with joy.’” The impersonation is spot-on. “Danny is the most gorgeously warm, affectionate and compassionate human being. But if you take that syrupy voice and apply it to somebody who is power-­hungry or sneaky, it makes things a little unnerving. It can be kind of condescending, ‘I’m up here, just looking down upon you all. Aren’t you quaint.’” 

Pearce remains as busy as ever. In July, he filmed Killing Faith, a thriller with a western setting alongside DeWanda Wise in New Mexico, and he has just wrapped an adaptation of Ruth Ware’s psychological thriller The Woman In Cabin 10, starring Keira Knightley, which has included a month filming on board a superyacht in Dorset on the south coast of England. And two other co-stars from that film, Hannah Waddingham and Daniel Ings, will also appear with him in the recently announced Mr. Sunny Sky, in which Pearce plays a once chart-­topping pop star-turned-lounge singer at an island hotel, embroiled in a dangerous romance. 

Pearce has actually had a musical career, alongside acting, releasing two albums in the 2010s, and is sitting in his own “little studio” as we chat. He laughs when asked if he sees himself as more pop or lounge. “I would be more lounge. I probably would have got shoehorned into pop if I had made some music in the ’80s, but thankfully everyone rolled their eyes at yet another Neighbours actor who wanted to make it,” Pearce says, referencing the longrunning Australian soap in which he starred alongside Kylie Minogue.

There is also the mooted sequel to 1994’s The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, with writer/director Stephan Elliott again at the helm and Pearce, Hugo Weaving and Terence Stamp reprising their roles. 

Pearce, who played the young drag queen Felicia Jollygoodfellow, is circumspect. “We are talking about it. We would be keen to do something if the script is good, if it felt like a truthful and authentic journey. We don’t want to damage the reputation of the first one. That’s quite beloved.”

The first Priscilla launched Pearce’s international career, which gained further momentum with L.A. Confidential, Memento and The Hurt Locker. He has never moved to the US, “much to my agent’s chagrin” but with no regrets of his own, preferring originally to remain in Melbourne and, more recently, the Netherlands to be with his eight-year-old son, who he shares with Carice van Houten.

“Yeah, I’ve had a lot of people say I screwed my career, because I didn’t go and do what I should have done… you know, superhero-type movies,” he says, citing his early fame with Neighbours as the reason. “I didn’t want screaming fans chasing me down the street like I did when I was on the TV show back in Australia.

“In fact, my mother had a bit of disdain for the States,” he adds, offering one further amusing insight. “So I was sort of brought up with that attitude. Mum was from the north of England, so she was quite sarky. You know, if someone rang the doorbell, she’d be like, ‘Just because you’re ringing the doorbell doesn’t mean I’m going to answer it.”

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