Guy Pearce reflects on his attempt to do big studio movies with The Time Machine

Guy Pearce has come a long way from his days on the Aussie soap opera, Neighbours, to his newest film, The Brutalist, for which he’s receiving major accolades. When reviewing The Brutalist, our own Chris Bumbray said, “Pearce, in particular, has never played a role like Van Buren, with him hiding his sadism behind a polished mid-Atlantic accent similar to the one used by John Huston when he played one of the screen’s great villains in Chinatown. Pearce plays him as a man of great charisma but little in the way of scruples. Yet, he’s not two-dimensional; he is also capable of great compassion, even if it comes with an asterisk.”

And while the scope of The Brutalist is grand in its own right, it’s still a small movie when compared to big studio blockbusters. GQ recently profiled Pearce and the actor reflected on his attempt to be a leading man for the special effects-laden adventure film The Time Machine. Pearce recalls, “I think the process of it felt way too big for me. I can’t make [sense of] this idea of studio films where you just get told what to do by people afraid to lose their jobs. I remember there were discussions at the beginning about how I was going to look. A couple of the executives say, ‘No, he’ll just cut his hair and he’ll just do this and he’ll do that.’ And I’m in the room going, Hello? I’m immediately feeling like my intuition doesn’t mean anything here. That’s a killer for me.”

He continued, “It was the first time I really felt that there was not just a disconnect, but a kind of greater power up there that you couldn’t even really talk to.” While The Time Machine would do well in the international market, it was not formidable competition against other big movies at the time and would be likened to John Carter‘s reception. Pearce would rebound from this attempt with 2004’s The Proposition, where he finally felt he found his place as an actor. He speaks about how his director on that film, John Hillcoat, knew how to pull the performance he needed out of him, “I think it was clearer to him that I’m a versatile actor. I’m interested in all walks of life, and I just want to explore all walks of life…. I had to really dig in deep with John, do lots of research with him, and create a bit of a character for myself, try to find how vulnerable and who this person was.”

Funnily enough, it was at a screening of The Proposition that Pearce’s agent finally knew what road to lead him down, “I remember seeing The Proposition with my agent Chris [Andrews, of CAA] at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005. And when we came out of the screening, Chris said to me, ‘Okay, I now get what it is you’re trying to do.‘ And that was a real important moment for me…to have him understand the career that I’m trying to create.”