Eric Bana embraces the dark side in true crime series Dirty John
Eric Bana is taking on one of his darkest roles yet in the new true crime series Dirty John. But playing frightening characters can come at a cost for many actors — especially for those who embrace method acting.
Entertainment
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News.
He may have first made his name playing funny boofheads in Aussie comedies but Eric Bana has become all too familiar with the darker side of acting.
From career criminal Mark “Chopper” Read in the 2000 film Chopper to troubled Mossad assassin Avner in Munich and, recently, the remorseless murderer Piet Bloomfield in The Forgiven, Bana has not been afraid to portray those who may not be on the side of the light.
Now, as the Melbourne father-of-two takes on one of his most notorious roles, he’s careful about how readily he embraces the darkness.
“There’s a lot of scope to explore that sociopath behaviour,” he says.
“Sometimes it can be a bit like quicksand. While there’s a lot of factual information about John, there’s a lot of stuff about him that I don’t want to know.”
Bana is talking about John Meehan, the titular character of Dirty John, a new true crime series by Bravo.
The American conman met Newport Beach woman Debra Newell and began a relationship with her in 2014. The relationship progressed very quickly before it took a series of distinctly sinister turns.
The series is an adaptation of the hugely popular Los Angeles Times podcast of the same name, by journalist Christopher Goffard.
Bana has been cast to play the man who lured Newell into a life of manipulation and lies.
“Studying how sociopaths behave and think was as important to me as it was to just focus on specific events that occurred in his life and kind of put them in some sort of memory bank,” Bana says.
“I think part of the mystery of John is these types of characters may not even know themselves whether it’s real, and I think that’s really interesting.”
Playing darker roles can take a toll on actors, especially for those who embrace method acting — the process of emotionally immersing yourself in a role.
Janet Leigh getting “stabbed” in the shower in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic horror Psycho is still touted among the most horrifying scenes in cinema. It also deeply affected the star.
“I stopped taking showers and I take baths, only baths,” Leigh told The New York Times in 1995.
“I make sure the doors and windows of the house are locked and I leave the bathroom door open and shower curtain open.”
In 1981, Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession brought to screen a terrifying subway scene that won actor Isabelle Adjani a Cesar award. But Adjani confessed to a French magazine that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after filming and was in therapy for years.
Australian heart-throb Heath Ledger kept a disturbing diary filled with images of clowns, aimed at transferring him into psychopathic territory for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight.
Prior to filming, he isolated himself and studied the material. He later told The New York Times that he was unable to sleep more than two hours a night.
More recently, rising star Bill Skarsgard suffered horrific nightmares after playing the terrifying clown-monster Pennywise in the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s It.
“I was home, done with the movie, and I started having very strange and vivid Pennywise dreams. Every night, he came and visited,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
That inability to leave a dark character behind can be debilitating.
MORE FROM ANGIRA BHARADWAJ
CELEBRITY TRAINER’S SECRET TO LOOKING LIKE AN A-LISTER
ELLY-MAY BARNES ON MOTHERHOOD AND MENTAL HEALTH
Research by entertainment union the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance found a concerning pattern of stress, anxiety, depression, and drug and alcohol use among actors.
Almost 40 per cent said they faced difficulties in relaxing and letting go of an emotionally and physically demanding role.
Dean Carey is the founder of the Actors Centre Australia. The country’s biggest
artists have honed their skills at his school, including Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Rose Byrne, Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe and graduate and patron, Hugh Jackman.
Carey is currently writing a book on the damage he has witnessed actors have to recover from after playing traumatic characters.
“Someone like Heath, who is on set playing that Joker 24/7 and then goes home with that dynamic on his skin, he needed a lot of alcohol and Stilnox to get to sleep every night,” he says.
“The darkness affects their relationships with their husband, wives, kids and people around them.”
Carey advises actors to separate the artist from the person.
Mixing the two as Bana does in Dirty John, he warns, can be a dangerous cocktail.
“Make sure the artists do what the artist has to do but make sure the person is looked after,” Carey says.
“This is why I don’t believe in method acting. If I was asked to play a role where I was asked to physically abuse a woman, I don’t think I could do it.
“I don’t think that the industry has any real understanding of how to support actors through roles such as this. They’re doing their own thing and they want the person to be the monster character when they are filming but the person is just left there.”
It’s easy to see, however, why actors such as Bana might delve into these dark spaces.
The Dirty John podcast was downloaded 10 million times within six weeks of its release.
And nuanced roles have been paying off in his age of the “premium drama” — often in content that is daring and dark.
Screen Australia chief executive Graeme Mason says Australian actors such as Yael Stone and Yvonne Strahovski are a testament to experiments done well.
“From an Australian perspective, the actors that took a leap of faith into these new premium dramas early were richly rewarded,” Mason says.
Stone plays criminal Lorna Morello Muccio in Orange Is The New Black, while Strahovski plays the far darker, sombre Serena Joy in The Handmaid’s Tale.
The latter has participated in numerous “ceremony” scenes, where Strahovski holds down a woman as she is raped by her
on-screen husband.
“I would say it’s actually HBO (that) could lay claim to being the pioneers of risk-taking, premium drama in the English-speaking market,” Mason says.
He finds another example of Aussies taking on mentally challenging characters in actor Katherine Langford who plays Hannah Baker — a deeply troubled rape victim on the controversial Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.
“What Netflix and Co have done so well is take that notion of programming premium product for niches, rather than the masses, onto a global scale using technology. And with that has come incredible work opportunities for Australians,” he says.
For Bana, it is likely that diving into the murky waters of Meehan’s life with Newell will catapult him into a new phase of Hollywood stardom.
The trailer of the series has already caught the world’s attention.
But Mason says it doesn’t matter, Bana has nothing to prove: “(The world) is just about to find out how good he really is.”
Originally published as Eric Bana embraces the dark side in true crime series Dirty John
Royal family posts job ad with low salary
Buckingham Palace has rushed to correct an “error” for inadvertently posting a housekeeper job ad with a salary that is less than minimum wage.
Bianca’s mum responds to Kanye ‘sex request’
Bianca Censori’s Aussie mum has responded to reports about her son-in-law’s alleged X-rated request.