Force of Nature star Eric Bana on going bush, directing himself and why he misses his stand-up days

Since his breakthrough role in Chopper more than 20 years ago, Eric Bana has been in global demand, but his “favourite thing in the world” is still exclusive to Australia.

Actor and self-confessed revhead Eric Bana loves nothing more than hitting the road and disappearing when he’s not working.

For more than two decades since his portrayal of infamous criminal Mark “Chopper” Read thrust him into the global spotlight (acting great Robert Duvall called it “one of the great performances you will ever see”), the former stand-up and sketch comedian has been one of our most reliable exports, sought out by revered directors from Ang Lee to Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott and Judd Apatow.

But when he’s back home in Melbourne, apart from spending time with his wife Rebecca and two adult children, Klaus and Sophia, his “favourite thing in the world” is to recharge his batteries by going bush on his motorbike.

For years he’s sought out remote trails in Victoria and New South Wales while staying in local pubs where the few people he meets couldn’t care less about his fame or his day job.

“They have no interest in talking to you about work or you being you,” Bana says.

“It’s just about ‘where did you come from? What road did you use? Where you going?’ They want to tell you what track you should ride. It just gets rid of all that.

“And I can’t not go to the pub because I’m worried about getting hassled. I just have to be ingrained in the country experience … I have done it forever and it means everything to me. It’s good for my creativity. It’s good for mental health. It’s incredible exercise. It’s challenging. I spend months planning rides, thinking about them gives me pleasure. Thinking about the ones I have done gives me pleasure. I can’t get enough.”

Eric Bana and Robert Connoly on the set of the movie Force of Nature: The Dry 2.

Bana’s biking side quests and local knowledge have also proved invaluable for his film career, particularly for his 2020 hit The Dry and its coming sequel Force Of Nature, both based on the thrillers of the same name by Australian author Jane Harper.

The first film, which made more than $34 million worldwide on its way to becoming the 14th most successful Australian film ever, was filmed in the parched and drought-stricken Mallee and Wimmera regions and introduced cinema audiences to Federal Agent Aaron Falk.

But for the new film, which marks the first time Bana has reprised a character in his long career, he and his long-time friend and collaborator, writer/producer/director Robert Connolly went to the other extreme in Victoria.

In what Bana describes as “the toughest physical shoot I’ve ever seen crew endure”, Force of Nature filmed in the Otways, the Dandenong Ranges, the Yarra Ranges and the Latrobe Valley, braving rain and frigid temperatures in the middle of winter – and often in locations so remote and rugged that they had to lug cameras and other gear in on foot.

“It’s crazy how you take things for granted – like just being able to take two or three steps on level ground,” says Bana.

“It happened to me a couple times where I did a film in the snow and it wasn’t until I wrapped and I got back to the city, and I walked along a pavement didn’t have ice on it and realised how much my back had been tense the whole time. It was the same with this, just constantly having to watch what you what you’re doing.”

And then there were the leeches.

Tony Briggs, Eric Bana and Jacqueline McKenzie in a scene from the movie Force of Nature: The Dry 2.

“There were so many,” says Connolly, who shares an office with Bana, and has directed acclaimed homegrown movies including The Bank, Balibo and Paper Planes.

“The crew were getting them on their eyeballs and the nurse was trying to get them off. I grew up in the bush and they always feel like they’re more of a bothersome thing than they probably ultimately are. It’s so beautiful and I always fear that they make people feel like going into the bush is a traumatic thing.”

Both agree that all the hard work and hardship paid off for the film, which was co-produced by Bruno Papandrea of Big Little Lies and The Undoing fame and also stars Aussie stalwarts Deborra-Lee Furness, Anna Torv, Richard Roxburgh and Jacqueline McKenzie.

Like the first film, the wild landscape is very much a character in Force of Nature, in which multiple crimes unfold over two different time periods, as group of five women disappear in the wilderness and Falk on the trail of a massive corporate fraud.

“What I love about the way Jane Harper creates these locations within the stories as a character, it helps you as a filmmaker avoid the danger of feeling like a tourism ad because the landscape has a narrative function,” says Connolly.

“And if you’re making a survival story, if people are joking that you are shooting The Revenant in Victoria, there can’t be half measures. You can’t make it feel like we took the actors down at night and filmed in the Botanic Gardens, so we put the actors in the toughest landscapes.”

Rebecca Gleeson and Eric Bana at the world premiere of Force of Nature: The Dry 2 at Village Cinemas Rivoli on January 21, 2024 in Melbourne. Picture: Getty Images

Like many Australian films, Force of Nature was a lean, mean production, with Bana directing some scenes to save time and money. If Connolly was in one location with the women, Bana would sometimes be dispatched to shoot scenes featuring protagonist Falk.

“It was fine,” he says with a laugh of directing himself. “Very easy. I’m very low maintenance. Very efficient.”

Bana has runs on the board as a director thanks to his 2009 car documentary Love the Beast, but he’s not sure he’s up for a full feature film. He chuckles at the reminder that it’s now been 30 years since he made his debut on Full Frontal and released his comedy album Out Of Bounds.

He still remembers his stand-up days fondly and the thought that he would have amassed the body of work he now has – let alone be seated behind the Prime Minister and Rod Laver at last week’s Australian Open final – would likely have seemed far-fetched.

He puts his success down to hard work, luck, surrounding himself with incredible talent and, even as his success grew, “realising that you are only a couple of bad performances away from no one talking about you again”.

“They were always just relatively project based,” he says of his early ambitions.

“I always had ideas … like get through this idea, try this, try that. It was always experimental. I was always open to things. I had no massive long-term grand plans and that probably really worked in my favour. So I was always, not super shortsighted, but it was always short-term goals with projects and just trying to enjoy it. That was always what I was trying to do. They were great days. I really miss them.”

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 opens in cinemas on February 8 with sneak peeks this weekend.

Originally published as Force of Nature star Eric Bana on going bush, directing himself and why he misses his stand-up days