Joel Edgerton lived out his childhood fantasy on Red Sparrow but doesn’t want to be 007

JOEL Edgerton might be living out a childhood fantasy opposite Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow, but says he’d make a terrible spy

WHEN Daniel Craig finally hangs up his Walther PPK after his fifth and final James Bond movie, one actor who won’t be putting up his hand to replace him is Joel Edgerton.

The Aussie actor’s name had been mentioned in dispatches as a possible 007 when Craig seemingly ruled himself out after Spectre but, for Edgerton, the coveted role is as fraught with danger as it is with reward.

“Were they written by my parents?” Edgerton says with a laugh on hearing of reports suggesting he might be a good fit for the role. “James Bond is like picking up a cobra I think. If you are Daniel Craig you pick it up by the tail and manage to grab it by the back of the neck and you are successful. Other people I think try to pick up that cobra and it turns around and bites them. James Bond is such a mantle — I don’t know that I would make a great James Bond. I definitely drink martinis though.”

Besides, Edgerton has now had his spy fix thanks to his new thriller with Jennifer Lawrence, Red Sparrow. After living out his sword-fighting fantasies with a bit part in the 2004 blockbuster King Arthur, and his martial arts obsession in the acclaimed cage fighting hit Warrior in 2011, Edgerton finally got the chance to make his childhood secret agent dreams come true. As a kid, Edgerton used to skulk around the bushland of Dural, on Sydney’s fringes, with his spy kit full of “secret things”, building his own bugs with gear bought from Dick Smith and looking for sleeper agents.

Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton in a scene from the spy thriller Red Sparrow. 20th Century Fox Films.

“They are all hiding in Dural — that’s where they go,” he jokes. “When they go into the cold, you can find all the ones on ice in Dural. I think around the age of 10 or 11 I was desperately trying to find them.

“Certain stories plug into your childhood and they become more attractive because of that. I’ll never be a spy — I’d make a terrible spy, I wouldn’t even pass the polygraph phase or the interview section but the idea that I get to be an actor and act that I am an operative, it’s cool. And it’s not lost on me that I get to for some reason at the age of 43 play out a childhood fantasy.”

Red Sparrow, which is based on the bestseller of the same name written by former CIA operative Jason Matthews and stars Lawrence as a Russian ballerina turned spy, is a world away from the glamorous, sex-and-action-heavy established spy franchises.

Its dark undertones and twists and turns are more reminiscent of the shady world of John le Carre, whose classic 1963 novel The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Edgerton had studied while still at school. Add to that the fact that the once villainous Russians of that Cold War world were back in vogue as the go-to bad guys having been supplanted for years by Middle Eastern types and Edgerton was intrigued enough to sign on to play CIA agent Nate Nash, who becomes entangled with Lawrence’s Dominika Egorova.

“It just reminded me of John le Carre spy stories — more of the cat and mouse, cerebral, chess game thriller,” he says. “I liked that and liked that it talked about the area of spy craft where it’s really about strategy and being able to cope with the stress and anxieties of that rather than constantly flipping cars and hiding guns in every part of your body. You have your Jason Bournes and your James Bonds and this lives in more of a strategy world and I loved that character-wise.”

Actors Mary-Louise Parker, left, Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton pose with director Francis Lawrence, at the New York premiere of Red Sparrow. Picture: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Edgerton spoke to Matthews about the real world of espionage and discovered that most who worked in it were not bulletproof action heroes, but rather “human beings who happen to have very high-level, high-clearance, high-anxiety jobs”.

“They still have to feed themselves and they still have to think about life or death and they have to weigh up family or no family and I found a lot of those dilemmas very interesting,” he says. “The character I play by way of his job has allowed himself to continue to lead a very monastic and simple and lonely life. He drinks a bit too much and pays for female company and I just found something kind of sad about the character rather than glamorous.”

Edgerton’s co-star Lawrence has said she had to face her own fears to film some very confronting nude and sex scenes to play a character for whom seduction is both a tool and an obligation. Edgerton says it was a genuine pleasure to go work with an actor he ranks alongside Cate Blanchett as among the very best around.

“Jen is a machine,” he says. “She’s up for anything and game to wrestle with whatever demons she needs to for the sake of the movie and manages to take it seriously without taking it too seriously. She’s an incredibly intuitive actor and already at the age of 27 has managed to secure herself a place on the top shelf of actors of all time.”

And in the light of last week’s dress controversy, when Lawrence was compelled to defend herself from the supposedly sexist situation of wearing a designer gown in the cold when her male co-stars were rugged up, Edgerton says his co-star is more than capable of taking care of herself.

After the controversy of Jennifer Lawrence’s dress at a Red Sparrow photo call in London, Joel Edgerton says his co-star can take care of herself. Picture: John Phillips/John Phillips/Getty Images

“She’s really fun,” he says. “She knows when to take things seriously and when not to and I think she’s like that in life. And I think she has worked out how to handle being in the public eye. She doesn’t take that too seriously and has developed a pretty thick skin. She knows when to bite back and I don’t think she lets the shadows of journalists loom over her and diminish her. She stands tall and fights back and sometimes does it with a really great sense of humour.”

In addition to his continued critical and box office success as an actor in films such as Loving, The Great Gatsby, Black Mass and Exodus: Gods and Kings, Edgerton has also developed a reputation as talented writer and actor. His 2015 Hollywood directing debut, The Gift, in which he also starred alongside Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall, was nominated for a swag of awards and turned a tidy profit. He’s currently in post-production on his second feature, Boy Erased, having finally paired up compatriots Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman on the big screen for the first time, as well as Aussie singing star Troye Sivan.

“It’s based on a memoir by a guy called Garrett Connelly, whose Baptist father and mother found out he was gay and sent him to one of these places that I would describe as a religious sexual reorientation camp or a conversion therapy place. Nicole Kidman is playing the mother and Russell is playing the father.

“When I read the book and when I met the parents Russell just seemed like the only guy who could have done it service and really would capture this guy’s essence. And Nicole was the same when it came to the mother. And then of course, Flea, who I would like to think is technically Australian because he was born in Victoria. And Troye Sivan, who as well as being an incredible singer first and secondly is also a very enigmatic and watchable and excellent young actor as well.”

WATCH Red Sparrow opens tomorrow.