Ben Mendelsohn is loving life on the dark side

MELBOURNE actor Ben Mendelsohn is enjoying international acclaim, with audiences loving his more menacing roles.

Ben Mendelsohn in Australia for the premiere of Una Ben Mendelsohn promotes new 'Una' film . Picture: AAP

“THE last audition I went to, I said, you have a choice — I can read it for you now and it will probably suck but then I’m not going to do the job,” a chilled-out Ben Mendelsohn drawls. The alternative was that The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) director Derek Cianfrance could just to give him the job.

It was an ultimatum too good to refuse: “He loved it, he gave me the job.” Now our Mendo seems to be calling the shots.

Australians have loved Mendelsohn, 48, for more than three decades. His first TV role was in The Henderson Kids in 1985, followed by The Year My Voice Broke in 1987.

But the rest of the world has now discovered our star and he’s hot property, renowned for his disarming, even menacing, screen presence and penchant for playing the bad guy.

His characteristic disconcerting delivery, on show last week when he put the Mendelsohn touch on The Lion King’s I Just Can’t Wait to be King for Triple J, has spawned the saying, “Full Mendo”.

Ben Mendelsohn with Loene Carmen in scene from film The Year My Voice Broke.

And now the veteran, who has worked in a bakery and abattoir, done some labouring and even served drinks in a nightclub, is finally prepared to say that acting is “probably” his thing.

“There was a period when I thought, OK, this is done. I acted for a while and it was good ... and now it’s done. It turned out to be not so and things got good,” Mendelsohn tells an audience at a screening of his latest film in Melbourne.

Mendelsohn’s sweaty, unsettling portrayal of Danny Rayburn, a character with more than his fair share of inner demons, in Netflix’s breakout hit Bloodline, earnt the Melbourne-born actor a coveted Emmy award — ahead of Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage and Kit Harington — and Golden Globe nomination.

And he reached peak villain as Director Krennic in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, fulfilling a childhood dream.

Mendelsohn has been in Melbourne this week for the first time in seven years to promote his new film, Una, where he plays a paedophile whose victim (played by Rooney Mara) tracks him down 15 years after he molested her as a 13-year-old. It could just be his most disturbing performance yet.

“I think he’s completely full of s---,” Mendelsohn says of his character Ray.

“I think he’s got feelings of this and that and the other but, no, I don’t like him at all.

“It does not matter whether I like him or not. What you try to do as an actor is do the script justice. I don’t care about what I think about them.

“What I’m trying to do is make whatever it is interesting. I don’t have a personal investment in them and they are not people, they are pretend.”

Ben Mendelsohn as Director Krennic in a scene from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Picture: Jonathan Olley

Mendelsohn is witty and charming as he speaks with writer and broadcaster Marieke Hardy at a special In Conversation screening of Una at Cinema Nova on Sunday. He jokes, he swears, he prays and he tells Hardy he’s getting queasy when she asks if his favourite sportsman, Melbourne Storm star Cameron Smith, plays for Hawthorn.

And he has the packed crowd at Carlton’s Cinema Nova hanging on his every word as he describes actors as being like chemists with a prescription — they add a few ingredients together and return to start filming.

He says a role never truly becomes his.

“They don’t belong to you, you just get to do them, they always belong to an audience in the same way an album belongs to a listener. I’m not the creator, I’m just the actor. I don’t confuse myself with them,” he says.

Mendelsohn’s purple patch has allowed him to be more choosy with roles.

“There are times when you think things are good enough and I can sit this one out. There are things that come along and you think, are you kidding me?

“There are things that are fanciful propositions, people try things on.”

Equally, he says there have been plenty of roles he’s missed out on.

“But if I want them and I’m close to getting them and I don’t get them, I don’t watch them or anything like that. It’s like seeing someone else with your lover. You might want to watch it but you don’t.

“You get over it, you suck it up and you move on, and you hope that the thing you missed out on turns out to be s--- and you dodged the car wreck.”

And he doesn’t read reviews.

“You know when something worked and you know when something hasn’t because people want to come up to you and want to talk about it. When it hasn’t worked, people don’t want to talk about it.”

Actor Ben Mendelsohn in Sydney for the Australian premiere of his latest film Una at the Sydney Film Festival. Picture: AAP Image/Brendan Esposito

Mendelsohn was born in Melbourne but spent extended parts of his childhood in Europe and the United States. He attended Eltham High and later Banyule High School (now Viewbank College), where he discovered acting at 14 with a part in the school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

At 17, he won an Australian Film Institute Award for best supporting actor for his role in The Year My Voice Broke.

“I saw that I think about 10 or 15 years ago. It felt good. I think it takes, for me, it takes a long time for me to be able to watch it as a film. It was very sweet.”

He went on to have roles in films including The Big Steal, Spotswood and Mullet. A lull in work in the early 2000s was followed by parts in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, Rachel Ward’s Beautiful Kate and The Secret Life of Us.

But his seminal piece of work was his award-winning role as Andrew “Pope” Cody, a Melbourne criminal on the run in Animal Kingdom.

Last week when Mendelsohn arrived in Sydney for Sydney Film Festival, he couldn’t even walk down the street reacquainting himself with an Aussie meat pie and sauce without being papped.

Mendelsohn has lived in the US for the past seven years.

“LA feels like where I live. Melbourne feels like home. I love this joint.”

Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn in a scene from film Una.

He told the Herald Sun in 2015: “I’m very proudly a Melbournite. There are qualities of that city I’ve always carried with me, all over the world, and I suspect I always will. I’m very much a Melbourne person in terms of attitude. I couldn’t even tell you in words what that means, but it’s a feeling.”

As well as speaking at screenings of Una at Nova and the Astor theatre on Sunday, Mendelsohn visited Readings in Lygon St, Carlton, to buy some albums.

“The way things are now, it’s beautiful. It’s a great time,” Mendelsohn says.

“That will probably, knowing the nature of things, drop off a bit. I will be happy to keep working til I drop.”

Una opens in cinemas on Thursday.

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