Melbourne actor Eric Bana awarded Order of Australia

He shot to fame in local favourites Full Frontal and The Castle before making it big in Hollywood. But what recently gave Order of Australia recipient Eric Bana a new appreciation for his country?

Bana with Ricky Gervais in the Netflix movie Special Correspondents.

Having recently returned from the red dirt landscape of the Victorian Mallee — where he has been filming award-winning author Jane Harper’s novel The Dry— Order of Australia recipient Eric Bana has a deep, new appreciation for his country.

Cockatoos wheeling through azure skies, burnt orange sunrises and sunsets, fresh air and the generous spirit of country folk have all left an indelible mark on the city-based actor’s heart.

Other cast members of The Dry, including Genevieve O’Reilly and John Polson, felt similarly about their seven weeks in the Australian bush, Bana said.

Eric Bana says he’s thrilled to be named in the Queen’s Birthday honours list. Picture: Britta Campion

“It really got under our skin. We all very much had major adjustment periods coming back to the city afterwards,” Bana said.

“We absolutely fell in love with it and I think the privilege of actually spending time there, as opposed to just driving through it, is getting a real sense of what that means to be in that landscape. I just absolutely loved it.”

The experience made him all the more humbled by his unexpected Queen’s Birthday honour, which Bana said he was “shocked” and “thrilled” to receive.

“It’s not something I ever thought about and it’s not something I ever even aspired to, it just happened. It’s never been on my radar, so I am genuinely shocked and obviously thrilled — I am really, really chuffed,” Bana said.

His parents, who immigrated to Australia when they were in their teens (his father from Croatia and mother from Germany), would likely be equally thrilled, and probably more than a tad proud, when they learned of the honour which had been bestowed upon their son for service to the performing arts and charities, he said.

Indeed, even his two kids would be “suitably impressed”.

Bana starred in one of Australia’s most popular films, The Castle.

Bana as Mark ‘Chopper’ Read in Chopper.

“I think they will be quite surprised and pretty impressed,” Bana said of his 19-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter.

“Hopefully it will get me a good 48 hours of respect in the house and that will be fantastic.”

To have been able to share the news with his late grandparents would have been the icing on the cake, he said.

Bana said he had been privileged to have parts in films and television shows which were loved by many Australians.

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“I think you’re always lucky, always fortunate if you can do any piece of work which has recall and I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of a television show which was hugely popular at one time in Full Frontal and which had an incredible cast and then was lucky enough to be one of many cast members in The Castle, which has held up incredibly well … it takes a lot of luck to be in the right place at the right time to be on the receiving end of those opportunities, so it’s been great.”

Bana, who also played Chopper Read in the film Chopper, and starred in Black Hawk Down, Hulk, Troy, The Time Traveler’s Wife and Romulus, My Father among other films and TV series and shows, said he was always grateful to be Australian, and to be able to work and raise his children in the Lucky Country.