Guy Pearce is playing to his own tune
AUSSIE actor Guy Pearce has emerged from the dark days of his broken marriage with a wealth of new projects, a new partner, a toddler son who loves the beach and a new positive outlook.
VIC News
Don't miss out on the headlines from VIC News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THERE was a time in the mid to late ’80s when you could barely turn on the radio without hearing someone from Neighbours. Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan ruled the airwaves here and in the UK, Craig McLachlan had the mercifully brief band Check 1-2, even Stefan Dennis and Annie Jones had a go.
But if Guy Pearce didn’t join them, it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.
Ramsay Street’s Mike Young, who has since become one of our most successful and versatile acting talents on the global stage, has been making music since he was 10.
The problem was, as Pearce found out when he shopped it around to various record labels at the height of his soapie fame, it wasn’t the kind of music that was expected from him.
“I was making a lot of weird, experimental s--- that was probably a good thing that I didn’t inflict upon the world,” Pearce says.
“The reality is that maybe I needed to take that time to take my ego out of the process and go, ‘I just like making music because I like making music. Yes, I’m envious of Jason and Kylie’s success and I would love that. But I don’t do what they do, so I therefore don’t know what to do. So what I’ll do is lock it away’.”
And, stung by the rejection, lock it away he did — for decades. Though he continued to write and record in his home studio — and always took a guitar with him as his acting career flourished in Hollywood, thanks to films such as L.A. Confidential and Memento — he always dismissed out of hand any suggestion he might share his musical musings with the world.
It wasn’t until he returned home to star in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of Poor Boy in 2009, singing songs written by Tim Finn, that Pearce began to change his mind.
Fellow musician Michael Barker made Pearce realise the only barriers to him releasing his own music were ones he placed on himself. The floodgates opened and Pearce wrote, produced and arranged his debut album, Broken Bones, which was released in 2014 to critical acclaim, followed by a successful tour.
“Michael made a very valid point that, as a creative person, to put the shackles on, you’re really not doing yourself any favours whatsoever,” Pearce says. “And so whether I was confident or not confident about it was sort of beside the point.
“The reality is that I like to make music, and if I want to get it out to people, I should.”
Pearce will release his second album, The Nomad, next month, and to say it’s a personal passion project would be a monumental understatement.
The Geelong-raised actor wrote the songs in a creative burst in 2015, when his life was in massive upheaval, having split from his wife of 18 years, psychologist Kate Mestitz. Pearce says he was left a broken mess by the breakdown of his marriage, and music was his way of channelling his pain and heartbreak into something more productive than dark thoughts and the copious amounts of wine he’d turned to.
At his lowest ebb, Pearce recalls stumbling drunk around Berlin, where he was shooting a film, thinking that “if some old weird Eastern Bloc bus ran me down” it would be an easy way out.
“I should have called the album The Catharsis,” Pearce says with a laugh. “It’s like therapy really except … well, I was going to say it’s cheaper, but it’s actually more expensive.
“When I started writing the songs I was literally sitting over the piano crying, crying and crying for hours at night, drinking, playing chords over and over — it was really pathetic.
“I was broken, I was at a loss and I was really a mess. And I eventually thought, ‘OK, there’s some material in here — why don’t I try to be mature and actually focus this and contain some of it so it’s listenable’.”
At its heart was Pearce’s quest to find out who he was without his wife, to whom the album is dedicated and who he still loves dearly (“She’s the most adorable woman in the world, so how can I not love her forever?”).
After 20 years in a relationship, Pearce says people tend to “morph into a version of ourselves that is the pair of you”, and when that no longer existed, he realised he needed to work through his emotional turmoil and learn to stand on his own two feet again.
“You can sit there and say, I am angry about what’s happened or sad about what’s happened or I am a failure because of what’s happened,” he says. “But ultimately you have to get back to the fact that you are who you are on your own.
“You are born into this world on your own, you’re in a relationship, if the relationship ends, you are again here on your own — and who are you in all of this? What have you learned from it? What’s negative? What’s positive? And how do you move forward and progress?”
Pearce admits he’s nervous about wearing his heart on his sleeve in his deeply personal songs, especially as a figure in the public eye, but says he is now old enough and confident enough to share his flaws and vulnerability, regardless of the consequences. And after the warm reception of his first album, plus the support and encouragement of his old friend, Grammy-winning producer Joe Henry, he’s not too fussed now about what other people think.
“I am not trying to shove it down your throat,” he says. “It is what it is and please respect the fact that I need to express it.
“I am sure there are some people who go, ‘Oh f--- off mate’ but I don’t care. Now I am not so stifled by somebody who does have that attitude.”
If writing The Nomad — named in part for the shiftless lifestyle of an in-demand international movie star, and for the name of the aeroplane his air force pilot father was flying when he was killed in a crash when Pearce was just eight — was Pearce’s way of moving on from his emotional turmoil, it’s worked wonders.
He quit drinking a couple of years ago and found love again with Dutch Game of Thrones star Carice van Houten, whom he met on the set of 2016 Western thriller Brimstone. And after years of saying parenting wasn’t for him, Pearce is revelling in his new role as father to Monte, who will turn two in August.
It’s a whole new set of challenges for Pearce, not least splitting time with his new family between Melbourne, Amsterdam and wherever his work takes him. Fatherhood and a devotion to therapy, he says, have also helped him better understand his relationship with his own father and deep-seated issues of forgiveness from losing him at such an impressionable age.
“I’m 50, so all my friends have 25-year-olds and 22-year-olds and 15-year-olds and they’re all slapping me on the back saying, ‘Well, good luck, Princess’,” Pearce says with a laugh. “I’m there going, ‘Wow, I have this little boy that looks at me and tries to tell me whether something is made of metal or whether it’s made of plastic and he looks at me and wants my approval. I have never felt anything like that before. “I know I’m way behind the eight ball, but I’m very glad that I’m here today to be experiencing that.”
Becoming a parent later in life has had upsides too. Pearce has nothing left to prove in the acting world: he’s done blockbusters such as Iron Man 3 and Prometheus, won an Emmy for TV drama Mildred Pierce, and made vital contributions to acclaimed dramas including The King’s Speech, Animal Kingdom and Holding the Man. He’s in as much demand as ever, and will soon appear in historical drama Mary Queen of Scots with Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan, Netflix series The Innocents, and another season of his much-loved, homegrown detective drama Jack Irish.
Fatherhood has helped put the frantic but fleeting demands of a globetrotting movie star into perspective.
“Someone said to me that really the opposite of love is impatience,” he says. “I thought, ‘It’s really true’. To sit there on the floor with your boy while he’s trying to draw a picture or he wants to play with his cars or he wants to just invent something and you’ve got some emails to respond to. You’ve just got to be patient. “So I’m learning patience, I think. I’m old enough now to do that.”
Pearce says it’s a challenge bringing up a bilingual son with limited Dutch himself, but he’s adjusting well to his adopted land, which he finds shares many similarities with Australia in terms of freedom, honesty, open-mindedness and the concept of a fair go.
“The ‘chh’ sound is a bit tricky to get my head and throat around,” he says of his attempts to learn the lingo. “The Germans say that Dutch isn’t really a language, it’s a throat disease.
“Holland’s a fascinating place — they are really quite advanced in a lot of ways and they are also like a big pack of bogans on another level. And I say that in the most loving way of course. My girlfriend Carice, I have educated her in the ways of the bogan so she is getting
a sense of what it’s all about.”
Pearce is doing his best to make sure Monte grows up with a firm grip on his Australian heritage. The family came back to Australia last Christmas and will return later this year so Pearce can make his directorial debut with a feature film version of Poor Boy, in which he will also star alongside Richard Roxburgh, Frances O’Connor and van Houten.
“He (Monte) knows how to throw his fists in the air and say, ‘Go Cats’ or put his thumbs up and say, ‘Good on yer’,” Pearce says. “So I am doing as much Ockerfying as I possibly can, but it’s really about making sure his English is up to scratch as he is surrounded by everyone else speaking Dutch. I’m doing what I can to keep him being a little Aussie boy.
“He’s quite keen to get back to the beach. He spent a bit of time at Fairhaven last Christmas and as the clouds come in and the rain pours down over Amsterdam he’s going, ‘Beach, beach?’ and it’s 5C and I have to say, ‘Well, mate, today’s not the day we are going to the beach. We going to put our boots and woolly hats on and go to the park and we’re going to watch people dressed up in orange’.”
Pearce and van Houten’s partnership has become a creative one as well as a personal one. Not only is the Dutch beauty, who plays red priestess Melisandre in the hit HBO fantasy drama, appearing in Poor Boy, she also provided back-up vocals on The Nomad.
“She’s got a beautiful voice and she was very happy to sing for me,” Pearce says. “It’s not just nepotism, there’s something quite appropriate about her voice appearing in my story, if that makes sense.
“Carice makes music herself and she’s asked me if I would sing or play some music for her and I think there’s something really lovely and genuine about friends and lovers creating together.”
Pearce, however, won’t be returning the favour on Game of Thrones — and he’s no help at all with inside information on next year’s final season, which is one of the most eagerly anticipated events in TV history. He has spoilers — he just has no clue what they mean.
“I’m embarrassed to say that unlike the rest of the world I’ve never watched a season of Game of Thrones,” he says a little sheepishly.
“I obviously know what’s happening. I’m well aware of what’s happening in the final season of Game of Thrones and probably should start watching some of it, but I’d probably have to go back to season one to really be able to catch up. “I haven’t even watched Breaking Bad. It’s insulting, isn’t it?”
THE NOMAD IS OUT JULY 6. guypearce.net
GUY PEARCE, ARTS CENTRE, PLAYHOUSE, JULY 8. artscentremelbourne.com.au
JACK IRISH SERIES 2 STARTS JULY 8, 8.30PM, ON ABC AND ABC IVIEW.
THE INNOCENTS SCREENs ON NETFLIX IN AUGUST.
james.wigney@news.com.au
‘Angels’: Hero Coles workers save mum’s life
A mother of three has opened up on how her life was saved after she suddenly collapsed while doing a routine supermarket shop.
Wildlife and traffic fears over music festival
Wildlife advocates fear a weekend music festival in central Victoria will endanger native animals including rescued joeys.