From Mare of Easttown to Jack Irish, everything’s coming up Guy Pearce
If you’ve switched on your television this month, you might have noticed that it’s all Guy Pearce, all the time. From prestige dramas on Binge to a brand new action thriller co-starring Michael B Jordan, our homegrown star has never been more in demand.
A counterfeit painter, an enigmatic writer relocating to a small suburb in Philadelphia, a high-ranking government official in charge of an elite squadron and … Jack Irish.
These are just four of the guises through which you might have encountered Guy Pearce on screen in the past month, in the movies The Last Vermeer and Without Remorse — that’s the elite squadron film, in which he stars alongside Michael B Jordan and Jodie Turner Smith — and Mare of Easttown, Pearce’s reunion with his Mildred Pierce co-star Kate Winslet. You may also have seen Pearce on television as himself, hosting a documentary about the environment on Channel 10.
It’s all Pearce, all the time when it comes to film and television right now; the Australian actor has well and truly taken over your screens, both big and small. Also coming down the pipeline from him over the next year are a local Netflix animated film with Isla Fisher and Eric Bana, a stacked Australian drama with Richard Roxburgh and Frances O’Connor, a Liam Neeson thriller, a Christoph Waltz magical corporation movie — yes, you read that right — and a cheerful film about exorcisms.
Pearce is about to be very busy. But then, he’s been working solidly since he joined Neighbours in the late ‘80s as Mike Young, the sweet-faced boy next door and, coincidentally, his Mare of Easttown co-star Winslet’s first celebrity crush. Since leaving the Australian soap, Pearce has worked on more than 80 film and television projects, from homegrown cult favourites (Priscilla Queen of the Desert) to Oscar-winning dramas (The King’s Speech), starry action flicks (Prometheus, Lawless) and cinematic classics, such as LA Confidential and Memento.
“I think Memento was obviously a bit of a turning point,” Pearce reflects, over Zoom. This interview was arranged to celebrate Mare of Easttown, HBO’s prestige murder mystery, starring Winslet and Jean Smart and airing weekly on Binge. But Pearce is also keen to look back over his career, and the projects and opportunities that had a huge impact on his life.
“(Memento) was a film that broke lots of barriers, not just for me but in the film industry,” he explains. “And people talk about LA Confidential being the last film of its kind, and people talk about Memento being the first film of its kind. It was interesting to be in both of those.”
One thing Pearce believes, however, is that a film becoming a critical or box office success — like Memento and LA Confidential, or later, The Hurt Locker or Animal Kingdom — isn’t as important to him as the actual lessons learnt from being on set. “For me, personally, I suppose it’s always about the experience that I have, whether the film works or not,” he muses. “To do films like Factory Girl or Death Defying Acts … Or things like The King’s Speech, which was just a delightful experience working with Colin Firth. Getting to work with Katherine Bigelow [on The Hurt Locker]. Of course, to work with Ridley Scott on Prometheus.”
And not just filmmakers, but co-stars too: Pearce adds that a highlight of his career has been working with peers including Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain — they both appeared with Pearce in the Western movie Lawless — and Michael Fassbender, on Prometheus. “One of the best things about being an actor is working with really great actors,” Pearce adds, laughing. “And getting your own personal show right there in front of you.”
Great actors like Kate Winslet, with whom Pearce has now appeared on the small screen twice, first in the Emmy Award-winning HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce in 2011 and now in Mare of Easttown. The seven-episode series premiered in April and follows Winslet’s Mare, a smalltown Detective whose life unravels at the seams in the process of solving a string of missing persons — and one very tragic murder.
Like other prestige crime dramas from HBO, though, the success of Mare of Easttown is entirely in atmosphere, casting and character development, so much so that the actual mystery of the series feels almost secondary. Winslet’s performance as the beer-soaked Detective, still coasting on that one time she nailed an impossible shot in high school basketball, is incredible, full of lived-in weariness. Pearce, who appears early in the season as a charming writer called Richard with whom Mare discovers an instant attraction, is the love interest that seems too good to be true.
For Pearce, working with Winslet again was a big drawcard for joining Mare of Easttown. And it was that which sustained him over the many months when production was shut down in 2020 because of the pandemic; Pearce arrived on the Mare of Easttown set just one day before Covid uprooted everything, and had to return in September to complete his scenes.
By that point, Covid protocols were in place across all film sets around the world, and one of the stipulations — given that Pearce and Winslet were starring as lovers, and were required to film a sex scene — was that the pair had to quarantine together for ten days, after which they then moved into a house with other members of the Mare of Easttown cast.
“We became quite domestic, which I think was a carry over from Mildred Pierce,” Pearce muses. “She’s a very down to earth, practical lady. I find that a very sexy quality in a lady. She’s a fantastic, funny woman. She called me and said: ‘We’ll be living together darling, you don’t mind do you?’ And I went absolutely not, let’s do it.”
Also in the house were Australian actor Angourie Rice and her mother — Rice stars in Mare of Easttown as Winslet’s young daughter Siobhan. “It was fun,” Pearce enthuses. “[Winslet is] great in the kitchen. She takes over and she dominates and she tells everyone what to do — and you do it. You know, if Kate Winslet tells you what to do, you just do it, right? You’re not going to say no, I’m not going to bake that cake for you. Kate. So she tells you to mix things, and chop things, and stir things, and put that in the oven and put this in the fridge, and you just do it. She’s great fun. I enjoyed every second with her.”
Pearce was last in Australia in November, when he filmed the final season of Jack Irish, which will air on the ABC later this year. It was the first time he had been home since the middle of 2018.
“I don’t have any other plans at this stage (to come back),” Pearce reveals, “but I do keep saying to (my partner) Carice and (son) Monte, that I can’t let another two and a half years go by before I get home again … So they’re aware that we will probably get to go to Australia sooner than later next time. I don’t have any plans at this stage, but I would like to at least get home once a year, because it does drive me a bit mad not to get back to Melbourne too regularly.”
Mare of Easttown airs weekly episodes Mondays on Binge.