Editor's letter: My kind of Guy

CELEBRITY interviews can be a deeply unsatisfactory experience for the reader, the interviewer, and, I suspect, for the celebrity.

Guy Pearce

CELEBRITY interviews can be a deeply unsatisfactory experience for the reader, the interviewer, and, I suspect, for the celebrity.

They are often brief, shallow and heavily controlled, with layers of restrictions on what you can and can’t talk about, how they will or won’t be photographed, whether they can have the questions in advance and then vet the copy afterwards (the answer from this magazine, at least, is no). But once in a while someone like Guy Pearce comes along.

He’s just won an Emmy for his role in Mildred Pierce and he’s at the height of his career, but there were no airs and graces in his interview with deputy editor Greg Callaghan. He was generous with his time, honest with his answers and nothing – not teen shoplifting, or drugs, or his battle with anxiety – was off limits.