Eric Bana has proven himself to be one of the most intense actors of his generation. But two decades after his days as an 'idiot' comedian, he still sees the world in sketches and bits. He spoke with BilgeEbiri
Eric Bana, a character actor at heart. Photo: Ryan Pfluger for New York Magazine “It’s an interesting morning in my country,” Eric Bana is telling me over Zoom from Melbourne, Australia. It’s late May, and he’s just learned that the state of Victoria will be entering another heavy COVID-19 lockdown. Melbourne is where pandemic restrictions primarily hit Australia throughout 2020, and this setback is clearly very frustrating. “We’re all a bit scarred,” he says.
I was in L.A. at the time and got a phone call saying, “Steven would like to meet with you. He’s shooting a film out in the desert.” He was shooting The Terminal with Tom Hanks and I drove out there. I had some intel that there were a few different projects that he was working on. But no one knew what the specifics were. Fortunately, by sheer coincidence, I had read Vengeance.
There’s an interesting formal journey in the film. In early scenes, you guys are out in the sun and it’s warm and collegial. Then the film gradually changes style, so that by the end you’re sleeping in dark, crowded dens with the very people you’re pursuing. It’s an interesting way of showing …It can’t have been too close to being in sequence just because of the location jumps. But it never felt jarring to me, so maybe it was relatively sympathetic.
You progressed fairly quickly in your comedy career. Do you recall one bit that just absolutely killed? It was a great lesson because it made me aware that my style didn’t suit every room. I think it’s a really great experience to go through, in terms of breaking down scripts, or trying to identify when something’s working or not, or understanding what might be your strength or what might be your weakness. And going, “Well, it’s okay to say no to stuff that you think you might be really bad at.”
It sounds like the leap to sketch comedy was fairly organic for you. How did you make the leap to drama? Chopper feels like such a huge risk for a relatively new actor — the part is so dramatic and so central to whether that picture will work or not. I wasn’t naïve about that. I did understand that it was a rare opportunity. Because he was so unique. When’s another character like that going to come around for anyone? So it was a case of just, “Well shit, I’d better be good. I better be as real as possible, otherwise that’s it from me. I’ll never work again.” You have to remember, I thought 100 people would see [Chopper]. And it took a long, long time for a number of people to see it.
It’s not just about going home. I think it’s the creative thing. At the time that I did Chopper, I had a really great opportunity to enter a very handsome contract with the television network that I had done my sketch-comedy show with, and I turned it down. And this was before I’d even made the film. When I started doing stand-up, one of the things I loved about the industry was that you had some control over what you were going to do. That was part of the appeal of not doing a nine-to-five job.
For sure. I’m able to be quite forensic and honest. In some cases, there are things that are within my control and other cases [where things] are out of control. In that case, there were a lot of things that I knew weren’t working really well, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I felt like people were overestimating how interesting poker was. It’s always a massive mistake, whenever you’re dealing with a subject matter that you think is hot and everyone’s into.
No, because the thing you’re referring to is not something I’m pursuing. I’m pursuing the work and I’m pinching myself every day that I’m doing it. The thing about stand-up is your mental well-being is at the mercy of how people respond to your material. So, once you escape that trap, [you’re thinking,] That’s not going to happen with acting. I have to do the work I want to do, do the best work that I can and feel good about that.
It was pretty simple. I had met J.J. [Abrams], who’s a mutual friend through my agent, and I just thought he had a great sense of humor. He reached out and said, “Would you consider playing Nero?” And I think I was actually shooting Time Traveler’s Wife at the time. At first I was like, “I can’t get my head around that.” Then I was like, “Just let me read it.” I had a sense that the film was going to have a really fun energy and it wasn’t taking itself too seriously.
Right. It was never about just doing an impression and ripping off that movie. It was, “Okay, let’s take Tom Cruise and let’s do this. Let’s take them out of their setting and have them in a different setting and have fun with that.”There was a really, really bizarre character I did, I think only once, and he’s got a Hawaiian shirt on and thick glasses and he’s telling someone that they have to go and see Chelsea Brown, who is this cabaret performer.
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