Enjoying life on 'the list'

"It's all happening so quickly and so weirdly" ... Joel Edgerton.

Giles Hardie, The Age, reports

Joel Edgerton is rapt yet philosophical about his 'overnight' success.

In the past year, Joel Edgerton has gone from Animal Kingdom, via Warrior and The Thing, to The Great Gatsby, becoming the next big thing in Hollywood on the way. But far from being an overnight sensation as some in the industry might perceive him to be, the actor, writer and director from Blacktown has worked diligently at his craft for decades in Australia.

''By the time I got any kind of real momentum in the States, I'd done a tonne of work here,'' he says. ''Now I feel equipped and I feel ready and yet at the same time people over there are saying this guy's a relatively new person.''

Instead of focusing all his energy on Hollywood, the 37-year-old will continue making films in Australia, too. In his latest, Wish You Were Here, Edgerton plays Dave Flannery, a family man whose holiday with his wife (Felicity Price) goes horribly wrong. Shifting back and forth in time, the film gradually reveals the details of a fateful night in Cambodia alongside the consequences back home in Australia. The story also reveals more about Edgerton than he is entirely comfortable with.

Despite being single, Edgerton says his character ''is a lot of me. So the tricky thing becomes: Do you know yourself well enough to then portray that on screen? And for me, I find that really hard. I'd rather hide behind accents and funny walks.''

Far from an inflated ego, success has given Edgerton a fresh sense of responsibility. ''There's the pressure of being a No. 1 on the call sheet, being a lead actor,'' he explains. ''There's almost this feeling like being captain of the team. You want to put a bit of energy into actually setting a good example. If you're an idiot, if you're behaving badly, then forget rumours and gossip, just think about the examples you set for young children who are working on movies.''

As well as displaying this on-set maturity, Edgerton has developed a good nose for choosing worthy projects and characters that resonate, which is important now with big money offers flooding in. ''It's tricky,'' he says. ''I've never been standing at the top of the tree with tonnes of money thrown at me. I've never really had a profile. So in a way I have this 'nothing to lose' attitude. I don't want to blow it all now by suddenly taking the money and running, having a gun in my hand in every project and spitting out cheesy lines.''

In addition to on-camera success Edgerton has ''been writing a tonne of stuff for years and now it's all starting to come together. He has written One Night Stand for Fox, another unnamed script that will bring him home again to perform later this year, as well as planning to direct a third in the US early next year. ''It's a disturbing suburban Hitchcock-style thriller,'' he says.

Before that, Edgerton heads to the Middle East for a couple of months to work on Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's film about the Navy Seal team that caught Osama bin Laden, a topic he enjoys teasing journalists about: ''I could tell you loads … but I'm not allowed to.''

In high demand, Edgerton is now linked seemingly to every major Hollywood project announced, although big-name roles aren't his ambition. ''I'm on the list that I thought I'd never be on,'' he says. ''I'm not sitting here thinking, 'God, I might get this part' or 'is it too late for me to play Hamlet?' It's really about: who do I get to work with? There's so many people on that list.''

The schoolyard dreamer can be seen lurking within Edgerton as he considers the opportunities that now seem possible. ''I got sent something the other day that Clint Eastwood's directing. I've sent a few audition tapes for Clint's movies in the past but now it feels like maybe I could actually work with him.

''It's all happening so quickly and so weirdly, and it's all shifted so dramatically,'' Edgerton says. ''I don't want to get too bogged down in the seriousness of it all, I want to have the gratitude for it all, because it's kind of awesome.''

WISH YOU WERE HERE

GENRE Drama.
CRITICAL BUZZ Great slow-burn thriller that twists with every new revelation about an ecstasy-fuelled night in Cambodia and its impact on life back in suburban Australia.
STARS Joel Edgerton, Felicity Price, Teresa Palmer.
DIRECTORS Kieran Darcy-Smith.
RATED MA15+.
RELEASE April 25.