At home in an Alien world

Guy Pearce. Photo: Simon Schluter

Sacha Molitorisz, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

He may look haggard in Ridley Scott's new film, but Guy Pearce has never been happier as he opens up about Prometheus, Iron Man 3 and the studio system.

Guy Pearce has never looked worse. His skin is wrinkled and blotchy. His hair is grey and thin. His body is frail and vulnerable. It's hard to believe this is the man who, as a teenager, won the Mr Junior Victoria bodybuilding contest.

To play the part of elderly businessman Peter Weyland in Prometheus, Pearce spent hours in the make-up chair each day, having those famous cheekbones hidden beneath prosthetic wrinkles and blemishes. In character, he doesn't look a day under 90.

"Oh, thanks," Pearce says. "I thought the work the make-up team did was fantastic."

Prometheus is one of the most eagerly awaited films in years. Four years in the making, with a rumoured budget of $130 million, the 3D epic stars Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender. More significantly, it sees Ridley Scott - director of Alien and Blade Runner - returning to sci-fi for the first time in 30 years. It has generated a buzz the size of Saturn.

"I've never worked on such an anticipated film before," Pearce says. "People are jumping out of their skin. I've been looking online and getting the sense, 'Wow, this is something people are hungry for."'

That's saying something, given Pearce has appeared in several hotly anticipated films in his career, from Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997) to Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000), from Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker (2008) to John Hillcoat's The Road (2009). The good news is that Pearce feels much better than he looks in Prometheus. The devil's confusion is when you look great, but feel terrible. Pearce has the opposite: for this role he looks terrible, but he's never felt better.

"I'm far more comfortable in my 40s than I ever was," says the 44-year-old.

Born in Britain, he moved to Australia at age three and was 18 when he took the role of Mike Young on Neighbours.

The year he turned 21, he graduated to that other thespian rite of passage, Home and Away. His breakthrough came in 1994, when he slapped on lippie and slipped into stilettos to become Felicia Jollygoodfellow in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Three years later, he made his Hollywood debut in L.A. Confidential. His performance, and his looks, turned heads.

Critic Anthony Lane described Pearce's character, Ed Exley, as "a model officer, though his real problem is that he's an officer who looks like a model".

At that point, though, Pearce wasn't much interested in Hollywood. He would travel to LA for two-week stints to have meetings and auditions, then retreat to Melbourne. Nonetheless, he was cast in a trio of big budget features: Rules of Engagement (2000), The Time Machine (2002) and The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). He disliked all three, and, against industry protocol, didn't mind saying so.

Since then, there have been fewer roles he's disliked and many more he's enjoyed. He played Andy Warhol in Factory Girl (2006), Harry Houdini in Death Defying Acts (2007) and Edward VIII in The King's Speech (2010). Not to mention a moustached cop in Animal Kingdom (2010).

In 2001, he declared his preference for small films; but he's softened. "I'm more open to the variety of things than I was back in 2000," he says. "I just found the experience of the three studio films I did then were all difficult for me. I was finding a really obvious difference between smaller films and larger films. Whereas now I'm far more comfortable in myself, so I can wander onto any set and I'm fine. And I'm about to go and do Iron Man 3, so that'll be a fairly big world to enter, I'd say."

Pearce is enjoying the big-budget spectaculars, too. In Iron Man 3, he'll play a scientist tinkering with nano technology. In Luc Besson's sci-fi romp Lockout, released in July, he plays a gun-toting "loose cannon". In Prometheus, he is a megalomaniac businessman. "The thing I've come to learn is that what's great about small independent films is the intimacy and the communication that occurs when you're making them," he says.

"And funnily enough, Ridley Scott makes you feel like you're working on a little intimate movie because of his ability to communicate, his respect for the actors and his way of saying to the studio, 'Keep out of my way.""'
Developed in strict secrecy, Prometheus is a prequel to Alien.

So far, only a 12-minute teaser has been screened. Set in the late 21st century, the teaser begins with two archaeologists making a startling prehistoric discovery in Scotland. It then jumps forward to reveal a geriatric Peter Weyland, who has organised a trip deep into space to answer questions about mankind's origins. The film asks big questions about religion, artificial intelligence and men who think they're gods. "My ambition is unlimited," Weyland says in a viral video released to promote the film (see box). "We are the gods now."
Pearce has a much more limited ambition. He doesn't want to bother the gods. A decade ago, he was restless; these days he's happy down here with the humans. And he may not dislike Hollywood as much as he used to - "I've realised the value of the place" - but he still prefers Melbourne.

"The thrill of coming home has never changed."

Prometheus releases nationally on June 7.