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.

Hollywood tops up on sunburnt countrymen

Sandra Hall, The Age, reports


IS the Australian leading man becoming a marketable figure in Hollywood?


It's taken a while. A young Mel Gibson raised the possibility in the 1980s. Then came Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger and Sam Worthington, among others. At last, their efforts have achieved "an Aussie mystique of sorts", to quote Gavin O'Connor, the director of Warrior. More specifically, O'Connor sees Australian actors as being more intimate with life's rugged realities than their smoother American counterparts.


You can observe this effect in action in Joel Edgerton's performance in Warrior opposite the equally hot and sweaty British prospect Tom Hardy (Inception). They both play Americans - estranged brothers who take on cage fighting, a mixed martial arts sport involving boxing, wrestling, ju-jitsu and kickboxing. There are rules but if you're not already familiar with them, don't expect to get a handle on them here. All that is clear is the fact the brothers are going to wind up in the ring together.


The cause of their estrangement is Nick Nolte, who has never lost his ability to make trouble. He plays their father, Paddy, a former boxing trainer and alcoholic whom neither son has forgiven for knocking their mother about. But after an absence of 14 years, Tommy (Hardy) has come to his father with a demand - that he help him train for Sparta, an international mixed martial arts contest with a $US5 million purse.


Tommy's older brother, Brendan (Edgerton), knows nothing of this. An ex-boxer, he is a high school physics teacher with a wife, Tess (Jennifer Morrison), and two children. But he, too, is resuming his career in the ring because his teaching salary can't pay the mortgage and the medical bills.


With the help of the Aussie mystique, this is shaping up as Edgerton's year. He is also on show in the prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing but this is the movie that could propel him into the big time.


O'Connor is not the most sensitive of directors. Excitable is the word for him. He's heavy on big music, tight close-ups, large crowds, hyperactive editing and declamatory dialogue. His taste for the inspirational makes Rocky seem like a delicate exercise in social realism. But he's been astute enough to sign up actors who can somehow persuade you to overlook the triteness of their words.


Let's start with Nolte. His Paddy is a remorseful, exhausted-looking character whose world has contracted to the point where he's content to spend his days plugged into an audio recording of Moby Dick. With Herman Melville in his ear, he can try to forget the past and stave off thoughts of the future - until Tommy comes back.


Hardy's performance is essentially one long sulk yet he and Nolte pull off a couple of poignant scenes together. He's such a muscular bundle of concentrated energy that you can't look away for fear of missing something extraordinary. He'd be a wonderful Caliban.


In contrast, Edgerton makes deceptively light work of Brendan, who likes the kids he teaches and is happily immersed in family life. It's an attractively relaxed performance and O'Connor is right. While he looks as if he really can throw a punch, he's also unpretentious enough to seem at ease doing the washing up.


The film's settings, too, impart an air of authenticity. Much of it was shot in Pittsburgh with an excursion to seedy Atlantic City for the gung-ho finale. And while I found the fighting matches pretty incomprehensible, there's no denying O'Connor's ability to extract the maximum amount of suspense out of Brendan, the underdog, and his steady climb through the ranks.


This is a movie that defies analysis. Try to take it apart and it disintegrates into pure corn. I think it qualifies as a guilty pleasure - which probably won't hurt its chances at Oscar time. Its three leads certainly deserve consideration for their artfulness in being able to infuse it with intimations of quality.


For Edgerton it's good news. His Brendan looks as if he belongs in a much better film. He makes a great calling card for an actor who's been doing fine work for a long time.

Punch drunk success

Story by Giles Hardie, The Age

Ten years ago Joel Edgerton thought his career was about to explode. Now, success has finally arrived, partly against doctor's orders.

“You take a few punches in the head, but that was kind of fun.”

Joel Edgerton is talking about his time shooting the numerous fight scenes for Warrior, in which he plays an out-of-retirement Mixed Martial Arts cage fighter whose never say die attitude leads to many, many poundings in every one of his fights. He could just as easily have been describing his career.

Edgerton had already shot Warrior when he last toured Australia for a press tour, a little over a year ago, for Waiting City a critically acclaimed, but relatively low profile Australian film. At the time, he knew everything was about to explode for him career-wise, he just couldn’t tell anyone.

“Work was starting to roll along,” he recalls, “I’m pretty guarded about it all.”

Edgerton was hesitant to celebrate, having had false starts before.

“I’ve had times in my life where I’d worked on a few things and I thought it was going to push things to a different level and it just didn’t.”

Almost a decade ago, Edgerton was shooting at Fox Studios with George Lucas on the second (and later the third) Star Wars prequel, in the role of Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen. A role in King Arthur followed, yet the momentum never quite swept him up. Now, with two Hollywood films releasing this month alone (he can also be seen in The Thing), and Edgerton back at Fox Studios to shooting on The Great Gatsby in the major role of Tom Buchanan, that momentum has well and truly kicked in.

Still Joel is modest about his new star status. “At the moment, I feel like things have shifted only because I get asked to jobs a lot more than I used to. I get asked to do jobs without having to audition for them.”

“Things have definitely changed. I feel like the doors have opened wider and I can choose between things.”

That false start ten years ago, those punches to the head, have actually prepared Edgerton for the new, spectacular success.

“I felt like it would feel different,” he admits. “It doesn’t feel any different, but I do. When I look at the circumstances surrounding it, I’m very thankful of it, and I realise that I’m swimming around exactly where I wanted to be ten years ago and I’ve got those opportunities now.”

There has been at least one advantage to not being a “movie star” until now, and that is his role in Warrior, for which he’s receiving significant awards buzz. Basically, if Joel had been a star, he might not have wanted it, and director Gavin O’Connor certainly wouldn’t have wanted him.

Warrior, at that point an unkown script about cage fighting “wasn’t high on the list to do for other actors,” Joel explains. That suited O’Connor, according to Joel “he wanted two actors who didn’t have a lot of movie star baggage.”

The other actor without baggage is Tom Hardy, another whose career has skyrocketed since shooting Warrior.

Not only did O’Connor need two actors without baggage though, he needed two with a fairly clear calendar. Edgerton says of the casting rationale, “he wanted two guys, and he founded Tom and I, and he needed us to get there a couple of months early, and train hard, and start to kind of look like we belonged in the cage.”

Edgerton, playing the former MMA figher Brendan Conlon, certainly looks like he belongs - as the poster and trailer attest - yet Hardy as his brother Tommy looks like a veritable man mountain.

Edgerton got along very well with Hardy, but envied his bulk.

“I was about as big as I could get with the amount of food I was shoving in to me, and the weight I was losing,” he recalls. “I wasn’t going to get any bigger.”

“And he (Hardy) just looks huge.”

Edgerton also envied Hardy’s shooting schedule as the big hitting Tommy, whose fights tend to be over in a matter of seconds.

“Tom, he’d walk in and do a fight and it would take a day to shoot,” Joel explains. “I would take a week, two weeks to shoot just one fight.”

“I literally am a punching bag to some of the best fighters in the AMC.”

Some of those punches landed, and even if he thought it was fun, Edgerton’s character’s pain endurance wasn’t all acting.

“I was actually advised by a doctor here in Sydney that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to do the movie.

“But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I’m not smart enough to take advice like that.”

Edgerton puzzled about missing Bourne role

Article by Giles Hardie, Sydney Morning Herald

Warrior star Joel Edgerton is still puzzled about missing out on the lead in the post-Matt Damon Bourne movies - because he thought he had the part locked in.

Though Damon and director Paul Greengrass (who helmed the second and third films) have not signed on, an all star cast has been assembled to continue the hugely popular franchise.

Australian star Edggerton believed the online hype from earlier this year suggesting he would be Bourne for director Tony Gillroy's The Bourne Legacy, but he lost the role to Jeremy Renner - and he's still trying to make sense of it all.

"I don't know if I'll ever know the complete machinations of it. I do know there was really strong support for me from certain members of the team, but it wasn't unanimous," he said.

Edgerton, who is currently fliming Baz Lurhmann's The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire will next be seen in this week's The Thing as an American helicopter pilot, and then in Warrior later this month, a film for which he is receiving Oscar buzz.