One look at Guy Pearce‘s filmography and it’s clear the actor has largely stayed away from big Hollywood studio fare over the years. One would have to go all the way back to 2013’s Marvel movie “Iron Man 3” to find Pearce’s last sizable role in a studio tentpole, although he did have smaller appearances in “Prometheus” and “Bloodshot.”
Pearce has stayed busy over the years with indie dramas and international fare, which he recently told GQ magazine was somewhat of a reaction to the bad experiences he had with a few studio films. After the success of “Memento,” Hollywood tried and failed to mold Pearce into a studio leading man with projects like 2002’s “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Time Machine.” The latter film, loosely based on H. G. Wells’ novel of the same name, was a notorious critical flop and a pain for Pearce to make.
“The process of it felt way too big for me,” Pearce told GQ. “I can’t make [sense of] this idea of studio films where you just get told what to do by people afraid to lose their jobs. I remember there were discussions at the beginning about how I was going to look. A couple of the executives say, ‘No, he’ll just cut his hair and he’ll just do this and he’ll do that.’ And I’m in the room going, ‘Hello?’ I’m immediately feeling like my intuition doesn’t mean anything here. That’s a killer for me.”
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Pearce felt powerless making a studio movie like “The Time Machine,” and he swore off ever joining a Hollywood tentpole that would make him feel like that again.
“It was the first time I really felt that there was not just a disconnect, but a kind of greater power up there that you couldn’t even really talk to,” Pearce added.
Pearce stepped away from Hollywood for two years and regrouped. When he decided to return, he pivoted full time to more creative indie projects like the Western drama “The Proposition” and biographical film “Factory Girl,” in which he played Andy Warhol.
It wasn’t that Pearce was averse to making Hollywood tentpoles, he just needed the right collaborators on them. The actor told Vanity Fair earlier this month that he met with Christopher Nolan around the same time for a role in “The Prestige,” but a studio executive at Warner Bros. allegedly had no interest in working with Pearce.
“He spoke to me about roles a few times over the years,” Pearce said about working again with his “Memento” director. “But there was an executive at Warner Bros. who quite openly said to my agent, ‘I don’t get Guy Pearce. I’m never going to get Guy Pearce. I’m never going to employ Guy Pearce.’ So, in a way, that’s good to know. I mean, fair enough; there are some actors I don’t get. But it meant I could never work with Chris.”
Pearce said this particular Warner Bros. executive “just didn’t believe in me as an actor.” Perhaps that executive is having a change of heart now all these years later. Pearce is currently a frontrunner to land an Oscar nomination in the supporting actor category for his role in A24’s “The Brutalist,” in theaters Dec. 20.