That One Film! Starring That One Guy!

Guy Pearce in (left to right) Iron Man 3, Jack Irish, and The Adventures of Priscilla,
Queen of the Desert (click to enlarge)

I’m so far behind in watching big-ticket superhero films that I didn’t realize five entire years had already passed since Iron Man 3 debuted. Honestly, Wonder Woman was the first superhero film I’d seen in cinemas since Iron Man 2. Or since. So when it appeared in my On-Demand menu, I figured, what they hey, let’s get caught up. Except, once I pressed play, a whole other question occupied my mind:

Why do I recognize Aldrich Killian?

The fella looked so damned familiar that I focused my attention on trying to place him, to the exclusion of events onscreen. (I really should re-watch the film. Eventually.) Only during the closing credits did I realize: it’s Guy Pearce, a British-born Australian actor probably best-known to international audiences as Felicia, the flamboyant young drag performer in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Despite appearing in high-profile productions like The Time Machine and Prometheus, Pearce hasn’t achieved the immediate recognition of his sometime castmate, Hugo Weaving. He has liberty to dive into projects he chooses, remaking himself each time, unlike Weaving, who has become so visible that he cannot enter new productions without carrying the aura of Agent Smith or Lord Elrond behind him. To different degrees, each actor carries past characters behind them.

I’ve witnessed this at various stages in today’s massively media-saturated culture. When, say, George Takei entered the TV series Heroes, back when anybody could still watch it, nobody could separate him from his role in Star Trek, and the series producers didn’t even try; they even gave his limousine the license plate number NCC-1701, the registry number of the starship Enterprise.

But as modern media has become increasingly ubiquitous, it’s also become increasingly homogenous. Production companies use tentpole franchises to purchase (or steal) audience loyalty, and as a result, they persistently overstretch a story, resulting in disasters like Peter Jackson’s ridiculously overlong Hobbit trilogy, or a Han Solo movie nobody really wanted. And actors, by sheer repetition, become associated with one character.

George Takei in Star Trek (left) and Heroes

Be honest. You can’t see Patrick Stewart without seeing Captain Picard and/or Professor Charles Xavier, possibly both superimposed in your mind simultaneously. Stewart has tried playing against that role, in shows like The Eleventh Hour and Blunt Talk, but audiences have refused to accept him, because they cannot separate his face from the extreme rectitude they associate with his characters.

Once actors become sufficiently high-profile, many complain about getting typecast, and only being offered variations on the same role. This works for some, as it’s impossible to imagine Alec Guiness as Obi-Wan Kenobi without his roles as men of great integrity, sometimes played straight, as in The Bridge on the River Kwai, or subverted, as in his classic Ealing Studios comedies.

Other actors, however, suffer for this typecasting. Jack Nicholson played characters known for their unique moral code in films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or The Missouri Breaks, but Stanley Kubrick forced him into an extreme version of that character for The Shining. And sadly, he never returned from that, becoming more and more exaggerated. On learning of Heath Ledger’s death after playing the Joker, Nicholson reportedly said: “Well, I warned him.”

Guy Pearce has in some ways avoided these extremes. Because he’s tough to recognize from role to role, he can accept divergent characters like the flamboyant Felicia or villainous Aldrich Killian, without interrupting roles like the shabby but heroic and oversexed Jack Irish. He’s just famous enough for me to vaguely recognize him, but has liberty enough to try new roles without carrying old ones with him.

Speaking as somebody who’s done a bit of acting himself, I admire Pearce’s flexibility. I suspect most actors want that freedom. Many good actors start off that way: Johnny Depp famously spent fifteen years only taking roles he found challenging, before going broke and descending into the great tomb of ego that is Pirates of the Caribbean. Does Depp want that freedom back? He’s diplomatically circumspect, but I suspect yes.

Once an actor becomes sufficiently famous, I suspect he’s trapped by his roles. Whether it’s Nicholson’s feigned madness, Hugo Weaving’s relentless seriousness, or Adam Sandler’s unending cascade of dick jokes, actors become prisoners of whatever people liked in the last role. It’s tough to imagine Robert Downey, Jr, without Iron Man anymore. Yet the fortunate few, like Guy Pearce, somehow manage to avoid that.

There’s something inspiring about actors retaining that freedom. One wonders whether it’s portable to other career fields too.