Guy Pearce on The Brutalist: “It’s about an artist trying to stay uncompromising”

When Guy Pearce gets recognised in the street, period noir L.A. Confidential (1997), Christopher Nolan’s non-linear thriller Memento (2000) and riotous drag comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) are the features people want to talk about. The next tier of his fan favourites, he says, include The King’s Speech (2010), The Hurt Locker (2008) and The Proposition (2005). But what of his first screen role, in the soap opera that made him famous in 1980s Britain and beyond? “Mike from Neighbours gets brought up quite a bit, which is nice,” he explains.

In Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, Pearce gives an enigmatic, reptilian performance as Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy industrialist in post-war Pennsylvania who commissions Hungarian architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Holocaust survivor and recent immigrant to the US, to build a huge community centre. What ensues is an epic story of survival, work and power, which clocks in at 3 hours 35 minutes including a 15-minute interval baked into its print. 

On the cold January day we sat down with Pearce in a central London hotel to discuss the film, he was nominated for a BAFTA for best supporting actor. The film bagged another eight nominations including best film, best actor for Brody, best supporting actress for Felicity Jones (who plays Tóth’s wife Erzsébet) and best director for Corbet, while Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold are up for best original screenplay. The film has since received 10 Academy Award nominations.

What grabbed you about your role as Van Buren?

Guy Pearce: The complexity of it. He has a pretty good entrance, but the way in which his various behaviours and ways that he tries to control himself and people around him immediately enabled me to see that there was a darkness in there that he was trying to repress, and there’s an ego that he manages beautifully to act as if he doesn’t have. There’s a great performative element to his presence, but also there’s bitterness and envy. There’s also great taste. He’s got really good taste, but I think even that comes at a cost; he doesn’t know what to do with that.

It’s funny, I thought about Salieri in Amadeus’s life. We see that great scene [in the 1984 film] with F. Murray Abraham where Mozart can’t write anymore and he’s basically just dictating. Salieri’s writing it and knowing as he’s writing it how incredible this is, but he can’t do it himself. I had similar feelings to that, in a way that I recognise this great talent in Adrien’s character but just feel envy that I can’t do it myself.

Did Brady or Mona or both give you any background about him? Was Van Buren based on any particular figure?

No one specific. I’m sure there are various wealthy industrialists like the Rockefellers that Brady might’ve talked about, but not to necessarily help me understand who he is, more just because Brady has an interest in history and because it was pretty clear who this person was on the page. It wasn’t like I was struggling to find him by any means.

Some people have read The Brutalist as a film about filmmaking, with Tóth as the director and Van Buren as the patron who has his own demands and maybe wants to take credit at the end of it. Do you think there’s anything in that reading?

Yeah, I think so. Essentially it’s about an artist trying to stay uncompromising, which is a very personal story for Brady because he is an artist trying to make the films that he wants to make, and he’s very aware. I think that so many filmmakers are beholden to the money people, and fair enough to some degree, but at the same time I think lots of films end up being compromised and end up being too committee run. So it’s a beautiful irony that Brady’s the one who got to make this film, and he got to make it the way that he wanted to. He didn’t want to wait seven years to make it, but he still got to make it.

Van Buren is a fascinating character. He is quite unpleasant, but also he wants to build this monument to his mum. To what degree do you kind of empathise with his point of view?

Well, very much. My mum sadly passed away in the middle of this process so it felt really quite personal to me in a way. I’ve not got to the point yet of wanting to build a monument to mum, but I do have a lot of photos around the house of her, so I understand it and I think that’s a genuine element in Van Buren’s make-up that he is clearly moved by the passing of his mother, but at the same time getting László to build this for him is also part of him building more of his own empire, so he’s using László to increase his own ego really.

You’ve played a variety of characters, heroic types, such as Ed Exley in L.A. Confidential (1997) to bad guys like Charlie Burns in The Proposition (2005), even someone in the middle like Leonard Shelby in Memento (2000). Do you have a favourite kind of role and what would characterise that?

I don’t. It’s funny because people always say to me, “What are you looking for next? What sort of role are you looking for?” And I just say, “I’m not looking for anything. I’m just waiting to see what the universe brings.” Because the best response that I have to something and the best experience that I have is when I read something that’s surprising and it fuels my imagination and takes me to a place that I hadn’t considered.

So the idea of looking for a specific role just makes no sense to me whatsoever. I know that’s not what you asked, but it’s funny because also, depending on what roles I might’ve done more recently, that might then dictate what I say yes to next. If I do things that are all in a certain world, I may need something refreshing, but I don’t know that until I read it and go, “Oh yes, this.”

What are you up to next?

I don’t have a job planned, but I have another film coming out called Inside, which is a prison film that I made in Australia with Cosmo Jarvis. We have that film to be released, and I did a film called Killing Faith, a western we did in the States in the middle of the year. So a couple of things yet to come out, but I’m just sitting back and reading a bunch of things and seeing what I do next. I’m focusing more on releasing this one and trying to enjoy this moment as much as I can.