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Eric Bana is a proud Australian who first found fame at home playing comedy roles. So he’s as surprised as anyone that he is known by cinema audiences for uncompromising men of action, as FOCUS finds out.
Type the name Eric Bana into YouTube and you are likely to have more grainy comedy sketches offered to you than high profile roles in films like Hulk, Troy, Munich and in The Other Boleyn Girl, in which he plays King Henry VIII.
None of these characters could be easily described as much of a joker, but even if his international breakthrough in Chopper flirted dangerously with the blackest kind of comedy it is odd that his film persona remains so intensely dramatic.
"It's funny because there's a lot of directors doing more traditional comedies in Hollywood who are aware of my background," he said last year. "But I'd be lying if I told you the piles of dramatic scripts and the lighter scripts are the same height. They're not, and I don't complain about that, I cherish the stuff that gets thrown at me.
"I love doing dramatic stuff, that's what I love to go and see in a movie. Generally you learn more by watching and working on a drama than you can in comedy. And also just the fact that by the time I'd finished doing comedy back in Australia I was really bloody sick of it. I know that seems weird because most people around the world haven’t seen my stuff and probably don’t believe that I could possibly be funny.
"But that doesn’t bother me, I don't have an urge to go out and prove it. Maybe one day, but the reality is that I don't have the same choices that a Will Ferrell and an Adam Sandler has. I don't write my own material any more, I don't have a lot of that stuff thrown at me, so it's a bit of a long shot."
The fact remains, even for an actor at Bana's level of fame and recognition, the projects you get offered tend to reflect the ones you have already appeared in. He jokes that many of his recent characters even share the same initial. "In Lucky You I play Huck, Hector in Troy, Hulk, in Black Hawk Down I played Hoot and now Henry VIII."
And so to Henry, a king often portrayed on screen though seldom by an Australian actor. Yet it's fitting in one way, as his character begets Queen Elizabeth I who most recently was played by Bana’s countrywoman Cate Blanchett. It all makes sense in a way.
"It's always great when you do these sorts of movies," Bana adds with a smile, "because you learn a lot about stuff that you weren't paying attention to in school, and that always makes it really interesting."
One thing he consciously chose not to do in preparation for the role was view the efforts of other actors who had portrayed the king remembered by history for breaking with the Catholic Church in his reckless pursuit of a Queen who might bear him a son and heir.
"I deliberately steered clear of that because I think it's restricting enough as it is playing a real person but to then be constricted by some other actor's interpretation is kind of crippling I think, so I steered clear of it completely."
The fact that he takes his craft so seriously hints at one reason why the guy from Melbourne is valued so highly in Hollywood. But even if, in conversation, his accent is that of the laid back Aussie he reveals another reason why playing an American or an English guy dramatically brings out the best in him.
"The reality is, in my case probably even more so than for the girls because they're lucky enough to be American but every time I go to work I have to do it so it's become part of the job. It does require more work, but it may be an advantage to a degree because it forces you to consciously jump into and out of the character."
No worries there then, as Eric Bana continues to have the last laugh in a career that goes from strength to strength.
ANWAR BRETT
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