“He would question me on every aspect”: the actor Christopher Nolan said could “do anything”
Now that he’s worked his way to the very top of the industry and been rewarded with a level of freedom and autonomy most filmmakers can only dream of, Christopher Nolan is in a position to cast whoever he wants in whatever role he sees fit.
Even though he’s admitted to being a screenwriter who never writes characters with specific actors in mind, he was at least confident enough to know that when he gauged Cillian Murphy’s interest in headlining Oppenheimer, there was only going to be one answer from his regular collaborator.
Throughout his career, Nolan has hired some of the greatest talents of their respective generations to play major roles in his features, ranging from Insomnia‘s heavyweight Academy Award-winning trio of Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank to his repeated dalliances with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Christian Bale.
When he was eying the perfect lead for his breakthrough feature, Nolan knew he needed a supremely gifted thespian who could handle the complexities of Insomnia. Thanks to its fragmented structure and overlapping narratives unfolding in reverse order, the part of Leonard Shelby was not an easy one to play.
The filmmaker sought somebody who was equal parts immersive and transformative, happening upon the perfect candidate when he didn’t even realise at first that two wildly disparate parts in two films at opposing ends of the spectrum had, in fact, been played by the same guy.
“I had seen Guy in LA Confidential and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but I had never really put it together that I was looking at the same actor,” he told Filmmaker Magazine in a ringing endorsement of Guy Pearce’s chameleonic talents.
Adding: “Once I did, I knew that an actor who could so fully inhabit both of those parts could probably do anything he set his mind to.”
Drag queen Felicia Jollygoodfellow in the Australian cult favourite and doggedly ambitious detective Ed Exley in the ‘Best Picture’-nominated crime thriller were worlds apart, but Pearce nailed them both. Memento‘s Leonard required something altogether different yet again, though, and he wasn’t above challenging his director when the moment called for it.
“One of the best things Guy ended up bringing to the project was his really logical mind,” Nolan offered. “He would question me on every aspect of his character’s behaviour. That helped us tighten the ways Leonard deals with his predicament. Guy’s also got a refreshing lack of vanity and a real desire to reinvent himself for every role.”
Memento was another incredible showcase for Pearce, and while he arguably hasn’t fulfilled the potential that saw him marked out as a superstar in waiting around the turn of the millennium, it’s nonetheless impossible to imagine anybody else in the lead.
