The actor Guy Pearce nearly came to blows with: “I wanted to punch her”
Guy Pearce has had an extremely varied career. Everyone remembers when he burst onto the scene with L.A. Confidential and Memento, and everyone who saw The Brutalist was captivated by his performance as scheming industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, though. Remember Factory Girl? Or Bedtime Stories? We’re very sorry if you do.
None of those movies would have come Pearce’s way had it not been for a little show called Neighbours. Like most Australian actors, the hearthrob got his start in the iconic soap opera, which has been on and off TV since 1985. Pearce played Mike Young, a character on the show between 1986 and 1989. He even returned to the show intermittently between 2022 and 2024, years after he established his rocky relationship with feature films.
Though it was his gateway to success, Pearce felt conflicted about his Neighbours work early in his career. “In the old days you were either a theatre actor or a film actor,” he told The Times. “If you got stuck in a soap you were the lowest of the low.” This attitude led to a rather tense confrontation with a fellow performer – one that could have turned ugly.
“I did a play a year after I left and this snobby actress said, ‘How could you even do that?’ I wanted to punch her!” Pearce revealed. Realising he was speaking to a major national newspaper, he decided to do a bit of firefighting. “Now, obviously, I didn’t punch her,” he said, much to the relief of his publicist. “But it was such a horrible attitude. And then, five years later, I saw her on some shit ad on TV. I so wanted to go and find her and say, ‘OK …’”
Pearce did a good job in not naming the ‘snobby actress’ he wanted to lay out, but a little digging online unveils a list of potential suspects. According to GuyPearce.net, a website seemingly set up by the star, he was in a pantomime production of Cinderella in 1989 and again in 1991.
Though this isn’t the ‘year after he left’ Neighbours (that would have been 1990), it’s entirely possible that he got his dates wrong. A fantastic website called Panto Archive even has the original flyer for the show saved online, listing Pearce as the ‘special guest’ who had come ‘all the way from Australia’. It also shows some of his co-stars, one of whom may have been his almost-victim.
Pantomime is far from the highest form of acting, so it seems a little rich that somebody else in the Cinderella cast would have called Pearce out. Also, as mentioned earlier, loads of top tier Aussie talent got their start on Ramsay Street. Kylie Minogue was a contemporary of Pearce on the show, whilst his future L.A. Confidential co-star Russell Crowe appeared in a handful of episodes. More recent examples include Chris, Liam, and Luke Hemsworth and Margot Robbie.
Thankfully, Pearce wasn’t hauled off to jail for assaulting a co-star in full panto get-up. Actors face all sorts of criticism, from the public and their peers alike. The trick is to ignore it and believe that you are as good as you say you are. It also helps not to punch people.
