Eric Bana is tall, dark, handsome and poised to take Brad Pitt to task as Hector, the brave (and sometimes shirtless) warrior prince in this month's epic extravaganza, Troy.
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Chatting with Eric Bana, you get the feeling he really lives life. That he's figured something out the rest of Hollywood is still searching for and happily leaves the vapidity of the star-spangled-schmooze-fest to, well, the vapid. Exhibit A: He passed up watching the Oscars to have friends over for dinner. Exhibit B: He shoots one movie a year and takes his wife and two tots with him. And the topper: Admitting he'd probably be just as happy had he pursued his teenage dream of becoming a mechanic. A mechanic!
Luckily for us, the 35-year-old Melbourne native recognized that his knack for guffaw-inducing impersonations was a gift from the gods. After years on the Australian giggle circuit, where the comic savant found fame on the sketch comedy program Full Frontal and his own show, Eric, he decided to play it straight and scorched the screen as sociopath/criminal/author Mark "Chopper" Read in the gritty Aussie flick Chopper. Et voila! A Leading Man was born.
Since then, Hollywood's come calling with plum roles in Black Hawk Down and last summer's The Hulk, but in sheer size and scale (The Trojan War! Eight months of shooting! A $150 million budget!) nothing beats Troy. Bana plays Hector--that's Heyctah in Australian--Troy's brave warrior prince in Wolfgang Petersen's version of Homer's Iliad.
So ladies, soak up those skirts, swords and sandals because the hunk with the espresso eyes and Hulk-ing frame rarely offers his life to the limelight.
STEPHANIE SCOTT: What can we expect from this movie?
ERIC BANA: Just a gut-wrenching story driven by characters you can't help but feel for. And a lot of them are kind of damned, you know? Hector is screwed in a lot of ways, but he's got to do what he's got to do and you feel for him.
Q: Tell me about when Achilles takes Hector down.
A: Mmmm. Well, it was a long time coming [Laughs]. We trained for that fight from the day we arrived in London. And it was, in the end, the very last thing we did. We got hit by a hurricane five days before finishing the entire film and then Brad hurt his Achilles. So, it was something we were so ready to do, and we just looked at each other and said, if we beat each other up who cares, we're mates, let's go for it.
Q: It's kind of funny that he hurt his Achilles.
A: Oh, yeah. When he came in with the temporary cast and the whole Achilles thing, I was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out with a video camera. I'm like, I can't believe Brad is doing this celebrity Candid Camera shit, you know? But after 45 minutes I thought, holy shit, this is for real.
Q: Black Hawk Down was a difficult shoot and The Hulk was a serious set, but it seems like you had a ball on Troy.
A: It was just the best. It's so hard to talk about because I can hear myself sounding like one of those actors that's talking up a film he's on and I can't stand it. But it was just the greatest bunch of people. When I found out Peter O'Toole was playing my father, I nearly fell off the chair.
Q: Had you met Brad before?
A: Yeah. It's a typical L.A. story. His manager lives next door to my agent [Laughs], which incidentally would never happen in Melbourne. I guess Brad enjoyed Chopper and said, "It would be great to work with Eric." So, this was just the most ridiculous stroke of luck. Luckily for me, I didn't want the same part as him. When I sat down with Wolfgang he said, [imitating him] "Which character do you think you'd like to play?" And I said, "Oh look, there's just no doubt, Hector, I just love the character." And he said, "Good, because Brad wants to play Achilles." In other words, if you want to play Achilles, you ain't got a chance in hell.
Q: You've said in the past that you approach your work with "literal obsession," so how did you prepare for this role?
A: I knew the key to this character was stuff I felt within. I'm a younger brother of two and I identified a lot with that bond between Paris [Orlando Bloom] and Hector. But I was getting to be the older one and I knew exactly what it was like to have a younger brother who was a bit troublesome.
Q: Did you ever marvel at the success of Jim Carrey or other comedians and contemplate taking that route?
A: Yes and no, because even when I was doing comedy, I never saw myself as a comedian. I had this burning desire to do drama ever since I was a kid. And comedy helped me be brave. I was able to be a flaming idiot for a long time and learn in front of large groups of drunk people [Laughs].
Q: Before The Hulk, articles made it sound like you came out of nowhere. But you'd been working a long time. Does that kind of stuff piss you off?
A: Yeah, especially when someone assumes that you've just been plucked from an underwear commercial. I took the exact opposite route. So, yeah, I'm old enough now not to get caught up in that--he says, frothing at the mouth.
Q: While Troy was filming, we got paparazzi shots of Brad's muscles every week. Are you prepared for that attention?
A: No. I can safely say that will never be me. I just know I'm not that guy and I'm really happy to not be that guy.
Q: But how do you avoid the spotlight when you're starring in such enormous films?
A: You just make sure you have people like Brad and Orlando opposite you [Laughs]. I don't know. I feel like I've gotten away with something really sort of lucky.
Q: You've said you've never been that enamored of fame. Does living in Australia keep you grounded?
A: No, I'm just one of the lucky ones who has enough outside interests. I'm very active in motor racing. It's one of the reasons I take time off--if I can't indulge in it, I go a little insane. At the end of the day, I'm not going from party to party. I'm just sitting underneath a racecar fixing things.
Q: Your wife is not in the industry, right?
A: She was a publicist at a TV station I worked at and since then we've been making babies and traveling together.
Q: Do your kids understand what you do?
A: Not completely. My son's 4 1/2 and I've tried to explain that when people ask me for autographs it's like when he met the Wiggles. He thought he knew them, but he actually didn't. And I said, when people come up to dad, they kind of think I'm a Wiggle. So that made sense to him.
Q: What would people be surprised to know about you?
A: They're usually disappointed with how normal my life is.
Q: Awww. No scandals, happily married. So, what would you want someone to write about you that hasn't been said?
A: Um, he wears nice after-shave.
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