Guy Pearce Taught Christopher Nolan How to Work With Actors in ‘Memento’
Actor Guy Pearce once teamed up with movie maker Christopher Nolan for their film Memento. The partnership was a learning experience for both, as Pearce showed Nolan something important when it came to collaborating with actors.
Guy Pearce changed the way Christopher Nolan approached actors
Nolan hadn’t worked with too many mainstream actors before Memento. His debut feature, Following, was a low-budget project that consisted of some actors who Nolan knew personally. Memento saw the filmmaker working alongside big names in Hollywood for the first time like Carrie-Anne Moss and Pearce. Despite being a still somewhat unproven director back then, Pearce was more than eager to star in Nolan’s Memento. So much so that he asked the director personally if he could be a part of the film.
“I got to meet Chris, then I saw Following, and then I called him and I said, ‘Look, I’m really embarrassed to be doing this. But I hear people tend to respond to this sort of thing, so I’m just gonna do it: I’m calling to tell you that I really love this and I’d really love to do it. If my enthusiasm plays any part in you making a decision about who you cast, then I’m just letting you know that I’m really keen,’” Pearce recalled on Empire.
After Nolan cast Pearce, he learned lessons from the star that he vowed to apply to his other films.
“I learned lots of things on Memento, but one thing I’ve always adhered to since then is letting actors perform as many takes as they want. I’ve come to realize that the lighting and camera setups, the technical things, take all the time, but running another take generally only adds a couple of minutes,” Nolan once told DGA.
Nolan revealed that a pivotal scene between Pearce and Anne-Moss was actually made better thanks to this new philosophy.
“We did a take that I thought was very good, and I knew we were out of time. So I asked Guy if he felt he’d gotten it, and he said, ‘No, we should do it again.’ I remember having a ‘What do I do?’ moment. Do I let him do it and risk running over? Or do I insist thatmove on, which Guy would have done, because he’s flexible and professional? But I let him do another take, and that’s the one used in the film,” Nolan remembered.
Guy Pearce once explained why working with Christopher Nolan was the greatest experience of his life
Pearce was more than impressed by Nolan’s ability as a filmmaker. But perhaps what Pearce found even more fascinating than Nolan’s skills behind the camera was the director’s personality. He described his time on the Memento set as a very pleasant and enlightening the process from start to finish. So much so that Pearce believed that the Oppenheimer director could work with anyone.
“The term ‘actor’s director’ feels like it exists in the face of those directors that aren’t actor’s directors, they’re all about camera, movement, the picture. Well, Chris is everybody’s director. He’s an art director’s director, a cinematographer’s director, an actor’s director,” Pearce said.
Even with all the directors Pearce worked with before or after Nolan, no other filmmaker duplicated what Pearce experienced in Memento.
“I will take this to my grave: I feel so proud and pleased that I got to have that experience because that doesn’t come along very often,” Pearce said. “I’ve worked with great people: Ridley Scott, Kathryn Bigelow, Curtis Hanson, and they’re all fantastic, wonderful people, but Chris is unique. A very special human being. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
Guy Pearce was willing to act in roles he was reluctant to do to work with Christopher Nolan again
Nolan and Pearce haven’t collaborated since Memento. But Pearce remained interested in reuniting with the director eventually. When Nolan was preoccupied with his Dark Knight trilogy, Pearce even wouldn’t have minded being a part of Batman’s world. Even though Pearce was unsure about playing comic book characters.
“I’d love to work with Chris again,” Pearce said in an interview with MTV News. “There hasn’t been any discussion, we’ll have to wait and see. I have a lot of reluctance [to playing a superhero or villain], but doing it with someone like Chris Nolan would certainly make it appealing.”
Ironically, Pearce would eventually end up playing a supervillain in the Marvel film Iron Man 3.
