Guy Pearce opened up about wanting to work with Christopher Nolan again after Memento but not being able to because a Warner Bros. executive didn’t like his acting.
In a conversation with Vanity Fair ahead of the release of his new film, The Brutalist, the actor admitted he hasn’t really been in touch with the Oscar-winning director since they worked together on the 2000 film.
“He spoke to me about roles a few times over the years. The first Batman and The Prestige,” he recalled. “But there was an executive at Warner Bros. who quite openly said to my agent, ‘I don’t get Guy Pearce. I’m never going to get Guy Pearce. I’m never going to employ Guy Pearce.’ So, in a way, that’s good to know. I mean, fair enough. There are some actors I don’t get. But it meant I could never work with Chris.”
When asked if he had done anything to potentially offend the exec, the L.A. Confidential actor explained, “I think he just didn’t believe in me as an actor.”
He found out about this when Nolan flew him out to London to discuss him portraying Henri Ducard/Ra’s al Ghul in Batman Begins — a role that eventually went to Liam Neeson.
“I think it was decided on my flight that I wasn’t going to be in the movie,” Pearce said. “So I get there and Chris is like, ‘Hey, you want to see the Batmobile and get dinner?’”
Nolan’s relationship with Warner Bros. began right after Memento with 2002’s Insomnia and continued through 2020 when he released Tenet. Throughout his time with the studio, he released blockbusters like The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception. The filmmaker famously left Warner Bros. in 2021 for Universal, which released his Oscar best picture winner, Oppenheimer.
Elsewhere in the profile, the Iron Man 3 actor praised his Memento co-star Carrie-Anne Moss and had nothing but glowing sentiments about the director.
“[Moss] was good fun. I’ve lost touch with her, unfortunately. She had a good sense of humor, but it’s hard to compete with Chris Nolan,” he shared. “He’s such a towering intellect.”
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