Guy Pearce

With classic, square-jawed good looks, Australian actor Guy Pearce brings to mind the leading men of Hollywood's Golden Age; however, the actor is a thoroughly modern one, using his talents to play characters ranging from flamboyant drag queens to straight-arrow Los Angeles policemen.

Pearce was born October 5, 1967, in Cambridgeshire, England. His father, who was a member of the Royal Air Force, moved his family to Australia when Pearce was three. Following the elder Pearce's tragic death in a plane crash, Pearce's mother decided to keep her family in Australia when young Pearce was eight, and it was there that he grew up. Interested in acting from a young age, he wrote to various members of the Australian television industry requesting a screen test when he was 17. His efforts proved worthwhile, as he was invited to audition for a new soap called Neighbours. Pearce won a significant part on the show and was part of it from 1986 to 1990. Following his stint on Neighbours, Pearce found other work in television and made his screen debut in the 1992 film Hunting. He acted in a few more small films and in My Forgotten Man, a 1993 TV biopic of Errol Flynn, before coming to the attention of film audiences everywhere in the 1994 sleeper hit The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. As the flamboyant and often infuriating Adam/Felicia, Pearce gave a performance that was both over the top and immensely satisfying. The role gave him the international exposure he had previously lacked and led to his casting in Curtis Hanson's 1997 adaptation of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential. The film was an all-around success and drew raves for Pearce and his co-stars, who included Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance) and fellow Australian Russell Crowe.

After the success of L.A. Confidential, Pearce went on to make the independent A Slipping Down Life, which premiered at Sundance in 1999. He followed that with the highly original but fatally unmarketable Ravenous (1999), Antonia Bird's tale of chaos and cannibalism which cast Pearce alongside the likes of David Arquette and Robert Carlyle. Though his role in the following year's military drama Rules of Engagement would offer a commendable performance by the rising star, it was another film that same year that would cement his status as one of the most challenging and unpredictable performers of his generation. Cast as a vengeance seeking, tattoo-covered widower whose inability to form new memories hinders his frantic search for his wife's killer, Pearce's unforgettable performance in the backwards-structured thriller Memento drove what would ultimately become one of the biggest sleepers in box office history. Pearce was now officially hot property on the Hollywood scene, and producers wasted no time in booking him for as many upcoming blockbusters as they could. A memorable performance as the villain in The Count of Monte Cristo found Pearce traveling back in time for his next film, and his subsequent role in The Time Machine would find him blasting so far into the future that mankind had reverted to the days of prehistoric times. A trip to the land down under found Pearce next appearing as a hapless bank robber in the critically panned crime effort The Hard Word, and the popular actor would remain in Australia for the elliptical drama Till Human Voices Wake Us (2002). In 2004, Pearce played a lion hunter in the family-oriented epic Two Brothers. See him in 2008's Traitor.

by Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide