Eric Bana: Don't Cheat Your Audience!

Almost from the moment I Tweeted a photo from my chat with the Australian actor Eric Bana last week, I've been hearing from various women around the office who, for lack of a better analogy, are melting like butter on a hot stack of pancakes over the man's hunkiness (I guess I'm not actually lacking a better analogy, but that's the one I'm going with).

Bana puts his charms to excellent use in his new thriller Closed Circuit-costarring Rebecca Hall and Jim Broadbent-but I'm also happy to report that in addition to being a bonafide beefcake, Bana is an engaging, fun guy. Although he plays a lot of serious roles (they don't get much more grim than that of his terrorist-tracking assassin in Steven Spielberg's Munich), Bana started out doing stand-up comedy, so he has a healthy and endearingly ironic perspective when it comes to the business of being a movie star.

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Here's a video blog of our conversation. Bana talks about how some thrillers cheat their audiences with outrageous twists; how his beloved father-in-law, a leading Australian judge, influenced his role as a lawyer in Closed Circuit; and why sometimes the most serious-minded movies are the ones that are the most fun to shoot.

 

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