When Guy Pearce gets recognised in the street, period noir L.A. Confidential (1997), Christopher Nolan’s non-linear thriller Memento (2000) and riotous drag comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) are the features people want to talk about. The next tier of his fan favourites, he says, include The King’s Speech (2010), The Hurt Locker (2008) and The Proposition (2005). But what of his first screen role, in the soap opera that made him famous in 1980s Britain and beyond? “Mike from Neighbours gets brought up quite a bit, which is nice,” he explains.
In Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, Pearce gives an enigmatic, reptilian performance as Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy industrialist in post-war Pennsylvania who commissions Hungarian architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Holocaust survivor and recent immigrant to the US, to build a huge community centre. What ensues is an epic story of survival, work and power, which clocks in at 3 hours 35 minutes including a 15-minute interval baked into its print….