Interview: Joel Edgerton, actor

“I’D never really imagined myself as an action star,” says Joel Edgerton. The 37-year-old Australian actor is pondering this new perception of him, primarily because his latest film Warrior casts him as a martial arts fighter who knocks seven bells out of Tom Hardy.

That his character is also a debt-ridden physics teacher with a family to support, an ex-alcoholic father (Nick Nolte) and a troubled younger brother (Hardy) may make it easier for him to think of the film as a complex family drama with scope for the kind of dream-come-true acting opportunities any on-the-rise thesp would kill for (doing scenes with Nolte was, he says, “definitely one for the mental scrapbook”).

But there’s also no escaping the fact that, physically, Edgerton holds his own against the more practised Hardy, and that, in turn, makes it easy to see why Edgerton may be about to follow fellow Antipodeans such as Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Sam Worthington by becoming a more prominent fixture in Hollywood.

Already this year’s he’s delivered a memorable performance in his friend David Michôd’s Oscar-nominated Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom and, after Warrior hits cinemas this week, he will next be seen in the prequel to The Thing. He’s also due to play a US Navy Seal for Kathryn Bigelow in her as yet untitled Hurt Locker follow-up about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, and he came very close to winning the lead in the new Jason Bourne film currently being prepped (The Town’s Jeremy Renner was ultimately cast).

In fact, given his rising profile and Australian connection, it’s a wonder he wasn’t also considered for the title role of the new Mad Max film that Hardy is due to start filming next year.

“I guess you could put me in the frame for something like that, but I personally wouldn’t cast me as Mad Max,” grins Edgerton. “I don’t see myself as someone who would take on the mantle of something that Mel Gibson left behind. It’s just not the way I view myself.”

In terms of Hollywood, he’s just pleased that there’s a space for Australians to take on leading roles and is quick to pour scorn on the theory that American leading men of his generation perhaps still look a little too boyish for the kinds of rugged roles that are regularly being won by his Australian (and British) contemporaries. “There’s a bunch of Americans that handle that weight of role as well,” he says. “And I certainly don’t consider myself as more of a man than anyone else.”

Still, reluctant as he may be to view himself in this way, when it came to casting the new prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, it was Edgerton that the filmmakers chose when they needed someone to portray the type of character Kurt Russell played in the original. “I’m kind of a supporting character in that,” corrects Edgerton. “The lead is actually a female protagonist, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.”

Nevertheless, going by the trailer, Edgerton’s physical similarity to the type of gruff, surly character Russell played is undeniable and it does help provide some continuity with the Carpenter version. “Oh it will sit neatly before the Carpenter version in terms of the look and feel and the visual aesthetic of the story,” confirms Edgerton. “The story that we’re telling is answering the mystery of what happens to the Norwegian camp that Kurt Russell’s character stumbles upon early in the Carpenter movie.” Is it daunting being part of a film that is going to be heavily scrutinised by fans of what has become a cult classic? He nods. “It is a little daunting doing any prequel, franchise, sequel or anything that is connected to something with a great fan–base.”

Edgerton knows what he’s talking about in this respect. He did, after all, play the young Owen Lars in the final two Star Wars prequels. He still can’t believe he was in them. “The whole serendipity and luck and fortune of that still baffles me,” marvels Edgerton. “Like, when I think of all the strands that needed to come together for that to happen: that I was an actor, that I was the right age, that I perhaps anatomically fit the bill to be a young Phil Brown [the actor who played Owen in the original Star Wars], that they were shooting in Sydney – all of that stuff trips me out. Even to this day, when I think about the fact that I’m in this Star Wars world, that I’m a half-brother to Darth Vader and an uncle to Luke Skywalker, it’s too hard to wrap my head around.”

That’s hardly surprising. Despite the fact that Edgerton and his elder brother Nash both now work in the film business (Nash is a stunt co-ordinator, actor and director of several acclaimed short films), growing up in Sydney in the 1970s and 1980s, neither had much connection to the film industry. “My old man was a lawyer and is now in the property business and my mum looked after us – the hardest job on the planet,” smiles Edgerton. “We just liked mucking around with video cameras making movies. I got into acting when I left school and Nash quit electrical engineering to go and become a stuntman. So we both found our own ways into the industry separately and now we work together a lot.”

Edgerton spent a lot of his formative years doing theatre before getting small breaks in feature films – a career path that meant he avoided the indignities of the Australian teen soaps that gave early employment to the likes of Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe. Not that he thinks he would have been cast in something like Neighbours anyway. “I’ve never been the most attractive person and those things seem to be for symmetrically-headed people with perfect jaw lines,” he says, letting out a self-deprecating laugh.

“I always sought out more interesting writing and I think that has done well for me because now I’m participating in the kind of stuff I can really sink my teeth into.”

He’s not kidding. He’s about to start shooting Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in which he’ll play Tom Buchanan opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jay Gatsby. “It’s New York in the 1920s, so there’s a lot of excess and music and danger. It’s right up Baz’s alley.”

As for that Kathyrn Bigelow film, it’s currently being re-jigged in light of Bin Laden’s death earlier this year. “It used to be about the failed attempt [to capture him] in 2001 and now they’re readjusting it. As soon as it’s ready, that thing will happen, and if my schedule permits, and they’re still into the idea of me, I’ll be there for sure.”

It sounds as if that might be one downside of success – that there’s a chance he might be too busy to do some of the dream projects. “Yeah, maybe. But with Warrior, with Animal Kingdom, with nearly getting the job on the new Bourne film, all of a sudden I feel like I’ve been tapped on the shoulder as the new guy in town and there are lots of opportunities that I wouldn’t have dreamed would be available before. I just want to make the right choices.”

● Warrior is in cinemas from tomorrow. The Thing follows on 2 December