Actor Guy Pearce is all about the details
The star of such films as 'L.A. Confidential' and 'Memento' pores over scripts, and for his role as a Southern FBI agent in 'Traitor,' it was no exception.
GUY PEARCE maintains such a low profile that sometimes even directors who intend to cast him in their upcoming movies don't recognize him.
When writer-director Jeffrey Nachmanoff first met the 40-year-old actor to talk to him about the role of FBI agent Roy Clayton in the spy thriller "Traitor," which opens in theaters today, he walked right by the star of 1997's "L.A. Confidential" and 2000's "Memento" without a second glance.
"We met for lunch, and I looked around the restaurant," recalls Nachmanoff. "There was only one other person there, and I didn't know it was Guy. And he said to me, 'Jeffrey?' I'm like, 'Guy!' I don't know why, because he doesn't change that much, but there's something about him, and I think a lot of great actors have this. He wants to disappear into his parts."
In "Traitor," the English-born, Australian-raised Pearce slips out of recognition courtesy of a clipped goatee, a heavy Tennessee accent and full-immersion into a complex character -- a federal agent whose Baptist upbringing and respect for other faiths provide him with the keys to unlocking the secrets of former U.S. Special Operations officer and devout Muslim Samir Horn (Don Cheadle), who has been linked to terrorist activities in Yemen, Nice and London.
"Roy Clayton is more understanding of Samir's position than anybody else in the FBI actually is," says Pearce. "What they have in common is that Roy's father was a Baptist minister, and Samir's father was a religious man as well."
This heady exploration of faith and terrorism has its origins in a "what if" scenario that comedian-actor Steve Martin posed to producer David Hoberman during the filming of the 2003 blockbuster comedy "Bringing Down the House." Hoberman and partner Todd Lieberman then recruited Nachmanoff, who wrote 2004's climate-change thriller "The Day After Tomorrow," to develop the idea into a screenplay.
"When [Guy and I] first sat down to look at the script, he was enthusiastic about it," says Nachmanoff. "He said, 'Look, Jeffrey, I normally have a lot of notes. I have to say, I don't have many notes on this script. But let's literally go through it page by page and look at every line.' And we did. And he would analyze sometimes down to a contraction, saying 'I do not' versus 'I don't.' That type of thing, for Guy, could be important."
