Ben Mendelsohn: Alf from Home and Away has the best acting career in Australia
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Version 0 of 1. One time, a very long time ago, Ben Mendelsohn still lived in Melbourne and so did I. He wound up at my house and I wanted to be an actor so I asked him all about it. I don’t remember much of what he said but I remember this because it seemed universal for most Australian creatives: have a back-up plan. “My advice in that respect hasn’t changed,” Mendelsohn says when we meet again, with his latest film, Black Sea, in Australian cinemas and small-screen drama, Bloodline, on Netflix. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a great thing not to have another option on the table. When it gets lean and dry, it’s pretty tough, and it can go on for a very long time, and there’s no guarantee of that changing significantly.” Related: Ben Mendelsohn: five best moments “Are you happy not being an actor?” he asks. I meet an inordinate amount of actors who are cab drivers in Sydney, I tell him. “Yeah. Well, there’s a proud tradition of that in Sydney. Most notably, Steve Bisley, who is a very important Australian actor. He’s in that film The Big Steal that I did, but Steve has a long and incredibly storied career; class of 77 at Nida [the National Institute of Dramatic Arts], which is their greatest year ever.” Same year as Mel Gibson. “In Steve’s downtime from work,” Mendelsohn goes on, “he started driving cabs. And it was a big deal, a really big deal, but his attitude was pretty straightforward: ‘Look, I’m not working, I’ve got kids, they need to eat and be provided for.’” Mendelsohn, meanwhile, wound up in Hollywood. There’s a proud Australian tradition of that too. “The thing about home,” he says, “is that it’s a tough place to sustain a career, just by dent of the size of the place. I had about as good a run there as anybody, but it’s still a tough ask. I mean, the person I think with the best career in Australia is Ray Meagher, in Home and Away.” Alf Stewart? “I’m not trying to be clever about this! It’s not some wry, hip, ironic take. The guy has been working straight for 20, 25 years, however long he’s been doing that job, with a regular paycheck on a show that millions of people around the world watch. That guy’s got the best career in the country.” Homegrown soaps are integral to the development of young local actors, insists Mendelsohn, who’s some kind of proof positive, having appeared on Neighbours in the 1980s. “In my experience, it doesn’t get tougher than those shows. They are where you work the hardest. You have the least preparation in some ways, the scripts ask a lot of you as a performer, and you have to find a way to do that that’s not preposterous.” All this soap talk, I note, and we’re forgetting to get on to Ryan Gosling and the fact that he might be in love with Ben. First they appeared together in The Place Beyond the Pines, directed by Derek Cianfrance, now Mendelsohn has shown up in Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River. He laughs. “I’ve got a lot of time for that guy. I love him right back.” While Lost River has not fared well with the critics, Cianfrance’s movie was “one of the best film-making experiences of my considerably long life”, Mendelsohn says. Related: Ben Mendelsohn set for Star Wars spin-off Rogue One “We had a shit first day. Didn’t feel good, wasn’t good. I was pretty bad. My guy was supposed to be this ex-con badass that was gonna lure Ryan’s guy, with all his motorbike-riding prowess, into doing the heavy lifting of all these bank robberies. We started doing it that, and Derek was like, ‘What if you just really liked Ryan … ?” Hardly a stretch. But Mendelsohn’s success can’t just be a case of Being a Guy Who Acts. Is Mendelsohn, who is trying really hard not to drop regular F-bombs but really wants to (and enjoys) doing so, better at playing Hollywood than he lets on? “No, no,” he says, rejecting this line. “There was an interview I did many years ago. Didn’t go very well. The guy ended up writing the piece and the upshot was: things would be fine if I’d just learn to play the game; that’s what I don’t know how to do. And I don’t think that’s the case.” There are two routes to making it, he says. Do something that gets you noticed. Or make immediate sense to people. “Now, I didn’t. I didn’t make sense to them. I’d been coming to LA for a very long time before I got anywhere.” He laughs off talk that he’s become more palatable. “I may have got naturally less whatever as I’ve gotten older,” he says. “The general rule of thumb is, honestly, that the higher up you go, the less sturm und drang there is. The thing with people who are doing it at the top, top end of town – they don’t have to prove anything.” Proper movie stars, he notes, “get bombarded”. He makes a briefly disgusted noise. Related: The Big Steal rewatched – a timeless John Hughes-esque teen caper “It’s a tougher gig than what people think it is. The proper, real, genuine, worldwide movie stars don’t get a lot of downtime from the world outside. That’s a tougher price, I think, than what people’s fantasy of fame account for.” But it could be Mendelsohn soon – maybe. Rumours seem oddly certain about his leading man involvement in the latest Star Wars spin-off, Rogue One. “There’s a friend of mine who seems to think that there’s something to all that,” he says. “All I can say is that if it were to happen, no one would be happier than myself, being a kid that Star Wars hit at really the most magical time when you’re really watching stuff.” He pauses. “I can honestly tell you there is no such deal in place. I’ve heard reports, but there’s nothing definite. It would be excellent to do a Star Wars.” I can almost hear him coil his fingers together. “It would be excellent.” • Black Sea is in Australian cinemas now |