A diverse and interesting actor, Guy Pearce has been gracing our screens for over 30 years. Here are his greatest movies, ranked.
Renowned Australian actor Guy Pearce has been gracing the big screen with his presence for over three decades, starring alongside the cream of Hollywood’s crop, from Liam Neeson and Samuel L. Jackson to Adam Sandler, Danny DeVito, and Kate Beckinsale, in genres ranging from historical dramas and psychological thrillers to family comedies and sci-fi action flicks. Before moving to Hollywood and hitting the big time in the world of movies, Pearce started off by starring in the iconic Australian soap series Neighbours, which also happens to be the show in which the likes of fellow Australian A-listers Russell Crowe, Margot Robbie, and Liam Hemsworth, to name but a few, also honed their acting skills before making the jump to the big screen.
Early on during his career, it was immediately apparent that Pearce was something special. From his boyish good looks to his amazing and diverse emotional range, Pearce was always destined for the big time. With a prolific career that still continues to impress and surprise to this day, we have selected eight of the very best below and ranked them.
Lawless features what could be one of the finest casts ever assembled, including Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, and, of course, Pearce. Pearce plays a ruthless lawman who has embarked on an uphill battle to shut down the escalating world of bootleg moonshiners during prohibition-era America. The movie is a highly stylized trip through a dark and bloody story of love, death, and betrayal.
Related: Guy Pearce Interested in Making His Marvel Comeback After Iron Man 3
Perhaps not as well-known as most of the others on this list, but a fantastic movie, nonetheless. Ravenous was different to say the least and quite hard to categorize, which might explain its less-than-stellar performance at the box office. It could be described as a western cannibal horror mashup and a tense and horrifying ride, starring genre favorites like Pearce, Robert Carlyle, Jeffrey Jones, and David Arquette. Blur/Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn scored a fantastic genre-bending soundtrack to match the mash-up of genres found within the movie. Despite poor box office returns, the movie has since garnered a significant cult following and has proven itself more than worthy to sit on this list among Pearce’s greatest pieces of work.
The King’s Speech is an intriguing historical drama focusing on the widely untold story of England’s Prince Albert (played with aplomb by the ever-reliable Colin Firth) and his struggles to effectively communicate whilst suffering from a noticeable speech impediment. The movie examines the relationship that develops between Prince Albert and his speech therapist. Pearce has a smaller yet memorable supporting role as King Edward VIII in this highly acclaimed 2010 movie.
As you will notice with the list, Pearce has been a part of numerous highly esteemed films that have been nominated for multiple awards, and The Hurt Locker is no exception. Nominated for nine Academy Awards and winning six, including Best Picture (making it the first Best Picture winner to have been directed by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow), Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, it is not your typical war movie. Set during the Iraq war, The Hurt Locker deals more with the psychological consequences of war than the action or the glory.
This 1994 gem, written and directed by Stephan Elliott, sees Pearce as we’ve never seen him before as it follows two drag queens (played by Hugo Weaving and Pearce), and a transgender woman, (played by Terence Stamp), as they journey across the Australian Outback from Sydney to Alice Springs in a tour bus that they have named "Priscilla." Along the way, they come across all sorts of interesting and odd individuals, and find themselves in a range of outrageous situations. While mainly a comedy, the drag and transgender aspects of the film are handled thoughtfully and never played for lazy laughs, with its positive portrayal of LGBTQ+ individuals helping to introduce queer themes to a mainstream audience. At its core, it is a tender and thoughtful road trip movie with some brilliant performances from its main cast. To top it off, the outfits are fabulous, with the movie winning the Oscar for Best Costume Design at the 67th Academy Awards.
Related: Best LGBTQ+ Movies of the 90s, Ranked
Animal Kingdom is a 2010 Australian crime drama that wears its noir influences proudly on its sleeve. Animal Kingdom was written and directed by Australia native David Michôd and stars Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Pearce, and Jacki Weaver. It is based on true events that involved the Pettingill criminal family of Melbourne, Victoria, when in 1991, two brothers Trevor Pettingill and Victor Peirce (along with two other men) were acquitted in the 1988 shooting murder of two Victorian police officers. Pearce plays Detective Nathan Leckie, one of the few good police officers in Michôd’s brutal and captivating depiction of Melbourne’s criminal underbelly, which earned the picture 18 nominations at the 2010 Australian Film Institute Awards, across all major feature film categories — a record achievement.
L.A. Confidential is a beautiful throwback to the noir mystery of yesteryear and tells the story of three policemen in Los Angeles, each with his own agenda, coming together to solve a murder that took place in the 50s. Each of the character’s individual pasts play into how they solve cases and define the people they are. Featuring a fantastic cast that stars Pearce alongside Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, James Cromwell, and Danny DeVito, the movie was universally acclaimed, scoring a near-perfect 99% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, winning two in the categories of Best Supporting Actress (for Basinger) and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Arguably the film that put both director Christopher Nolan and lead actor Pearce on the map as forces to be reckoned with, Pearce delivers a career defining performance as the main protagonist who has a short-term memory loss condition (anterograde amnesia), which prevents him from the ability to form new memories. Memento follows him as he attempts to track down those who murdered his wife, using a memory system he created involving Polaroid photographs and tattoos to function as reminders of the memories he loses. The movie’s narrative is presented as two different sequences of scenes intercut throughout. A series set in the past presented chronologically in black and white and a series of color sequences shown in reverse order representing the mental state of Pearce’s character. Both meet at the end revealing the audience one of cinema’s all-time greatest twists.
Movie geek, musician and all round nice guy...