By Cara Nash
How are you feeling right now? “I sometimes feel pretty shattered at the end of a movie, but I don’t feel shattered with this one. It’s a good feeling. It means that you didn’t struggle to deliver, and that everyone worked very hard, but it wasn’t a struggle. I think that will translate to the film itself.”
What was your response to the script? “It’s a great script. The thing that resonated with me straight away was that it’s a real leading man role. You’re following this character at every twist and turn, and it’s a complex plot line and role. My character experiences so much, and it’s a journey that I feel people would want to take with him. It’s a challenging role, and he’s going through a lot of things – largely grief, and coming to terms with things, but he’s constantly being pushed by certain realisations coming his way. It’s exciting.”
Did you sign on immediately, or was there a lot of back and forth between you and Michael Petroni? “I expressed my interest, and then we had a phone call. We spoke about a lot of things, but mostly I talked to him about playing an Australian and getting a sense of what kind of preparation I would need to do with the dialect and that type of thing. Michael is a wonderful guy. He’s an extremely talented writer and director, and he created the right environment to make me comfortable. That’s very important to me.”
Did you ever toy with the idea of your character being American? “Michael mentioned it as a possibility if I was really uncomfortable with it, or if I wasn’t able to do it well. We discussed possibly incorporating the fact that Peter spent some time living in the states, but we didn’t end up opting for that. The Australian accent is more specific than most other accents that I’ve had to do – the tone is very specific. It took focus. It’s not just a matter of being able to say things believably. If you’re thinking about how you sound, and nothing about how the character is feeling, then that won’t work. They have to come out as second nature, and that takes time. In making a movie, the pressure that’s always there is that there’s not enough time. If I had spent a year living in Melbourne, it would be no problem, so it’s really about doing the best that you can in a shorter period of time. It’s about trying to master something, and then letting go of the technical aspect and being driven by emotion.”
You play a psychologist haunted by things in your past – did you delve into psychology? Was that your starting point? “Yeah, a little bit. It was part of the process, and I studied psychology in university a little bit. When you get down to the root of it, the objective of the therapist is to try and help someone reveal something that has been blocked or suppressed, and that is preventing them from engaging fully or being present or is causing them suffering. It’s about helping them come to terms with that and uncover the roots of that and come up with a plan of action. Otherwise you’re lost in a swirl of random thoughts, and not able to function. The interesting thing with my character is that the analysis has to be performed on himself. It’s really interesting and fun stuff to work with and think about – to take an analytical approach to the mind and our coping mechanisms, and to learn that the things that we believe are the truth are not really the truth.”
The story is about coping with grief and loss – your character loses a child, so he’s reeling not only from his sadness, but also his own guilt. “It’s a great emotional anchor because the storytelling does veer into the supernatural. That’s the most exciting thing – to then be able to play and make a film that people will have fun seeing. But it also has depth and humanity.”
When you were working with Michael, did his writer’s sensibilities come to the forefront for you? “Knowing that he crafted all of this, there are a lot of details that are very important and subtle and poetic, so it felt good turning to him for insight. He’s very much in touch with the history and all the backstories, so any revelation that I had I would share with him, and he would love. It was great. He made it a very collaborative experience.”
Has your process changed in terms of building up a character and preparing for roles? “It really depends on how much insight I feel I have. The older you get, the more life experience informs your decisions and understanding, and that makes your process a little easier. I’ve spent a lifetime researching characters, so there are residual effects of things that I have done in the past. Even characters that are dissimilar can resonate. Playing a teacher in Detachment is an entirely different role, but a therapist is also a teacher in a way – they’re listening, and they provide an objective voice and offer insight. That’s what the objective of a teacher should be – to patiently guide you and nurture your learning process and inspire you to go deeper. So there are things that help you find your way with characters, and then there are details that need specific work. In The Pianist, my responsibility to learn musical pieces informed an understanding of music that I didn’t have, and the relationship that I had to those pieces then took away the pain and suffering of the hunger and physical transformation that I underwent for the role. I didn’t go into that role deliberately trying to discover that, but you discover revelations like that along the way. It causes a deeper shift in who you are, and a much greater understanding of the impact of something – the way that the artistic can heal something else. It’s a gift to explore all those things, with a bit of a safety net.”
You mentioned this experience didn’t leave you shattered – is that because you’ve learnt to let go of your characters in a way? “This one was heavy in a way, but it was thoughtful rather than a consistent level of depression or suffering, like some of my other roles. It was a man always looking for the answer. It’s a man hanging on. He’s completely isolated in his experience. It’s made my mind very active, but it wasn’t debilitating in the way that other roles have been.”
Backtrack is available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital now.
