Guy Pearce is first-time Oscar nominee for The Brutalist. He did a lot to support the film, I would even say that he was more visible than Adrien Brody for much of the promotion. I finally saw The Brutalist and… yeah, it was an extremely difficult film to get through. Brody and Pearce were both giving career-best performances, but the film is so dark. Anyway, I wondered why Guy was still giving interviews this late in the awards season, but it turns out that he’s promoting a different movie now, an Aussie film called Inside. He recently chatted with the Guardian, and here are some highlights:

His campaign is going better than Karla Sofía Gascón’s. Not that Pearce has paid attention. “One of the [Emilia Pérez] actors said something on social media, right?”

Being Oscar-nominated: “It’s funny. Not funny that I haven’t had one before – just funny to even get one, I reckon. I stop and go, ‘Wow, is that – really? OK? That’s really happened?’ I’ve been nominated for a few of these awards, and I haven’t won any! I’m not gonna win! Kieran [Culkin] will win, again.” Has he got a speech ready? “I’ve had one I’ve thought about for the last three months now – haven’t used it once! Nah, I’ll just forget it.”

He & Carice van Houten split two years ago: He and Van Houten “never felt the need to say anything” about their separation “because it’s nobody’s bloody business. But Carice was really copping it in Holland. I mean, so was I. But she and I are the best of friends. We live together and look after our boy, and we function like a family. We have a great love, we adore each other. So yes, she probably is the love of my life now.”

The Kevin Spacey stuff: Then, a week after we speak, Pearce told an interviewer about how Kevin Spacey “targeted” him on the set of LA Confidential and how he “sobbed” decades later when the allegations against Spacey began to emerge. (Spacey responded by telling him to “grow up”, to which Pearce declines to comment further.)

Pearce is “deeply interested” in blurred relationships between men. “As I go through life, trying to understand the dynamics between myself and my friends and – not that I really have any enemies, but people who have done wrong by me – what then happens with that relationship? I’m really curious about the susceptibility and vulnerability we live with constantly, whether it is with your lover, your son or your brother. If a writer has homed in on that stuff, I’ll go to that every day of the week. But I’ve done some bad films before – I know I can’t sit around waiting for scripts like this to come along. I’d only work really rarely!”

His thoughts on the Best Actor race: His co-star Adrien Brody is his call for best actor (“I just love him so much”) but he thought Timothée Chalamet was “stunning” as Bob Dylan, and Sebastian Stan “really incredible” as Donald Trump.

[From The Guardian]

I have to say, if Kieran Culkin wasn’t the odds-on favorite for the Oscar, Guy would be playing this the right way – he’s kept it loose, he’s done so much to hype the film, he’s got nothing but lovely things to say about other actors (minus Kevin Spacey), and he just seems relaxed and like he’s having a good time with all of this. This is the other dream for actors – sure, they all want to win, but it must be really fun to go through an awards season as a nominee with zero pressure or expectations. As for the focus on male relationships… eh. There’s only so many “when sausage parties go wrong” stories people really want to see.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.