Ben means business

Hollywood’s villain of choice Ben Mendelsohn is continuing his reign of nastiness on film by facing off against Robin Hood, writes James Wigney

MELBOURNE actor Ben Mendelsohn is heading for a big birthday next year — he’ll hit the “dreaded 5-0” in April.

But unlike previous milestones — turning 30 and 40 were “a big deal” — the Aussie A-lister says he won’t be doing too much soulsearching about it.

“The 5-0 is a big one,” he concedes over the phone from his adopted home of Los Angeles.

“But I don’t know if something happens in your 40s where you are like ‘whatever’. You know it’s coming, you know it’s a big one, but I think by the time you’re in the later part of your 40s … you have done most of the ‘head miles’ or reflecting about it before it happens. I feel like I have already done a bunch of that anyway. But yeah, it’s a big birthday.”

Unsurprisingly, any reflecting he has done about his career over the past decade has only brought him smiles. Ten years ago he was just starting to come out of a career slump that at one point had him washing dishes at a restaurant in Sydney’s Bondi and working at a Brumby’s Bakery.

Now, thanks in no small part to his role as the insidious, dead-eyed gangster, Pope, in David Michod’s 2010 Aussie crime thriller Animal Kingdom, he has carved out a lucrative niche as Hollywood’s villain of choice.

In the past six years, Mendelsohn has broken bad for Christopher Nolan in The

Dark Knight Rises, Ridley Scott in Exodus: Gods and Men, and Steven Spielberg in Ready

Player One, as well as embracing nefarious roles in

Star Wars: Rogue One and next year’s Marvel Cinematic Universe chapter, Captain Marvel.

“It’s been extraordinary,” he says of his career renaissance. “But that’s what has been very sweet about it — you don’t expect that in this business.

“And also with the kind of career that I have had — such as it is — and having that success, you just don’t expect it. I think as an actor you expect that some time in your 20s is going to be your prime period of acting, so I am still grateful and taken aback by how it’s gone.”

For his latest movie, the umpteenth version of Robin

Hood, he’s returning to the very beginning of his long involvement with the silver screen. The Disney animated version of the much-loved “steals from the rich and gives to the poor” rebel was the first film he ever saw at the cinema as a child living in Germany.

And true to recent form, he’s not on the side of the underdog outlaw, but rather is playing the violent, bullying, corrupt antagonist, the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Finding something new in a role that has been played so many times is no mean feat — and Mendelsohn was adamant he didn’t want to try to emulate what he considers the greatest of them all, the late Alan Rickman’s towering performance that well and truly stole 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves away from its A-list star, Kevin Costner.

“He is absolutely the gold standard,” Mendelsohn says.

“One thing I said from the very outset was that is an untouchable performance. You can’t outdo or top that. ”

Instead, after talking to director Otto Bathurst about the new high-octane version that would see Taron Egerton’s Robin shooting arrows like a machine gun and moving like he was in some kind of Middle Ages Matrix, Mendelsohn resolved to make his Sheriff a “brutish kind of survivor”, the victim of an abusive childhood who rises to power and influence through a potent blend of cunning, toadying and violence.

“I think that he is someone who is born into a rough place and time, and obviously there is that descriptor of all sorts of unseemly stuff that you would go through at a young age,’’ Mendelsohn says.

“I think he is that kind of example of someone that decides that if you can’t beat them, join them — but get on top of them, as it were.”

While Aussie audiences have known about “Full Mendo” — a term coined by comedian Mick Molly to describe his menace-filled intensity — for years, his nickname is starting to go global. Compatriot Cate Blanchett was on the same episode of Jimmy Kimmel recently and remarked that she had just seen “Mendo” backstage in his trackie dacks, leaving the talk show host utterly perplexed.

“It’s very flattering to be part of the culture like that,” Mendelsohn says.

“I love being part of the country. It’s an honour. And it’s an irreverent country — that’s important to us. I have been away for a good while, but I kind of love that about us.”

He’s similarly grateful about the Aussie affection for the disreputable outsider. Not only does the country that embraces Ned Kelly as a folk hero love to hate the bad guys Mendelsohn brings to life on screen, but it also seems to be happy to look past his darker, more self-destructive days.

“I think we are more tolerant and less black and white about those things,” he muses.

“I mean the whole loveable larrikin thing, which was an earlier reading of who I was — a bit poorly behaved, not pernicious, a bit dodgy.

“We’re OK with that stuff and that’s a good thing. Australia throws up more than its fair share of genuine characters: interesting, fun, cheeky people.”

Robin Hood is now showing at the State Cinema and Village Cinemas.