Playing the perfect villain
> Ben Mendelsohn turns on the megalomaniac malice for Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi action film Ready Player One
ALONG with a brown suede jacket and frayed jeans, Ben Mendelsohn wears a look that says he’s been up to no good, his mouth poised halfway between snarl and playful smirk below a pair of smiling blue eyes.
“It’s just my face,” he pleads. “But that’s always been the case. Thankfully, I got old enough to go from a boy who looks like he’s been up to mischief, to a man who looks like he’s been up to mischief.”
The Australian actor brings a nuanced brand of malice to all his villainous roles, be it his Emmy-winning performance as the sexy black sheep in Netflix series Bloodline, or as a psychopathic brother in Animal Kingdom.
Then there was his career criminal in British drama Starred Up, and menacing white-caped Director Orson Krennic in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
This summer will see him step into the tights of another legendary baddie, playing the Sheriff of Nottingham to Taron Egerton’s Robin Hood.
But, before that, he fulfils a lifetime dream to work with Steven Spielberg, starring with Mark Rylance in the sci-fi action adventure,
( “I grew up with Mr Spielberg’s films so I was happy to get that meeting,” admits Mendelsohn, 48. “But I was also very shy, and did a lot of looking at the ground.
“I said: ‘Look, I don’t know if you want to give me the job or not. But this is good enough. Whatever happens from here is jam’.”
A little ironic, since, as a boy, he was traumatised by Spielberg’s Jaws.
“Because we got ’em,” he says of Australia. “I don’t care about Amity Island. We got sharks! My mum took me to see Jaws at the drive-in and I couldn’t make it over the seat.”
To this day, you won’t find him joining his surfer countrymen Chris Hemsworth or Hugh Jackman in the ocean.
“I can swim in a pool – but I’m only all right if I can touch the bottom. I blame Jaws for that.”
Unsure whether he had made a good impression on the fabled director, he waited three months to learn he’d won the role of Machiavellian Nolan Sorrento in Spielberg’s much-touted screen adaptation of Ernest Cline’s
2011 best-selling dystopian novel.
His awe of Spielberg continued onto Ready Player One’s UK set, where Leavesden Studios doubled for Columbus, Ohio, referring to the director as ‘The Governor’ or ‘The Boss’.
“That’s what he’s known as – it’s hardly a state secret. He’s Steven Spielberg. I don’t expect to see another director like him in my life. He’s singular. He’s extraordinary, and gentle too.”
Working in the UK reaped other unexpected benefits.
“Better tea. You’re always gonna get the best tea in a British production.”
If it bothers him that he’s become typecast as a complicated bad guy, he doesn’t let on, pointing to his recent portrayal of King George VI in opposite Bafta and Oscarwinning actor Gary Oldman.
On his slightly comedic take on Nolan ( “It’s the right fit for the vehicle; the right exhaust system for the engine.”
With its immersive virtual universe where the humans of 2045 escape their miserable existence by living in avatars,
is arguably a role he was born to play.
“I’ve played video games for most of my life, although pinball was my first love in the 70s. I grew up right in the sweet spot for this. I had a TRS-80 and a Commodore 64, so I know the turf.”
He’s still a regular gamer although he’s not about to divulge his player name.
Mendelsohn doesn’t take his second career start for granted. For the first time in his life, fans now recognise him in his adopted home of Los Angeles, smiling warmly despite the fact they usually only know him as the bad guy.
“But I’ve never had anyone want to attack me over that. Never. Other reasons? Yeah, but not that,” he says with theatrical pause.
“People have been pretty all right with me. They don’t expect to see someone from
on the streets. “And I still get moments of ‘Wow...’. I get very emotional about how good things are and where life is for me.”
He knows he’s finally hit his stride and even the fact that his role was limited to one film doesn’t bring him down.
“I am just happy that I built the Death Star. They can’t take that away from me.” –