STORM BREWING
His latest movie is making waves and generating talk of an Oscar, but Joel Edgerton is keeping busy and keeping his cool.
His latest movie is making waves and generating talk of an Oscar, but Joel Edgerton is keeping busy and keeping his cool.
Joel Edgerton is feeling a little discombobulated: Oscar buzz is taunting him, he is stretched between work commitments, and he is missing Australia terribly. But he wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, he has been working towards this moment his whole career. It’s been a busy week in what has shaped up to be an extraordinary year in the life of the Australian who, after decades as a journeyman actor, is finally breaking through, coming into his own. His week has gone something like this: one evening was spent patrolling downtown LA in the back of a police car with Will Smith, another walking the red carpet for the premiere of his new film Loving, and now he is on his way to New York to appear as a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers. He has already broken our interview in two to multi-task: part one while he was packing, part two continued once he jumped in the car. Such is the life of Joel these days, juggling films, international travel – Cannes one week, Toronto the next – and the demands of his new role as a leading man in Hollywood.
“Pulling the double duty is kind of doing my head in,” he says of simultaneously prepping for a new movie while promoting his last.
Edgerton is a man of many surprises. He paints, for starters, “with ink and stuff, but I wouldn’t say there’s an exhibition in the works”. He is passionate about politics: diversity, gay marriage and Australia’s “shameful” racial past dominate his conversation. And, in the midst of starring in one of the most highly acclaimed films of the year, which has had critics murmuring about awards for months, he freely admits to having a “mini-meltdown and just wanting to disappear”. But more on that later.
Part intense intellectual, part affable larrikin, and refreshingly open to converse with, Edgerton is a fascinating rollercoaster, especially at a time when the Australian actor is hitting his peak. “I’m not used to spreading my brain in too many different directions,” he says. “But I’d be a fool to complain, because it really is a great life and we’re having a great time … this movie is really very special.”
Loving is special indeed. The 1960s civil rights drama (in cinemas in March) is based on the real-life story of interracial couple Richard and Mildred Loving, who were sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958 for getting married and later took their love to court in what became a landmark civil rights case. Edgerton plays Richard Loving, the quietly spoken, unexpected poster man for civil rights, alongside Ruth Negga as his wife.
“The Lovings weren’t revolutionary; they weren’t kicking in doors. They weren’t grabbing microphones and writing speeches at night: they were doing the opposite. They were shying away from the cameras, they hardly spoke, they didn’t want to be at the front of a revolution, but they found themselves in the spotlight,” he says.
Director Jeff Nichols, who cast Edgerton after working with him on 2016’s Midnight Special, told US Vogue: “I wasn’t looking for star power … I was looking for great actors.” But in turn he has catapulted Edgerton, known for playing the kind of rugged supporting characters that suit his handsomely worn-in face, to star status. The actor’s turn as the quiet and reserved Richard, complete with tobacco-stained teeth, bleached hair and soft mumble, has put him firmly into the spotlight that he has spent decades working
“I HOPE I’LL BE SITTING IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR NEXT YEAR DOING MY NEXT THING”
towards. Peter Debruge, chief film critic at the film industry bible Variety, described Edgerton’s performance as “powerful”.
“In the half-dozen years since his breakthrough performance in Animal Kingdom,” Debruge wrote, “Edgerton has demonstrated nothing short of full actorly commitment to a series of demanding roles. Until now, what he has never seemed capable of doing is fully relaxing into the skin of another character, and yet, under Nichols’s direction, he disappears into the role of Richard Loving.”
If, as anticipated, Edgerton is nominated for an Academy Award this month, he would be in line to join the illustrious Aussie Oscar blokes’ club with Heath Ledger (who won posthumously for The Dark Knight in 2009), Russell Crowe ( Gladiator in 2001), Geoffrey Rush ( Shine in 1997) and Peter Finch (who won posthumously for Network in 1977).
“All that talk is obviously very flattering, and I’d be dishonest to say it doesn’t press the ego button a little bit,” Edgerton says. “But it’s a good reflection on the film, which resonates so strongly and screams very loudly about things that are going on today.”
Loving has ignited a passion for civil rights and politics in Edgerton, who is not exactly known for being outspoken in public. “There’s no greater time for a movie like this to enter into the entertainment space, and this constant awareness of the fact that there are so many problems with race and equality … and on the subject of marriage equality, which is obviously very relevant to us (Australians) right now, that marriage equality and racial equality align, those two topics sort of spring from the movie and are important themes,” he says.
Edgerton is now based in Los Angeles, where he owns a house in the Hollywood Hills with his director brother Nash. Living in America has opened his eyes to racism, civil rights and gun violence, he says, which are forefront in the debate in the US (and, interestingly, in some of his recent movie roles). He also keeps an eye on issues back home, is angry about the gay marriage plebiscite, and “our own complicated and shameful history when it comes to race relations in Australia”.
“One of the things the movie really resonated for me was the assumption that the private lives of people … and I’m talking about the unthreatening, non-destructive lives of two private people, can be infringed upon and governed and legislated against by people who really should mind their own business. It’s crazy that in 2016 two human beings who are not doing anything wrong are made to feel that they don’t have the same rights as everybody else. It’s so shameful, and I think that the villains of our movie are the people who stood in the way of change. My challenge to anybody who stands in the way of change is to not imagine themselves as the villain of a movie when this chapter of history is spoken about or depicted.”
He takes a breath for a moment and calms down. I ask if taking such interesting character roles, walking in other people’s shoes, has taught him more about the world.
“Absolutely,” he says. “I mean, Loving really brought home that I was a person who had never really experienced injustice in my life in any acute fashion. I grew up in Dural [in north-western Sydney]. I have a very smooth life, and for 42 years I don’t think I’ve ever seriously suffered any sort of injustice, certainly not a prolonged period of any kind of oppression. Injustice for me was not getting a certain piece of cake … as a child you expect it all the time, but as a grown-up person, nobody ever told me that I couldn’t do, I couldn’t be, I couldn’t live, that I couldn’t have freedoms and I couldn’t have equal rights … and I think it’s important that people like me and the kind of regular folk who have never experienced injustice should see a movie like Loving to have an empathetic experience with other people in order to experience our own judgement. But yeah, my life is very lucky. On the work front I have the lucky chance to dive into people’s experiences. It’s definitely a constant learning experience.” But surely, I ask, you also just pick some roles because they’re fun? “Absolutely,” he says, laughing. “I’m not getting up every day thinking I have an opportunity to change the world, and I don’t think I’m a very political person, but when you get involved in a project that is political, it’s very hard not to become a spokesperson.”
Edgerton’s passion for filmmaking began in the backyard at Dural, where he and Nash would make ninja movies as teenagers. He honed his acting skills at Nepean Drama School, before first gracing our screens in Erskineville Kings and TV’s The Secret Life of Us, then carving a steadily upward career trajectory through a mixed bag of roles that has included two Star Wars movies, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and last year’s Black Mass, alongside Johnny Depp.
The Edgerton brothers are still making movies together, but with much bigger budgets, under the banner of the Blue-Tongue Films collective they formed with a group of friends more than a decade ago, which most notably produced 2010’s critically acclaimed Animal Kingdom, directed by David Michôd.
Edgerton laughs when I mention his first homemade movies: “It’s funny you mention that because I was sitting there the other day thinking: ‘I should make a ninja movie!’ That’d be awesome.”
As if he isn’t busy enough these days, he is also working on a new project with Michôd, and the upcoming supernatural Netf lix police thriller Bright with Will Smith.
Edgerton is thorough in his research for roles (he learnt to lay bricks for Loving), which is why he recently found himself in the back of an LAPD car with Smith. “It’s funny doing ride-alongs, and it’s actually quite an adrenalised kind of situation doing a ride-along with Will, because he’s probably one of the biggest movie stars in the world and he’s sitting there with a hoodie on, hiding in the back seat of an LAPD car,” Edgerton recalls.
The actor wrote, directed and starred in the psychological thriller The Gift in 2015, and is keen to get back into the director’s chair again with a new film he is writing, something he’s been working on for several years. “I think screenplays need time to form themselves with a dimensionality that they need … it’s a slow-cooking articulation.”
“I got a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction and a lot of learning out of making The Gift,” he adds, “so I would hope that I’ll be sitting in the director’s chair by the end of next year doing my next thing.”
The busier Edgerton gets, the more he pines for Sydney. He plans to spend some time over Christmas “hanging out with friends, surfing, seeing the family” and recharging after his extraordinary year before returning to LA for the awards season.
“I really, really miss home and, actually, a few days ago I was having a mini-meltdown in my mind just wishing I could just disappear and go back home for a minute,” he says. “It’d be awesome if it was just down the road and if I could just tell everybody I’m going to take a week off, but unfortunately it’s not that easy. But there was a time when I wished for the opportunities that I have now … so I’m not complaining.”