Guy Pearce always wanted to be an actor.
The 47-year-old star – who plays Eric in ‘The Rover’ opposite Robert Pattinson – admits that whilst he loved the industry, he wasn’t keen on the fame that came along with his success.
He shared: "It’s not what I went into it for, not every actor wants to be Tom Cruise."
Guy – who has previously confessed to having a problem with cannabis – no longer smokes the herbal drug but admits that it did affect his life both personally and professionally at the time.
He said: "I was a mess, I was not answering the phone, not responding to anyone.
"Then one day I was under the sofa – stoned – when I heard a voice on my answering machine: ‘It’s Nick Cave. We’ve sent you a script and you have to listen…’."
After the phone call, Guy decided he would take a month away to the remote aboriginal desert of Cape Leveque, where he could "give myself time to think, sort myself out".
Meanwhile, Guy also opened up about the death of his father when he was just eight-years-old, admitting that it made him feel "anxious" and "afraid".
He told Event magazine: "I think from that point on, I felt I had to become an adult. I was very young but everything I had known in my life changed.
"It definitely made me very anxious and very afraid of unpredictable things happening to me. I found it hard to be around people. What I liked about acting was the structure of being someone else.
"Growing up I was a shy, anxious kid. I hated being pushed to the front. I wanted to act and people assume because you do acting, you want to go in front of the class and do a talk in front of everyone in assembly. That, to me, was a sweaty-palmed nightmare. In acting you are reading lines, being someone else. It is all scripted, costumed, secure. Anything else just wasn’t."
Guy Pearce’s acting dreams
