Guy Pearce in Killing Faith
Owning a prolific career in film and television, Emmy winner and Academy Award nominee Guy Pearce has starred inseveral box office and critically acclaimed films, including The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, L.A. Confidential, Memento, Iron Man 3, Alien: Covenant, The Road, The Hurt Locker, and The Brutalist. Also an accomplished musician, Pearce released his second album, The Nomad, in 2018.
Pearce’s latest project, Killing Faith, is set during the summer of 1849. The movie tells the story of Dr. Bender (Pearce), a widowed physician who, despite his better judgment, agrees to take Sarah (DeWanda Wise), a freed slave, and her mysterious daughter on a five-day journey to find a distant town’s faith healer, Preacher Ross (Bill Pullman).
Complicating his trip is the fact that Sarah believes her daughter is possessed. Bender, who is not a man of faith, believes the child is simply ill with the Sickness. The existential drama tightens as they journey to their destination. Along the way, the travelers face all the perils of the Wild West: bandits, unforgiving landscapes, and unseemly travelers. Directed by Ned Crowley from a script by Crowley and David Henri Martin, Killing Faith is a supernatural Western that plays on the themes of suspicion, faith, compassion, and guilt.
Pearce discussed his career and Killing Faith with The Arts STL.
The Arts STL: What drew you to Killing Faith?
Guy Pearce: It was a number of things, really. I wanted to work with Ned, our writer-director. I had seen his previous film [2016’s Middle Man] and enjoyed it. I also liked the script. I really enjoyed the dual worlds of extreme violence and this sort of harrowing existence with this rather humorous sort of black humor.
I thought that he captured that pretty well in a sort of Coen Brothers-type style. I also found the character really fascinating because he himself is quite extreme in that he’s full of self-hatred.
But on one hand, he’s sort of just trying to deny that, and on the other, he’s searching for answers and wants some sort of redemption. I feel like the whole film is full of extremes, really.
Getting along with the director is very important, isn’t it?
I got to have a few calls with him before we met in person. After talking with Ned, I felt that I got on very well with him and felt that we could make something interesting. So yeah, it was a bit of a no-brainer, really.
You’ve done a Western before [2005’s The Proposition, with Ray Winstone]. Do you like doing them? Was it fun? Because it seems like it would be an awfully physical shoot.
It’s pretty physical. I am not drawn to Westerns per se, just because they’re Westerns. I mean, I’ve read several scripts for Westerns that I haven’t been drawn to, but there’s something about the isolation of characters out in that desert or wilderness or whatever that I think amplifies whatever is going on for them internally.
So, that juxtaposition of the internal battle with the desert around them, I find quite fascinating. Similarly, in The Proposition, that was the journey—heading off to meet one’s maker, so to speak. So, this film had a similar sort of vibe, but also very different. The Proposition doesn’t really have the humor that this one has. It’s bleak, but still one of my favorite films that I’ve ever done.
I thought there was something about seeing Bender having nothing to lose, almost a death wish, that appealed to me.
Was this a role that gave you a lot of range to play with?
Yes, and there’s sort of the prospect of this sort of lingering romance with DeWanda’s character, too, where we don’t really know. It’s interesting when you put characters on screen together, and an audience is going to project whether they want to see them get together or not.
For me, it is interesting to play a role where we’re on a journey together, and she has her daughter with her. There’s a sort of slight family element to it. And we’re sleeping overnight in different places. I think in Bender’s mind, he would be asking himself if she is someone he is going to fall for. “Is this going to turn into something? I don’t want it to turn into something, but I’m attracted to her. I don’t really know what I think.” That’s all that’s going on in his head. I think it brings a sort of slightly warped romantic element to it as well.
When you get a part like Bender, how much of the character do you get to build?
I just read the script, and he’s there on the page. So, I just know what I want to do. There are obviously questions that I’ll have, like where I’m going to go, and how out of it are you? Do you want to see him staggering around the place, or is he just keeping it together?
Although I may have questions, I never want to build a character myself because I don’t believe I want to see it. I want to see it in my mind, on the page, because then I believe I can play that character. If I can’t see it and I’ve got to build it, then I know I don’t want to do it. Maybe I’ll extrapolate, or add to it, or do a little bit of shapeshifting with some things, but I’ve got to feel really motivated by what I’m seeing get written in the first place.
With this part, it seems like you’re just inhabiting the character. Is that true?
That’s when I do the best work: when I see a character on the page and can completely see them, and I just become that. I love it when I don’t feel like I’m doing anything. I’m just being sucked into the vortex of this character.
Stepping away from the film, are you making any new music?
I’m going through lots of old demos and making better versions of them to see whether they are songs worth doing for real with a band. I’m sort of just getting things up with me playing everything. Then I’ve got them, and I can listen to them and walk around with them, see if they are worthwhile. I’m doing that at the moment.
I know you can’t talk about the Priscilla sequel, but can you talk about working with Terence Stamp?
It was pretty amazing working with Terence because I was aware of his history as the icon that he’d been. But I was also very aware of how uncomfortable he was playing a transvestite.
An actress friend of his talked him into doing it. I think he was uncomfortable with the dancing. But I think secretly, he loved it. In fact, not even secretly, I know very much he loved it. He was very much wanting to do a sequel. He and Stephan Elliott, who wrote Priscilla, became very close over the past twenty years. It was such a great loss to lose him.
I hadn’t seen Terence for a couple of years, but he was a very gentle, really gorgeous, very quietly talented person. He was not someone who would brag at all; he was very humble.
It was hard for me to make sense that this guy that I was working with was the same person who was in these books as a cultural icon of the sixties.
You both have left this legacy where you have these films that generations of people are going to see, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.
You know, it’s funny when you look at films like Memento or Priscilla, and think they were done nearly 30 or 35 years ago.
What is interesting is that you can’t really be objective about those films. It’s hard enough to be objective about your own work when you make it at the time.
It’s interesting to see what films stand up over time. We know that L.A. Confidential and Memento, and Priscilla have. I feel that it is interesting to see why the ones that don’t, don’t last, and whether your performance is part of that. You can actually be more objective later. I can look at a film that I did twenty years ago and look at it as if it isn’t even me.
It’s an interesting job that we get to be able to look at our past work. I mean, it’s funny too. I’ve got a nine-year-old son, and of course, I’m thinking, wow, there are about seventy movies that I’ve done that he might watch one day.
He won’t watch them all on one day, but you know, he’s going to see these things, and they’re going to pop up, and he’s going to go, “wait a minute, that’s my dad!” | Rob Levy
Killing Faith is currently available on DVD as well as digital rental on multiple streaming services. For more information, visit killingfaithmovie.com.
