Eric Bana isn't exactly laughing all the way to the bank, but the former stand-up comic is enjoying a series of film roles which include The Hulk and Speilberg's Munich. He talks to Steve Pratt about home in Melbourne and Hollywood.
A BACKGROUND in stand-up comedy hardly seems a help in playing an Israeli agent man on a secret mission to avenge the deaths of his country's athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. But Australian actor Eric Bana, who worked in stand-up and TV sketch comedy before moving to films, believes that experience can help him in serious roles.
"When you're working in fast turnaround sketch comedy, it forces you to rely on your instincts," he explains.
"As well prepared as you can be for a character, there are times in the middle of a scene when something's not working and no amount of preparation is doing you any good, when you have to completely fly by the seat of your pants and go with your gut instinct.
"Having a comedy background does help because you're more used to flying in that area than someone who's not been in that world. It also makes you braver and puts you in a position where you very rarely can be embarrassed professionally because you've done some pretty weird stuff before. Nothing that a director or script can come up with can be any more humiliating than anything I've done."
In Steven Speilberg's based-on-fact drama Munich, Bana stars as a young Israeli patriot and intelligence officer who goes undercover to hunt down and eliminate those responsible for the Munich massacre. It follows the actor's starring roles in two big budget Hollywood movies, as Bruce Banner in Hulk and Hector in Troy.
The story goes that Speilberg was interested in casting him after viewing the mix of sensitivity and pent-up fury he brought to the Incredible Hulk in Ang Lee's film. Bana says he knows nothing of this, merely grateful, if surprised, to be offered the role of Avner in Munich. It involved mastering an Israeli accent. There wasn't a lot of rehearsal time but a lot of preparation time, he says.
"I had nearly two years to get ready. The Israeli accent wasn't one that I was overly familiar with, so had to learn from scratch," he says. He also needed to research events surrounding the Munich incident. Some facts he was aware of through history, but nowhere near enough to play the role.
"The thing that was important to me about playing an Israeli in such a sensitive environment was being better equipped with the history of the region," he says.
{Growing up in Australia, Middle East politics and history is not something we've studied at school. So that was the area I really wanted to concentrate on because it was important to me, personally, and I felt that it would affect the character.
"There's obviously then a bunch of other stuff to do with historical facts and you essentially have to come up with a character in your head. But the more you know, the more it helps affect the final outcome."
He was able to meet the real Avner who was very generous to him, he says. "It was extremely beneficial because you can always learn some things that aren't on the page or not expressed. Things that he might say, or things that he might not say. In the end, you can never have too much information, or too many thoughts, instincts. It all sits in your subconscious and affects the character in the end, so being able to meet with him was very, very interesting."
The aftermath of the Munich terror has remained largely unknown, so Speilberg's film has aroused controversy with its story of the covert hit squad known to Israeli intelligence as Operation Wrath of God. Bana's used to being asked about the justification for such a response - and dealing tactfully with the question. "It's really idealistic in some ways to say that you shouldn't respond to a response that's obviously going to be different for every set of circumstances. If you come up here and punch me in the face, I'm going to want to punch you back, so it's a very challenging notion. The film and real life is right now dealing with that complex issue and how people respond to it is very, very individual," he says.
Bana may be making a career in Hollywood movies but home, with his wife and two children, remains Australia. "I love LA, I love London, I love Malta, I love New York, I love Sydney, but I just happen to love Melbourne more than all those other cities," he says. "It's a bloody stupid idea if you ask me because it means I'm quite often away from home and it's a very impractical choice, but it's not one that I have a say in because it's home.
"Home is one of the themes that I really love about this film. It was one I definitely related to. The Palestinians in search of a home, the Israelis in search of a home. Home for some people is a geographical place on the map and for others, it's just a mere notion."
* Munich (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow.
Published: 26/01/2006
