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The West Magazine: Bana Breaks Through
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Written By: Mark Naglazas
Typed & Provided By Mona
Australia: Febuary 9, 2002
From TV comedy to a major movie, Eric Bana has joined the growing ranks of Australians taking Hollywood by storm.
The talented stand-up comedian who gets a television gig then goes on to a major movie career has become a Hollywood staple over the past few decades.
Robin Williams and Jim Carrey have moved so far beyond their livewire stand-up personas in movies such as Awakenings and The Truman Show that it’s hard to see the connection, or, just as illuminating are Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy.
But has there ever been a leap across the genres to match Eric Bana, who in the blink of an eye went from playing the mullet-topped, Ocker knuclehead Poida in Full Frontal to Sophie Lee’s boyfriend in The Castle (his film debut) to winning the AFI best actor award for his portrayal for the tattooed monster Mark “Chopper” Read?
Admittedly, the movie Chopper turned out to be a lot funnier than many would have imagined, with writer-director Andrew Dominick treating Read less as a violent psychopath and more as an underworld yarn spinner, a rogue who embroidered the truth as shamelessly as his doughy body.
Nonetheless, it took vision to see Bana – described by Full Frontal director Marc Gracie as the SNAG among Aussie actors – as the man to incarnate the most confronting character in a locally made film since Russell Crowe’s fearsome Hando in Romper Stomper.
“I’m not sure why I got the role in Chopper,” Bana says. “You don’t look at Poida and say, ‘Yeah, he’d be perfect to play a man who hacked off his own ears just to get into a prison hospital’.”
Bana does, however, have some firm opinions on why stand-up comedians have been able to make the transition to serious drama.
Most comedians are slightly tortured, he explains. And there is an honesty about performing stand-up because there is nowhere to hide when you’re alone on stage.
What the Chopper producers probably did pick up on was the 33-year-old Melbourne actor’s overwhelming determination to break out of the limiting world of television and into cinema.
“I’d been doing 10 years of stand-up and six years of television skit comedy. I felt I needed to spread my wings,” says Bana. “I had also reached the stage where people saw me as one type of performer.”
Chopper, light years away from the dopey yuck-yucks of Full Frontal, was just the movie to blow away those preconceptions. “I always knew that if I could nail the character of Chopper I would never have to worry about people pre-judging me again. So that’s what I concentrated on.”
“People used to stop me on the street and ask me to do or say something funny. Now they want to stop and have a conversation. It’s a much better way to be.”So good was Bana’s performance that you feared he might fall victim to another type of stereotyping, condemned to playing scary roles for years to come.
But he has made an equally prodigious leap in his next movie, Black Hawk Down. It’s a $175 million military drama in which he plays a veteran member of the elite Delta Force, one of 500 US troops who had to fight their way out of the Somali capital of Mogadishu in 1993 after an ill-fated attempt to capture a Somalian warlord.
Two of the seemingly invincible Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and 19 American soldiers and hundreds of Somalis were killed in the 18-hour gun battle that followed. The incident led to the US withdrawing from the United Nations-sanctioned humanitarian mission in the African nation. Again, Bana is unsure what producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Ridley Scott saw in Chopper to sign him, untested, for a part in Black Hawk Down.
“The character I play couldn’t be more different from Chopper,” he says. “He’s a worldly, slightly jaded, very clinical career soldier who is embarrassingly brave – a man you can depend on when the going gets tough. And it gets unbelievably tough in this story.”
What he couldn’t bring himself to say was that he had clearly been cast for his talent and, more importantly, his natural on-screen charisma. He is not the star of this grimly realistic docu-drama in which the severe haircuts make all the actors in the ensemble cast look much the same and the dialogue is mostly orders barked out loud to be heard over the gunfire. But Bana, as Sergeant Norman “Hoot” Hooten, makes an impression amid the explosions and chaos, helping to centre a film that tops even Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line in the realistic portrayal of war.
To ensure that realism, Scott sent Bana and two other actors playing Delta Force combatants to Fort Bragg, a boot camp for Special Forces. It was hands-on instruction on what a soldier needs to survive a battle like Mogadishu. While he was obviously well prepared for what turned out to be an arduous five-month shoot in the Moroccan capital of Rabat (there’s not a trace of Chopper blubber on the actor’s sleek frame), he says he wouldn’t have survived without the company of his wife Rebecca and baby son Klaus.
“It was never an option for me to be apart from my family for five months,” he says.
“Having Rebecca and Klaus with me made it all possible. Rebecca deserves the Oscar for this movie.”
After Black Hawk Down he returned to Australia to make a small Bill Bennett comedy called The Nugget, about three council workers who discover gold. Now he’s just about to star in Ang Lee’s highly anticipated version of Marvel Comics’ The Incredible Hulk. So will he be bulking up again to play the role made famous by Lou Ferrigno in the television series or will he be donning spectacles to play Bruce Banner, the scientist who mutates into the green-hued muscle man in the face of danger?
“Actually, I’m playing both parts but I won’t be doing a Chopper on this one,” he says. “I don’t think any amount of steroids or bulking up would help achieve what Ang has in mind.”
He won’t say what, precisely, Ang does have in mind. It is a further indication that his astonishing rise from minor comic to Hollywood star is no accident but the result of careful planning, determination and hard work.
So focused is the reborn Bana that he does not envisage returning to stand-up comedy, not even for old time’s sake. There must be thousands of fans dying to see Poida one more time, I insist.
“No, definitely not,” he says. “My stand-up days are over.”
Black Hawk Down will be released on February 21.
Stardust: L'Incroyable Hulk c'est lui Eric Bana
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Author Unknown
Translated from French to English By: Jennifer
Provided By Mona
France: March 2002
Very famous in Australia, where he originates from - it was there he was voted the most popular comedic actor of 2000 for his role in "Something in the Air - Eric Bana remains ignored in the rest of the world. That should change before too long, since he will soon be none other than one of the more famous of the comic strip heroes The Incredible Hulk.
Born in 1968 to a Croatian father and a German mother, Eric Bana made his stand-up comic debut in a bar in Melbourne in 1991 and his first television appearance in 1993 in "Full Frontal." Besides having written this humourous series - just as "Eric," another show that did very well - there was nothing to see with his last Soderbergh film.
In 1997, he made the jump to the big screen in a secondary role in "The Castle." Three years later, it was his head on the poster for the drama "Chopper." He played Mark Read, a legendary criminal in Australia (still alive), who wrote his autobiography while still serving his prison sentence and became a best-seller. Determined to live his character completely, Eric fattened up by 14 kilograms and shaved his head. It shows that, in addition to his comic talent, he has undeniable heroic fiber. The full-length film is disappointing, but its solid performance makes it worthwhile. The actor especially succeeds in attracting the attention of director Ridley Scott, who hired him to play in Black Hawk Down [title of Black Hawk Down in French]. Released last year, the film has as a background the guerrila war of Somalia in 1993. Eric Bana plays a brave soldier plunged in the heart of the action.
In "The Hulk," which comes out next June, the 34-year-old comedian plays the dual role of Hulk/Bruce Banner. For those who would not know it, Bruce Banner is a scientist who, after an experiment gone wrong, transforms into a giant green monster who feels anger. In the 70s, when the famous comic book was carried to the small screen, it was necessary for two actors (Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno) to play Hulk-Banner. Today, Eric Bana can play this double character thanks to technology, but also because it has good arguments for playing a giant. Indeed, it measures 93 meters and has the gauge of a remover. On the other hand, they are neither its personal convictions (it hates the weapons with fire) nor its formation of comic which brought to interpret the heroes of action films (Jennifer: I can't make any sense of this last little bit ?? lol)
"The Hulk" represents a career project of Eric Bana's. Packed with action and special effects without being stripped of romanticism - Hulk falls in love with a young woman who proves to the the daughter of a General in charge of a top secret base with suspect research - the full-length film has all the ingredients of a blockbuster. In fact, in likely case like the recently made "Spider Man," another Marvel Comic adaptataion, "The Hulk" could pave the way to success for the actor and continue to open doors. This possibility is more than probable when it is known that the director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) is commanding the project.
Eric's Eureka
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Written By: Melinda Houston
Source: The Herald Sun.com.au
Provided By: Coe
Internet: September 30, 2002
Eric Bana has felt the twists and turns of fortune - rocketing from pub stage to big screen. His latest co-star Belinda Emmett also knows a thing or two about luck. So it's fitting they're prospecting together in The Nugget.
Three years ago, Eric Bana conducted interviews in his kitchen. He made the coffee while the dog 
supervised, and everyone enjoyed a panoramic view of the unmown lawn and a paling fence. These days, it's one of Melbourne's most exclusive boutique hotels, in a painfully stylish room overlooking St Kilda marina.
The coffee is served by a black-clad waiter, a table is cluttered with bottled water (a dozen still Pellegrino), and both a publicist and an agent sit to one side, ears pricked, as the tape recorder starts rolling.
"Hang on a sec," Bana says politely, rising in his chair. "Girls?" he says to his minders, with just a trace of that northern suburbs petrolhead inflection to the single syllable. "I'm more than happy if you want to go downstairs. Come back when you're ready."
It would be idle to suggest that fame doesn't change things. And in three years, actor and comedian Eric Bana has become very famous, going from stand-up comic and TV guy to international hot property: a movie star. His astonishing portrayal of celebrity hardman Mark "Chopper" Read started the ball rolling. He then blasted his way through Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, has just wrapped filming on Ang Lee's version of the Marvel Comics classic The Incredible Hulk, and is now promoting The Nugget, a local production directed by Bill Bennett (Spider & Rose, Kiss Or Kill). He plays one of three Mudgee council workers who stumble across the biggest gold nugget in the history of the world.
Appropriate, really. Because Bana seems to have struck gold, in more ways than one.
"I honestly felt as though I'd found the nugget when I met my wife," he says promptly. "Without a doubt. I knew in an instant." (Bana has been married for five years to Rebecca, a former publicist with the Seven Network. They have two children, Klaus, 3, and Sofia, five months. He's already shown me the pictures.) "It's been a very, very, very busy five years in all different directions - up, down, sideways, the travelling, the children. And for us to be together and very happy - I don't take it for granted. I'd have to say I feel that also in a work sense. Things are going as I had dreamt they would one day. And I feel incredibly fortunate."
Not that it hasn't been a mixed blessing.
"I also now understand why you see a lot of people who, in the public eye at least, are incredibly wealthy and successful. And they disappear into the woods in search of... whatever. That kind of thing makes complete sense because success and fame look, from the outside, as though they complete you. But they come absolutely nowhere near completing you personally. All these things that are happening professionally for me just create noise, they don't create harmony. They don't create any peace whatsoever. The opposite ... a lot of the time." Hence, perhaps, his oh-so-tactful dismissal of the minders.
On the whole, though, Bana appears to be a man at peace. Certainly not a man on the verge of disappearing into the woods. In jeans, runners and a shirt one step up from a flannie, he's both affable and relaxed.
"I feel in some way like I'm more in touch than I was 10 years ago. Not in a professional sense, just in terms of what it is that makes you happy. But hopefully everyone is when they're in their 30s. [Bana is 34.] And for me, I have an all-consuming hobby that I've had since I was a kid. Which is motor racing. Cars. Working on cars and bikes and stuff. I got to an age when I thought that was all really silly, that it was time to grow up. And then I realised it was crazy. It's a part of who I am and I get stupid amounts of enjoyment from it."
Other things that give Bana stupid amounts of enjoyment (apart from his wife and kids) include living in Melbourne (he spends much of the interview looking longingly to Port Phillip Bay), being understood without having to fake an American accent, the St Kilda football team (even when they lose, which is most of the time), and not having his credit card bounce. In The Nugget there's a central scene when our heroes decide to pull out all the stops to celebrate their untold wealth. They go to the local Chinese restaurant ... and order two Mongolian hotpots.
"We all enjoyed that scene, those lines, and sometimes it is as simple as that. My wife and I going out for dinner and not having to worry about them coming back and saying, 'Sorry, do you have another card?'"
Of course, like most people pursuing a creative vocation, overnight success has come on the back of years of hardship, rejection and penury. Bana started his career doing stand-up spots at inner-city pubs, clearing tables in between. He went from writing and performing in TV's Full Frontal to The Eric Bana Show Live, to being dumped when the ratings failed to impress. He got a nice, solid spot on the ABC-TV drama Something In The Air. Which was axed. He agreed, after careful consideration, to take the lead role in Chopper. The film wasn't made for another five years.
So, yes, he feels lucky. But not that lucky.
"I've never overly believed in luck. I think I've been fortunate, and right now I'm in an incredibly fortunate position, which I'm totally aware of. I think luck gets you on to the stage. But it has nothing to do with keeping you there. I guess I struggle with it because I've never said to myself if I'm lucky, I might be able to get a gig. If I'm lucky, if things fall my way, I might be able to make a film."
He often thinks of the wise words of his father: "My old man always said that luck is preparation met by opportunity."
Later, Melbourne comedian Dave O'Neil says, "It's like Eric's old man always said - did he tell you that? - luck is just when hard work meets opportunity. And I think he's lived by that."
O'Neil first met Bana the year they both started doing stand-up comedy, in 1991. "The thing I remember most about it is Eric had a business card," O'Neil says. "I was so impressed! He reckoned his cousin was a printer." He also remembers Bana saying, even back then, that he wanted to be in movies. "So he was always kind of destined for it. None of this has been much of a surprise."
O'Neil first met Bana the year they both started doing stand-up comedy, in 1991. "The thing I remember most about it is Eric had a business card," O'Neil says. "I was so impressed! He reckoned his cousin was a printer." He also remembers Bana saying, even back then, that he wanted to be in movies. "So he was always kind of destined for it. None of this has been much of a surprise."
The two went on to work together on Full Frontal and Bana's own show, and have kept in regular contact over the years. Last year they reunited to co-star in The Nugget. "His work's changed, the stuff around him's changed, but he hasn't," O'Neil says. "And I reckon he deserves it. It's hard to feel jealous or anything like that because he works so hard and he's such a nice bloke. And I remember being on a tour of RSL clubs in 95 or 96, and one night he said, 'I'm going to do this movie about Chopper Read. And see that guy there? He's directing it.' And I said, 'A movie about Chopper? You sure about that, mate?' Anyway, he did it. It was an odd choice. But the right one."
Bana makes no apologies for his choices. "I look at it as continuing to find the best projects. And I've been ruthless in my criteria of what it takes for me to make a movie and I won't compromise on any level. Which is why we're sitting here right now, and why I'm not in Europe or LA on another production."
When he was offered the gig on Something In The Air, he asked himself, "Is this something I'd like to sit down at 6pm and watch?" He decided it was. When Bill Bennett invited him to be part of The Nugget, he thought, "This is a film I'd like my son to watch." He vowed he'd never do a romantic comedy or a film based on a comic book. But when his agent told him Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) was directing a version of The Incredible Hulk, he thought, "Ang Lee? I'd like to be part of that."
The experience, Bana says, was fantastic, if not exactly fun.
"Films are never fun," he says firmly. "Or at least, fun like running a marathon is fun. Satisfying, invigorating, challenging. That's fun. But that's why I do it. I love the fact that it's not fun. I'm weirdly attracted to discomfort. I find it incredibly interesting and challenging."
Which is not to say he's some kind of Buddha: "I'm still capable of getting down and frustrated and melancholy." (Spending five months shooting Black Hawk Down in a dusty outpost in Morocco was particularly trying.) "But I've always felt lucky. Lucky to have the parents I have, the brother I have, the friends I have. I wake up every day thinking how lucky I am, and I have done for the last 10 or 15 years."
When Bana was still in high school, a "very, very close friend" died of cancer. "It was a real big slap in the face for me, and it had a profound effect on how I look at things. I never take things for granted. And even on my worst days, I still feel lucky."
It was a state of mind given renewed emphasis during the shooting of The Nugget. Another of Bana's co-stars is Belinda Emmett, who puts in a startlingly good turn as Cheryl, his character's wife - both of them good-hearted bogans.
She's fantastic," he says simply. "There's a realness to her character that's not always easy to achieve. It's not just about sounding Australian. There are other levels there. But I wasn't surprised - I'm never surprised at what people who have a lot of flying time can do. We pigeonhole people because of the kind and style of show they've been on. But you never really know what people are capable of until they're presented with the opportunity."
Belinda Emmett, the former Home And Away star, made front-page news and magazine covers in 1998 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, aged 24. She has, in fact, endured an ongoing battle with the disease and it may not be over yet.
"Belinda was an absolute joy," Bana says. "Extremely down to earth, a very real person. She's been through a hell of a lot, and was going through a hell of a lot at the time. I think we were all pretty humbled by what was occurring. And it does make you think - again - about just how lucky you are."
So while Bana's big on of the virtues of hard work, professionalism, preparation - like the good blue-collar boy he is - he's also generous about the things that are not within our control.
"I'd like to say the world is everyone's oyster, but perhaps that's just in an ideal world," he says. "I think there's a danger about being in the position I'm in and saying you can do anything, you can achieve anything."
"It's dangerous to think that if people don't achieve things, it's their fault. Not achieving your dreams doesn't make you less of a person. I think it's important to believe we're entitled to go after anything. You may not get there, and if you don't get there, that's fine; it doesn't mean you're a loser."
The eternal optimist can't help adding, "But it's certainly worth having a crack!"
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