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About Eric Bana
Written By: Christy (Webmaster)
He's a brillant actor, car mechanic and comedian.
Not to mention he's a wonderful husband to his wife Rebecca and a fabulous father to his two childern, Sophie and Klaus.
Eric began his career with a comedy act in 1991, which soon landed him a role on the Australian comedy show, Full Frontal. Eric accepted the role as Mark "Chopper" Read in the Australian film, Chopper. Soon after he starred in movies such as Black Hawk Down, Hulk and the epic movie, Troy.
Even though Eric is now accepting leading roles from Steven Spielberg and Curtis Hanson, he's definitely not the typical Hollywood actor. He remains extremely grounded and he refuses to move from Melbourne to Los Angeles. Eric never takes anything for granted and still manages to keep his excellent sence of humor intact from his early comedy days. Eric only shoots one film a year because he enjoys 
spending lots of time with his friends and family. His family is his number one priority, so he brings them with him to the set when he's shooting abroad. When Eric's not working aboard, he still finds time to do random acts of kindness for various charity organizations in Australia. Eric's been described many times as a popular and easy going guy. Now, what's not to like about him?
Eric's Profile
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Eric's Career Milestones
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Source: Hollywood.com
- 1991 Began performing stand-up comedy
- 1993 Appeared regularly in the Australian comedy/variety series Full Frontal until 1996
- 1997 Starred in the Australian TV series 'The Eric Bana Skecth Show'
- 1997 Feature film debut, 'The Castle', playing a kickboxer
- 2000 Earned plaudits for his dramatic portrayal of real-life murdered and cult figure in 'Chopper'
- 2000 Had supporting role in the Australian comedy-drame series 'Something in the Air'
- 2001 Cast as an American sergeant in 'Black Hawk Down'
- 2002 Starred in 'The Nugget', directed by Bill Bennett
- 2003 Protrayed Dr Bruce Banner in the film adaptation of 'Hulk', helmed by Ang Lee
- 2003 Voiced in the animated hit 'Finding Nemo'
- 2004 Cast as Greek warrior Hector in director Wolfgang Peterson's epic 'Troy'
- 2005 Cast in the movie 'Lucky You', directed by Curtis Hanson
- 2005 Cast in the movie 'Munich', directed by Steven Spielberg
Eric's Biography
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Written By: Dominic Wills
Source: Tiscali Film & TV.com
Eric Bana's career must surely bring hope to all aspiring screen actors. Seldom has someone of such low cinematic standing and of such little experience climbed so high in the Hollywood firmament. Who was he, after all, this guy who single-handedly carried Ang Lee's mega-blockbuster The Hulk, then grabbed the role of Hector, arch-enemy of Brads Pitt's Achilles in Troy? Sure, he stood out in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, but weren't Ewan McGregor and Josh 
Hartnett the up-and-coming stars there? Who exactly was this Eric Bana? No one knew for sure.
Well, he was born Eric Banadinovich in Melbourne, Australia, on the 9th of August, 1968, the son of a Croatian father and German mother. As a kid he lived a typical suburban life in Tullamarine, out on the western edge of the city, near the airport. Melbourne is famed as the most vibrantly cosmopolitan of Australian towns, but Bana's upbringing was typically Aussie. He describes his young self as an "infatuated rev-head", obsessed with cars and motorbikes. It's an obsession that lasts to this day. Having driven in big races like the Targa Tasmania and the Adelaide Classic, in 2003 Bana would become the official patron of the Dick Johnson Racing Company - the former star driver Johnson being one of Eric's earliest heroes. And remember, this was nothing like the glamorous, money-drenched world of Formula One or Indie Car - this was about the V8 Supercar Championship, rough and hard, more Mad Max than Monza. Bana was staying true to his working-class roots.
For Bana, school was fairly uneventful. He was bright and, growing to 6' 4", powerful, but the thing that marked him most was a singular tragedy. When a very close friend died from cancer, young Eric was profoundly affected. Harshly taught the lesson that we can take nothing for granted, he felt fortunate for every new day and, heeding his Dad's dictum that "luck is preparation met by opportunity", put his all into everything he did.
On leaving school, he worked as a labourer for a transport company down on the wharf. This was just one in a string of menial jobs, including washing cars at a service station, pushing trolleys at Coles New World and picking up glasses in bars. They didn't forward his career much but, along with that rev-head adolescence, they did bring him into contact with a host of unusual and eccentric characters, many of whom, as a natural mimic, he would study and imitate for laughs. He was already aware of his gift for entertaining people and, naturally influenced by the thrills and spills of Mad Max, had decided he wanted to act.
But it was another influence that first kick-started him on the road to the top. A big fan of Richard Pryor, he was forever cracking people up with his gags, pranks and rapidly growing collection of impressions. Come 1991, while working as a barman at Melbourne's Castle Hotel, he was persuaded to try his hand at stand-up and proved an immediate success. For the next two years, he played at inner-city pubs, supporting himself by clearing tables. As ever, he was preparing for opportunity. One fellow comic remembers how Eric, unlike all the others, had business cards printed up - no chance would pass him by.
The first big one came with a performance on Steve Vizard's Tonight Live show. This led to an invitation to join the Full Frontal team, a comedy troupe with a very popular TV sketch series. Eric's impressions of Columbo, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ray Martin, Sylvester Stallone, John Farnham, Tom Cruise and Warwick Copper would make him one of the show's most popular turns. When he finally left in 1996 - by which time he had toured Australia's club circuit with 'Full Frontal' and was a stand-up star in his own right - he produced, wrote and starred in a solo special, simply called Eric, for Channel Seven. It was such a success that it led his own series, 'The Eric Bana Show Live', which saw him interviewing star guests, performing skits and, unusually, sat in his car hilariously setting the world to rights.
Unfortunately, The Eric Bana Show Live was not a ratings success and was not given a second series, despite Eric being named Most Popular Comedian at the Logies and hosting a Comic Relief special that raised $380,000 for Community Aid Abroad. Yet this made no odds to Bana who'd already set his sights on an acting career. 
Inevitably, given his meteoric rise, when he made his screen debut in 1997 it was in one of Australia's biggest ever hits, 'The Castle'. This took him right back to his roots as it featured the working-class Kerrigan family, living right beside the airport. A little band of Candides they believe everything is right in their world, despite the constant thundering of aircraft, then are forced to protect their lowly abode when airport expansion results in a compulsory purchase order. Eric's role, as the daughter's kickboxing accountant husband, was small, but it was a great start. The movie was a major sleeper hit. Filmed in eleven days for just $19,000, it was bought by Miramax for $6 million.
Having married Rebecca Gleeson, a former publicist for the Seven Network (she'd give birth to son Klaus in 1999, then another child in 2002), Bana moved on to what would be his breakthrough role. This was in 'Chopper', a fictionalised biopic of Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, one of Australia's most notorious criminals, who claimed to have killed 19 people and cut off his own ears in prison to avoid being whacked by enemies. Having turned to writing about his exploits, he'd become a best-selling author and a master of (often unbelievable) self-publicity.
Director Andrew Dominik had been working on the project for some five years and was having real trouble casting the titular lead. Russell Crowe was a favourite, particularly due to his brutal turn as Hando in Romper Stomper, but now had bigger fish to fry. Eventually, Read himself suggested that they audition Bana, having seen him perform a skit about Broadmeadow yobs on TV. Dominik was against the idea, but was persuaded by producer Greg Apps. Eric was called by his agent and thoroughly nonplussed by the idea. Besides, he was about to depart on honeymoon and couldn't race to Sydney for the screen-test. Happily, they were prepared to wait two weeks and, some two months later, Dominik and Apps had cast a comedian as their country's most brutal serial murderer. It was a huge risk, like casting Alistair MacGowan as Fred West - but what an inspired choice it turned out to be.
To play the role, Bana shaved his head and put on 30 pounds, mostly by gorging on cinnamon doughnuts. He also spent two days with Read himself, to perfect his mimicry. He'd arrive on set at 4 each morning, spending five hours in makeup (Read is covered in distinctive tattoos). And, incredibly, he was superb. Appearing in nearly every shot, he was menacing, paranoid, egomaniacal, clueless, manipulative, unpredictable and thoroughly weird. It was a rare test for an actor, Read suffering from uncontrollable mood swings that would turn him from an eager-to-please teddy bear to a raving psycho in an instant, and then back again. In one scene he stabs a guy repeatedly in the neck then, as he's dying in a pool of blood, asks "Are you OK?" and offers him a cigarette. 
Elsewhere he shoots a drug dealer then drives him to hospital. Read was massively complex - funny and homicidal, gregarious and utterly distant - a man who would kill purely so he could boast about killing. Bana could easily have done a Pacino and completely overblown it. He didn't, he was brilliantly believable.
This was a starring debut of some force. US critic Roger Ebert said of Eric "He has a quality no acting school can teach you and few actors can match. You cannot look away from him". With typically aggressive humour Read commented "a top fella, but get your ears off, mate... whatever happened to Method Acting?" The film, refusing to glorify or condemn Read's behaviour, began a Natural Born Killers-style controversy and went to Number One in Australia, managing to dislodge The Patriot, starring Oz's favourite adopted son, in the process.
Bana spent months touring the festival circuit with Chopper, where his performance was often compared to that of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. High praise indeed, and it made Bana think even harder about his career. He knew that his next role had better be "bloody good" or it was all over. At the time he'd taken the part of Joe Sabatini in a new soap opera, 'Something In The Air', 
concerning the small town dramas of Emu Springs, a community dominated by its local radio station and Rules Football team. Sabatini was a good old boy, dedicated to his farm, wife and mates. Of Italian immigrant stock, he was prone to boil over, made execrable wine and had a (bad) poem for every occasion. For Bana, this was good experience but easy work, hardly challenging for a man who'd won Best Actor from the Australian Film Institute and the Stockholm Film Festival for Chopper. He needed a step up, and fast.
Thankfully, he now had an American agent and, with Chopper serving as an impressive audition tape, he won the part of Norm "Hoot" Hooten in 'Black Hawk Down', his US film debut. This was a true story concerning 123 elite troops from the US Rangers and Delta Force, who are air-dropped into Somalia to take out the top henchmen of a warlord who's ripping off Red Cross funds and causing the starvation of hundreds of thousands. Preparing with a 2-week Special Forces boot camp at Fort Bragg, Bana threw himself into the role of the super-sniper and military legend taking it to the enemy when the US troops discover they've severely underestimated the warlord's fire-power. Most reviews would pick out his performance over those of Ewan McGregor and Josh Hartnett.
Leaving Something In The Air far behind, and having briefly returned to the Melbourne stand-up scene with his Standing In The Corner show, now he was on his way. He returned to Oz to film 'The Nugget', a comedy based on John Steinbeck's The Pearl, where three road workers who go prospecting at weekends (as an excuse to gab and get drunk) stumble upon a boulder-sized hunk of gold. Naturally, this changes things, particularly when the nugget is stolen, and the happy-go-lucky trio are forced to re-examine their value systems. It was a semi-successful feel-good effort with Bana coasting as the excruciatingly unlucky Lotto, the smart but uneducated leader of the gang, who at one point loses a scratch-card down a drain and spends days digging up the whole street looking for it. It wasn't what he was used to, after Chopper and Black Hawk Down, but he took it anyway because the script made him laugh, reminded him of his suburban Melbourne home and would be suitable for his own children.
Bana was now much in demand in the US. Indeed, he'd turned down the lead in xXx to take The Nugget (Vin Diesel stepping in instead). Eric's next action epic would be far more ambitious - he took on 'The Hulk'. Ordinarily, he wouldn't have been interested but was keen to work with director Ang Lee who he admired for The Ice Storm. He liked Lee's ideas for The Hulk who, like Chopper, was a character suffering from loss of self-control. This would be no standard super-hero picture with CGI monsters and effects. Bana's face would be superimposed over that of the green giant - he would be acting throughout. So, there he was as Bruce Banner, an arrogant student brought onto a top secret military project to build the cell-altering Gammasphere. Naturally, things go hideously wrong and, despite the efforts of the compassionate Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) Banner's inner demons come to exhibit themselves in a big, green, angry way.
Following The Hulk would be another major picture, Wolfgang Petersen's 'Troy'. Here Bana, after only five films, found himself playing Hector, ordered by his father King Priam (Peter O'Toole) to 
protect the city against the invading Greeks, led into battle by Brad Pitt's Achilles. Only five films and he was there already - Peter O'Toole, Brad Pitt and Eric Bana. Preparation had met opportunity for sure, and Bana had joined fellow Aussies Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman and Toni Collette at the top of the tree. Discounting Sam Neill and Russell Crowe (both from New Zealand) and Mel Gibson (born American), he was up there with Hugh Jackman as his country's biggest acting export. Not bad for a rev-head comedian from Tullamarine...
Awards
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Source: Eric Bana Central.com
1996 Australia's Most Elligible Bachelor
('Cleo Magazine)- 1997 Most Popular Comedian Personality
('39th TV Week Logie Awards') - 2000 Best Actor for 'Chopper'
(Stockholm Film Festival) - 2000 Best Performance in a Leading Role for 'Chopper'
('Emirated Australian Film Institute') - 2001 Best Male Actor for 'Chopper'
('Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards') - 2003 Mr June 2003
('Most Beautiful Man') - 2003 World Stunts Awards
(Los Angeles, CA USA)
Nominations:
(Source: 'Cinescope Magazine', Chicago Film Critics.org)
- 2001 Most Promising Performer for 'Black Hawk Down'
('Chicago Film Critics Association') - 2003 Cinescope Genre Face of the Future for 'Hulk'
('Academy of Science, Fantasy & Horror Films')
Eric's Favorites
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DVDs:
Mad Max(1979)
In an Australian dystopia of decaying order and violent highways, a police pursuit driver is drawn into a path of vengeance after a motorcycle gang targets him for the death of their former leader. In the U.S. the Aussie accents were dubbed over. (Source: IMDb.com)
Mad Max (1981)
A former police officer is now a lone wanderer, travelling through a devasted Australia after a nuclear war looking for the now-priceless fuel of petrol. He lives to survive and is none too pleased when he finds himself the only hope of a small group of honest people running a remote oil refinery. He must protect them from the bike gang that is terrorising them whilst transporting their entire fuel supply to safety. (Source: IMDb.com)
Deer Hunter (1978)
Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Steven (John Savage) are three buddies from the steel mill town of Pittsburgh. They are like schoolmates, hanging out in a local bar and enjoying weekends of deer-hunting. Michael and Nick are also both in love with Linda (Mryl Streep), who seems to juggle both of the men. But their placid life is soon to be changed after they are enlisted in the airborne infantry of Vietnam. So they all celebrate a goodbye at Steven's wedding and they leave to Vietnam, where they are captured by the enemy and forced to play a game of Russian Roulette. They escape and return home, but their lives are forever changed. Nick stays in Vietnam, Michael returns to Linda, and Steven is handicapped after losing a leg in the war. (Source: IMDb.com)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Marti DeBergi is a film-maker who decides to make a documentary, a rockumentary actually, about the world's loudest band, the British heavy metal group Spinal Tap. The movie is in fact a biting satire and spoof of the whole rock and roll scene that passes itself off as a real documentary of a real band. Hilarious behind-the-scenes footage is combined with faux-concert clips to breath life into the imaginary group.
The Blues Brothers (1980)
After the release of Jake Blues from prison, he and brother Elwood go to visit the old home where they were raised by nuns. They learn the church stopped its support and will sell the place to the education authority, and the only way to keep the place open is if the $5000 tax on the property is paid within 11 days. The brothers want to help and decide to put their blues band back together and raise the the money by staging a big gig. As they set off on their "mission from god" they seem to make more enemies along the way. Will they manage to come up with the money in time? (Source: IMDb.com)
Films:
Vanilla Sky (2001)
David Aames takes all he has for granted; his wealth, his inherited publishing company, his good looks - his relationships. Especially his relationships. It catches up to him when a friend/sometimes sex-partner can't see their relationship the way he sees it. From that point, the movie takes a Lynchian twist that ultimately and literally pulls us into Aames' tortured psyche.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
A doctor (Tom Cruise) becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter after his wife (Nicole Kidman) admits to having sexual fantasies about a man she met and chastising him for dishonesty in not admitting to his own fantasies. This sets him off into unfulfilled encounters with a dead patient's daughter and a hooker. But when he visits a nightclub, where a pianist friend Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) is playing, he learns about a secret sexual group and decides to attend one of their congregations. However, he quickly learns he is in well over his head and finds he and his family are threatened.
Eric Trivia
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Eric wears two rings, one on each hand. A gold one and one silver one?
The gold ring on his left hand is his wedding ring, and the silver ring was the "first thing my wife bought me when we were dating. It's a big silver ring with coraggio engraved in it, which is Italian for courage." (Source: Eric Bana Central.com)
What is Eric's Nickname?
Little Bana. "In so many ways, he's still my little brother, but these days I've now become Eric's big brother," says Anthony Banadinovich. (Source: Eric Bana Central.com)
What was Eric's first job?
Washing cars at a service station, pushing trolleys at Coles New World, barman at Melbourne's Castle Hotel in 1991. (Source: Eric Bana Central.com)
What was Eric's first car?
His first car was an old XB Coupe, purchased for $1000 when he was 15. (Source: IMDb.com)
What role did Eric turn down in order to play Lotto in The Nugget?
Xander Cage in xXx (Source: Eric Bana Central.com)
Why did the producers of Chopper have to wait two extra weeks for Eric to do a screen test?
He was about to depart on his honeymoon. (Source: Banatic's Forum)
Where did Eric propose to his wife, Rebecca?
Aspen, Colorado USA (Source: Banatic's Forum)
Why did Eric name his son Klaus?
Eric has an uncle named Klaus and always liked the name. He also claimed that his wife wasn't enthusiastic about the idea, so he suggested it immediately after the birth while she was doped up on painkillers and was ready to agree to anything. (Source: Teen Matter's Magazine)
What's the worse thing that young Eric has to experienced?
The thing that marked Eric most was a singular tragedy. When a very close friend died from cancer, young Eric was profoundly affected. Harshly taught the lesson that we can take nothing for granted, he felt fortunate for every new day and, heeding his Dad's dictum that "luck is preparation met by opportunity", put his all into everything he did. (Source: Eric Bana Central.com)
What sport did Eric's brother, Anthony play?
Basketball in the USA (Source: Banatic's Forum)
What movie did Eric's parents briefly appear in?
What was the scene?
Mr and Mrs Banadinovich featured in 'The Nugget.' When Lotto and the gang were headed to the bank, they walk by the three of them (Source: Banatic's Forum)
Which one of Eric's movies were Rebecca and Klaus were briefly shown in?
What was the scene?
'Black Hawk Down' When a pilot who looks at a picture of his wife and child before he dies. (Source: Banatic's Forum)
