Christopher Nolan’s Memento is often hailed as one of the best psychological thrillers and best movies of the 2000s. Despite its small budget, this mind-bending, non-linear puzzle became a big hit. It helped cement Nolan’s reputation as a director who meticulously crafts cinematic experiences. Also, Guy Pearce delivers what many consider a career-defining performance as Leonard Shelby, a man with short-term memory loss trying to unravel the mystery of his wife's murder. But, if you can believe it, Pearce didn’t like his performance and, respectfully, I have to disagree big time.

Guy Pearce was asked about a recent remark he made about how a Warner Bros. exec cost him the role of Batman in Nolan's Oscar-winning Dark Knight Trilogy. In a wild twist of a response, Pearce ended up revealing that he thinks he was terrible in Memento. Speaking to The Sunday Times, the L.A. Confidential star shared that watching the film again for the first time in years left him reeling—and not in a good way:

This revelation is shocking because the Rover actor’s performance in Memento is widely regarded as one of his finest—and, in my opinion, still one of Christopher Nolan’s best flicks. His performance simmers with a mix of frustration, confusion and emotional detachment that perfectly fits Leonard’s fractured reality. The way he plays the role makes us feel just as lost as Leonard, unsure who to trust or what’s real.

And yet the Prometheus star now finds his own work unwatchable. He elaborated on exactly what bothers him about his performance:

To be clear—he’s saying he was terrible in Memento, a film that critics and audiences alike have consistently praised for over two decades. Hey Guy, please be kind to my buddy Pearce. He’s a fine actor, especially in Memento.

When asked if he’s ever told Christopher Nolan about this harsh self-assessment, the Hurt Locker alum had a surprising response:

Now, hold on. If Memento is a five, what does that make most other movies? The Inside performer is being way too hard on himself here. The idea that Nolan—who has frequently praised the film and its impact—would secretly agree that Pearce was miscast is pretty hard to believe. If anything, Nolan’s entire film hinged on his performance working, and it did. So, as harsh as this might sound, the actor’s opinion on the subject is just off base and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Even if the England-born A-lister has come to doubt himself, fans haven’t. Memento remains a defining entry in Nolan’s filmography, and it wouldn’t have worked without Pearce carrying it so effortlessly. Leonard Shelby is an intensely tricky role—one that required an actor capable of playing lost, vulnerable, dangerous, and, at times, darkly funny, all at once.

Maybe the A Christmas Carol star is just his own worst critic, or maybe it’s just part of being an actor—always looking back and seeing things that could’ve been done differently. But, for those of us who’ve spent years rewatching Memento and marveling at the sheer precision of his performance? We remember it differently.

If you want to revisit the movie and see why Guy Pearce is wrong, you can stream it with a Prime Video subscription. Also, check out our 2025 movie schedule to see what other projects the in-demand star has planned.

If you’re a fan of book-to-movie adaptations — especially female-led thrillers like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window — there’s another film to be on the lookout for -- hopefully on the 2025 movie schedule. Ruth Ware’s 2016 bestseller The Woman in Cabin 10 is headed to Netflix, so whether you’ve read the book and can’t wait to see how the story plays out on the screen, or if this is the first you’re hearing of the title, no worries! We’re here to relay everything we know about The Woman in Cabin 10 movie.

Author Ruth Ware is known to take inspiration from Agatha Christie in her crime thrillers, and if you've read The Woman in Cabin 10, you understand why. Fans of the book are likely excited to follow our travel journalist protagonist on this high-seas adventure, but when will it be available to stream with your Netflix subscription, and who can we expect to meet on this cruise ship of mysteries? Read on!

What Is The Woman In Cabin 10 Release Date?

Netflix hasn’t announced a release date for The Woman in Cabin 10, but principal photography reportedly took place on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England, in September 2024, and according to an Instagram post from David Ajala, one of the movie’s stars, filming wrapped in late November. Hopefully that means we’ll see the film at some point on the 2025 Netflix schedule.

What Is The Woman In Cabin 10 About?

The Woman in Cabin 10 centers around a travel journalist who has been assigned to cover the maiden voyage of a luxury yacht. One night she witnesses a passenger being tossed overboard, but when she reports the incident, no one believes her, as all of the passengers are accounted for. Sure of what she saw, the journalist continues to investigate, which only leads to more danger for herself.

The Woman In Cabin 10 Cast

Keira Knightley has been cast as the travel journalist who possibly witnesses a crime while covering the yacht’s launch, and Netflix announced she’ll be joined by Guy Pearce, Hannah Waddingham and several others when The Woman in Cabin 10 hits the streamer.

Keira Knightley

As previously mentioned, Keira Knightley is set to star as the journalist who believes she witnesses a terrible crime while on assignment. In Ruth Ware’s book, the character is named Lauren “Lo” Blacklock, but no character information for the upcoming movie has yet been released.

Keira Knightly is known primarily for movies, including titles like Atonement, Love Actually, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She also earned an Oscar nod for her role in The Imitation Game in 2014. In December 2024 she starred in the Netflix original series Black Doves, which is a binge-worthy offering that earned Knightley a Golden Globe nomination.

Guy Pearce

Australian actor Guy Pearce has also been confirmed for The Woman in Cabin 10, though his role has not yet been divulged. Pearce was nominated for a 2025 Golden Globe for his role in The Brutalist. He’s also well-known for roles in films including Memento, The Time Machine, The Hurt Locker, Alien: Covenant and many more.

Hannah Waddingham

Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham is another familiar face in the upcoming Netflix movie in a to-be-announced role. In addition to playing Rebecca Welton on the popular Apple TV+ series — a role that won her an Emmy in 2021 — Waddingham can be seen on Game of Thrones, The Fall Guy and several stage productions on London’s West End.

Other Actors Confirmed For The Woman In Cabin 10

A host of other talent has also been confirmed for the upcoming Ruth Ware adaptation, including:

• Gitte Witt (Cadaver, The Sleepwalker)
• Art Malik (The Little Mermaid, Homeland)
• Daniel Ings (Lovesick, The Crown, Black Mirror)
• David Morrissey (The Walking Dead, Extant)
• Christopher Rygh (Vikings: Valhalla)
• Paul Kaye (Game of Thrones, After Life)
• Kaya Scodelario (Skins, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales)
• Lisa Loven Kongsli (Wonder Woman, Justice League)
• Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Loki, The Morning Show, Doctor Who)
• John Macmillan (House of the Dragon, The People We Hate at the Wedding)
• Pippa Bennett-Warner (Sick Note, Gangs of London)
• Ayọ̀ Owóyẹmi-Peters (People, Places & Things on London’s West End)

Simon Stone Is Set To Direct

Simon Stone is set to direct the book-to-screen adaptation, and given his own background in the theater, it makes sense why so much of his cast has stage experience. Stone made his film directorial debut in 2015 when he premiered The Daughter, a drama starring Paul Schneider and Geoffrey Rush, at Toronto International Film Festival. In 2021 he helmed The Dig, another drama, this one based on a historical novel.

The script for The Woman in Cabin 10 was written by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, per Variety, with Simon Stone reportedly also taking a pass at it.

The Woman in Cabin 10 Is An Adaptation Of Ruth Ware’s Ninth Novel

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware debuted at No. 4 on the New York Times Bestseller list when it was published in 2016 and maintained its presence amongst the year’s most popular titles. It was a nominee for Goodreads Readers’ Favorite Mystery & Thriller the year it was released. The book is Ware’s ninth crime thriller (she previously published YA fantasy novels under her birth name Ruth Warburton) and is the fourth to be optioned for a screen adaptation.

In addition to the upcoming Netflix movie, the rights to Ruth Ware’s 2015 novel In a Dark, Dark Wood were acquired by New Line Cinema in 2017, per EW, with Reese Witherspoon’s Pacific Standard attached to produce. Ware’s fans may also see The Lying Game (2017) make to the small screen, with Deadline reporting that Entertainment One bought the television rights the year it came out. Finally, Zero Days, from 2023, may also be getting the TV or streaming treatment, with Universal International Studios reportedly acquiring the rights to develop a series.

A Sequel To The Book Is Coming In Summer 2025

Ruth Ware has a lot of coals in the fire, but that’s not slowing down her novel production. The Woman in Suite 11 — a sequel to The Woman in Cabin 10 — is set to hit bookshelves on July 8, 2025. People reports that Ware’s 10th novel picks up 10 years after the events aboard the luxury yacht, with travel journalist Lo receiving an invitation to the opening of a luxury hotel in Switzerland to interview billionaire Marcus Leidmann. Once there, she meets a woman claiming to be Leidmann’s mistress who says her life is in danger. Can Lo suss out the truth and save herself and the woman?

The Movie Was Filmed On A Luxury Super-Yacht Called The Savannah

With all or most of The Woman in Cabin 10 taking place on a luxury yacht, the filming location is pretty important. According to the Dorset Echo, the movie was shot aboard an 83-meter mega-yacht called The Savannah. The award-winning yacht was built in 2015 and can fit up to 12 guests and 24 crew members. Amenities include multiple swimming pools, a spa, a gym and an underwater lounge called the “Nemo Room,” which doubles as a theater.

After reading about the super-yacht that the cast and crew of The Woman in Cabin 10 took over for filming in 2024, that definitely sounds like a trip I want to take — as long as we can guarantee no one goes overboard. Check back for updates on a release date for the film as you continue to check out the other best things to binge on Netflix.

Before we start, I have to admit to a personal bias that may color this story: I’ve been a fan of Guy Pearce since first seeing him in 1997’s L.A. Confidential. So knowing that he’s been popping up on the 2024 movie schedule in movies like The Convert and The Brutalist has pleased my cinephile heart to no end.

However, after learning the story of how a random Warner Bros. executive allegedly blocked Pearce from ever working again with Christopher Nolan, I have to say my blood is a bit boiled. What’s more, I can double down on that anger, as the Australian actor’s recent interview with Vanity Fair also revealed that he came really close to playing a role in Batman Begins.

“But Mike,” you’re probably about to ask your screen, “surely a studio executive wouldn’t have it out for the man who starred in Memento?” Allow Guy Pearce himself to prove you wrong, courtesy of the following quote:

As you’d expect, and as the Prometheus actor admitted, this supposed “No Guy Pearce” sign on the WB gates meant that he was theoretically barred from quite a few movies. Theoretically, if true, this could explain how Warner Bros. passed on an L.A. Confidential sequel. As for reuniting Pearce with Christopher Nolan, the pair might have missed out on making anything Batman Begins to Tenet .

I don't know that for sure, as this unnamed exec may have left at some earlier point during that metaphorical exclusion period. Are you ready for the knife in this story to be twisted in a very special way? Guy Pearce’s proposed role in the 2005 Batman reboot was revealed in this same interview, and as the Iron Man 3 thespian admitted, that decision was made at a pretty late stage of the game:

I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit furious to hear this, especially since Pearce was on an airplane to take a meeting for the role! While Liam Neeson’s Henri Ducard/Ra's al Ghul was certainly a welcomed casting in Batman Begins, it still doesn’t change the fact that the exclusion of Guy Pearce from consideration was, to put it mildly, quite unfair. Though I suppose it all worked out in the end if you really think about it.

If Mr. Pearce had starred in that Christopher Nolan comic book hit, he may not have played Aldrich Killian in Shane Black’s Iron Man 3. Which might have also seen the actor unavailable to star in his entry on the Alien movie timeline, Prometheus, as he’d have had to reappear in 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises.

If there’s any sort of silver lining to this horrible story, it’s the fact that it’s perhaps one of the best things to come out of Christopher Nolan’s 2021 breakup with Warner Bros. Guy Pearce acknowledged that himself in this interview, closing the entire affair with the sentiment that maybe it’s time for him and his Memento director to reunite.

As luck would have it, Christopher Nolan’s next movie is gearing up to shoot early next year - and considering how large his casts can get, I’m sure there’s room to get the band back together. For now though, you can catch Guy Pearce and Christopher Nolan's sole film together, Memento, for free on Pluto TV and Tubi.

As with many years prior, several upcoming films will bring us tales of joy and woe with animated adventures, heartfelt family films, people overcoming horrific circumstances, fun comedies and more. But, something that many people love to see is a story that focuses either on people who do intriguing work or who have some true magic in their lives. As such, let’s take a look at 32 famous actors who’ve given us that by playing a wizard, witch or magician in some popular movies. 

Nicole Kidman (Practical Magic, Bewitched)

An Oscar winner who’s notably portrayed a witch twice in her big screen efforts is Nicole Kidman. Seeing as how Practical Magic 2 is now being worked on in earnest, you probably remember her 1998 hit with Sandra Bullock easily. But, do you recall her turn as a real witch hired to play a fictional one in the 2005 comedy, Bewitched?

Hugh Jackman (The Prestige)

We actually don’t get as many magicians on screen as one might think, but Hugh Jackman did us all a solid when he starred as one in the 2006 Christopher Nolan movie, The Prestige. If you somehow still haven’t seen this Edwardian London-set thriller, do yourself a favor and track it down. You won’t regret it.

Ian McKellen (The Lord Of The Rings And The Hobbit Trilogies)

This list would be nothing without mentioning maybe the most famous wizard in all of literary history, who made his major motion picture appearances courtesy of Sir Ian McKellen in The Lord of the Rings movies, as well as The Hobbit trilogy. Gandalf the Grey cannot be ignored, and not just because he’s so much taller than most of his traveling companions!

Neve Campbell (The Craft)

Fledgling teen witches count just as much as those who’ve been witchin’ for decades, which is why Neve Campbell’s eventual power-hungry sorceress, Bonnie, is on this list. The Craft is a teen horror classic that’s worth a watch.

Bette Midler (Hocus Pocus)

Here’s another classic movie witch who’s hard to forget. Bette Midler really dialed it up for her performance as Winifred Sanderson in 1993’s Hocus Pocus (along with fellow witchy Sanderson sisters Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker), and the results were so memorable that a Disney+ sequel was made nearly 30 years later.

Jesse Eisenberg (Now You See Me)

We’ve come to another magician, but Jesse Eisenberg’s modern-day character, Atlas, is an illusionist who works in Las Vegas in a popular group…who are really teamed up to steal lots and lots of money. It was so popular that a sequel followed.

Alexandra Daddario (Mayfair Witches)

If anything, we could trust late horror author Anne Rice to pen an intriguing tale that keeps us glued to the pages of a book. It also turns out that White Lotus star Alexandra Daddario can help turn that story into a can’t-miss TV show, as she’s done by playing witchy lead Rowan on Mayfair Witches.

Cher (The Witches Of Eastwick)

Cher has excelled in pretty much every role she’s ever had, and that includes widowed mother/witch Alex in The Witches of Eastwick. This one gets wild but you’ll never regret watching her (or her co-stars Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson) as things go from weird to worse.

Nicolas Cage (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice)

We all know that Nicolas Cage has played a multitude of roles during his decades-long career, so it should be little surprise that he’s portrayed as a user of magic. Before you get too deep into wondering whether or not there’s a real difference between a wizard and a sorcerer, just know that Cage played the latter in this 2010 film that takes some inspiration from a segment in Disney’s animated classic, Fantasia.

Tia And Tamera Mowry (Twitches)

Sure, there have already been people on this list who played witches along with other really famous people, and those co-stars weren’t listed as the main star, but guess what: none of those other people starred with their twin, which is the case with Tia and Tamera Mowry in the beloved Disney Channel original film, Twitches. Did this one get a sequel? You bet it did!

Meryl Streep (Into The Woods)

No one can deny the prowess or ability of 21-time Oscar nominee (and three-time winner) Meryl Streep to deliver an amazing performance. The same can be true for when she played the character known simply as The Witch in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Into the Woods (and, yes, got an Academy Award nomination for her work).

Steve Carell (The Incredible Burt Wonderstone)

And here we have another Las Vegas magician in Steve Carell’s Burt Wonderstone. Instead of watching him steal money, we follow along in this comedy as Burt attempts to reunite with his former partner (Steve Buschemi) so they can gain more traction than a competing magician (Jim Carrey) whose “tricks” mostly involve odd feats of endurance and real pain.

Edward Norton (The Illusionist)

You’d be forgiven for confusing this film with the above-mentioned The Prestige, as they’re both about old-timey magicians and released in 2006. However, this film stars Edward Norton as our…illusionist, and is more of a romantic mystery than Nolan’s thriller.

Lucy Lawless (Salem)

So many evil witches, so little time. The WGN TV series, Salem, was loosely inspired by the Salem witch trials, and focused on a lead who was trying to bring the Devil to earth. But, that wasn’t even the character played by Xena actress Lucy Lawless, as her Countess Palatine Ingrid von Marburg was simply a different and far more evil witch. Can’t anyone use magic to just like, keep everyone’s house clean so we can all have more free time?

Guy Pearce (Death Defying Acts)

It’s actually rather surprising that we’ve gotten this far into the list without coming to someone who portrayed a famous real-life magician, so we can thank Guy Pearce for that. His 2007 supernatural romance, Death Defying Acts, saw him play Harry Houdini.

Angela Bassett (American Horror Story: Coven)

Even for those who don’t follow along with the amazing antics on every season of the anthology series, American Horror Story, it would probably be a little shock to find out that the show has cast several witches during its long run. The subtitle of this 2013 season tells you that it was dedicated to witchy goings-on, and double Oscar nominee Angela Bassett had a notable guest role as real historical figure/Voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau.

Sebastian Stan (The Covenant)

The actor who would come to be known as Bucky “Winter Soldier” Barnes, Sebastian Stan, played a very different type of super-powered character in 2006, when he played teen warlock Chase Collins in the fantasy film The Covenant. It also features stars like Taylor Kitsch and Chase Crawford, who also get their magic on in the film.

Michelle Pfeiffer (Stardust)

As we’ve seen from the entry on Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer had already played a witchy woman by the time she appeared in the 2007 movie Stardust, as an evil (of course) witch looking to retrieve a fallen star to have ever-lasting beauty and youth.

Debbie Reynolds (Halloweentown)

Here’s another Disney Channel classic, which follows a young witch who realizes she has powers on her 13th Halloween, only to be transported to the titular town where supernatural creatures can live without human interference. The late Debbie Reynolds plays her grandmother (also a witch), and returned for all three sequels.

Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange)

This 2016 MCU entry stars Benedict Cumberbatch as an injured doctor who involves himself in the business of fighting evil with sorcery after losing the use of his hands and heading to a mysterious enclave to look for healing. Cumberbatch has appeared as the character in a number of Marvel franchise films now, including a 2022 sequel to his original solo film.

Mila Kunis (Oz The Great And Powerful)

Here’s a movie filled with magical beings that’s often forgotten. Oz the Great and Powerful saw Mila Kunis, along with Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz, play witches of, yes, that Oz who have to determine if the Kansas magician who’s turned up in their realm is really the “great” wizard they’ve been waiting for.

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone)

This is another actor and portrayal that this list would basically be pointless without. Though Daniel Radcliffe has gone on to portray a wide variety of good and bad guys in the past decade or so of his career, for many he will always be known as the boy wizard, Harry Potter.

Selena Gomez (Wizards Of Waverly Place)

What? Did you forget that Selena Gomez, the Grammy-nominated singer and star of the Hulu hit show Only Murders in the Building, got her first taste of fame on a Disney Channel series? Well, shame on you for not being able to remember that Gomez led Wizards of Waverly Place through a magical four-season run as the supernaturally gifted teen, Alex Russo.

Elizabeth Olsen (WandaVision)

Do we have yet another MCU stalwart for you? You bet we do! Elizabeth Olsen first took on the role of Scarlet Witch during the post-credits scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, later starring in several more of the franchise films and the critically lauded Disney+ series, WandaVision, for which she received an Emmy nomination.

Sam Neill (Merlin)

While there have certainly been a number of movies and shows that have given us versions of the mythical wizard known as Merlin, NBC’s two-part, 1998 miniseries saw Sam Neill use his recent Jurassic Park stardom to show us an adventurous tale of Merlin’s life before the birth of King Arthur.

Rosamund Pike (The Wheel Of Time)

Many of the portrayals we’ve discussed (and will continue to discuss below) have dealt with book-to-screen adaptations that are based on already incredibly popular novels, and The Wheel of Time is certainly one of those. The Amazon series, which takes its story from the 14-book franchise by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, stars Rosamund Pike as powerful magic user Moiraine Damodred, who takes a group of young adults on a journey to save the world.

Julia Ormond (Witches Of East End)

This Lifetime series, which ran for two seasons from 2013 to 2014, followed the women of the Beauchamp family, witches in a small, fictional seaside town who are led by their mother, Julia Ormond’s Joanna, and have to fight to save themselves and the people of their town from dark magical forces.

Emma Thompson (Beautiful Creatures)

This 2013 Gothic fantasy romance focuses on a teen who will learn on her 16th birthday whether or not her witch tendencies will be for good or ill. Two-time Academy Award-winning actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson plays her mother, Sarafine, who didn’t raise the girl but wants her on that dark side really, really badly.

Tilda Swinton (The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Suspiria)

Considering that Tilda Swinton has played everything from a gender-switching hero in Orlando to the MCU’s version of the Ancient One in the aforementioned Doctor Strange and the archangel Gabriel in Constantine, is anyone surprised to know that she’s played some witches? In both The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and Suspiria she was very good at playing magical ladies who wanted (or already had and wanted to continue) to do some very bad things, but the latter film has WAY more serious and bloody fun for those who watch.

Jack Black (The House With A Clock In Its Walls)

Frequent funny man Jack Black as a warlock? That’s what the 2018 fantasy The House With A Clock In Its Walls delivers, as the Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle star portrays a boy’s magic uncle who lives in the house of a dead evil wizard and is trying to discover the location and purpose of a clock the previous dastardly owner hid in the walls.

Jude Law (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald)

While much of the Harry Potter franchise featured either actors Richard Harris or Michael Gambon as the beloved Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, when the prequels were made, a younger Albus Dumbledore was needed and they called in Jude Law to fill the wizard’s very important and legendary shoes.

Julianne Moore (Seventh Son)

Last but certainly not least on our list of famed actors who’ve brought wizards, witches and magicians to life is lauded talent Julianne Moore. The Academy Award winner starred in 2015’s Seventh Son as the evil witch Mother Malkin, who escapes after many years imprisoned and looks to restore her full power by any means necessary.

As you can see, many of our most beloved stars have portrayed wizards, witches and magicians!

Warning: slight SPOILERS for The Convert are in play. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you’ve been warned.

Throughout director Lee Tamahori’s 2024 movie The Convert, the theme of grief binds the wider narrative that sees Guy Pearce’s lay preacher protagonist become entangled in the local politics of English settlers and Māori natives. A collaboration that saw actor and director finally working together after 25 years of attempts, it’s a sweeping drama that lives in a realm of personal stakes. In an unfortunate coincidence, a death in Pearce’s family inspired his portrayal of character Thomas Munro in a way that, once he’d explained it, had truly moved me.

The Loss That Influenced Guy Pearce’s Role In The Convert

Sitting down to speak with the veteran performer whose resume includes notable entries such as L.A. Confidential, Memento and Iron Man 3 was an absolute honor. As a fan and admirer, our interview touched upon the areas you’d expect, such as how author Jeffrey Deaver’s offhanded comment about the actor as his ideal 007 led to Guy Pearce’s vague flirtation with playing James Bond.

However, early on in our talk to promote The Convert, the Australian performer shared a very personal story that happened to take place just as filming was about to begin. Recalling the passing of his last living aunt to CinemaBlend, Guy Pearce shared the following:

Pearce is certainly no stranger to interacting with stories of personal obstacles, as seen in his time as part of the Mare of Easttown cast. So the fact that on a professional and personal level, those experiences left a mark on Pearce as he made The Convert isn’t all that shocking.

But navigating such material under these personal conditions makes all the difference in this specific story. In one particular case, those marks were intentionally permanent, as the Lockout star was inspired to get his first tattoos. For more on how that particular path came to be taken, Guy Pearce provided this:

Filming The Convert sounds like it was a personally transforming moment for its centerpiece talent. Certainly if it was enough to inspire Mr. Pearce’s tattoos commemorating family members, it was indeed something that reached into his heart. But there’s also some strong thematic elements that I’d think helped process Guy Pearce’s grief on set.

As his character eventually finds himself protecting a young Māori woman (Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne) who grieves the loss of her husband, those emotions are present throughout the entire picture. Not to mention, the backstory for Thomas Munro is also a tale steeped in tragedy, more than likely allowing Pearce to express a more personal quantity of sorrow.

How The Background Of The Convert’s Thomas Munroe Tied Into Guy Pearce’s Grief

Some might consider having such a personal experience land right at the start of a new project an omen of sorts. The circumstances seem so bespoke, with the potential silver lining being that Pearce wasn’t totally unprepared for his family’s loss. At the same time, The Convert's story allowed its lead to tap into that grief, as his character is beset by mourning from the start.

Revealed through a powerful monologue that sees Thomas Munro unfolding his personal backstory, we learn that Guy Pearce’s protagonist was a British soldier at one point. What’s more, the event that drove him away from his homeland in the first place was the fact that he killed women and children during an exercise, leaving him with traumatic guilt. Through that lens, Pearce continued to explain what he loved about playing this character, in these remarks to CinemaBlend:

Backstory is the lynchpin of The Convert’s story for a couple of important reasons. While Thomas Munro is more than capable of defending himself, his personal experience has left him wanting to take the peaceful route. Defying the trope of a former soldier looking for a fight, or a warrior’s death, Guy Pearce is able to take that role in directions that make this picture more of a drama than an action-packed historical epic.

Also, the theme of religious faith is something that definitely comes off as refreshing. While working on contributing to and shaping the story for The Convert, co-writer/director Lee Tamahori explicitly wanted to avoid the typical pitfalls of such a story. Case in point: earlier drafts of the story had Thomas Munro drawn as sort of a religious zealot dropped into this new frontier.

That was changed in favor of the man who Guy Pearce describes above: a person who, while not truly subscribing to religion, saw it as a way to start healing their inner trauma. The actor was in favor of this sort of diversion from the norm, and in some cases it helped Tamahori sell him on taking a part that he initially felt he was too old for.

Right off the bat, that choice was a particularly good one, as Pearce already has roles like that from his time in Bedtime Stories and other movies that took advantage of his skills as a villain. In further highlighting how these novel differences intrigued him, Pearce continued to elaborate with these details:

As the stories of how Guy Pearce’s MCU experience, as well that time Lockout changed his career mindset have shown, the man is always up for a challenge. It’s unfortunate that The Convert saw the acclaimed actor/musician presented with personal sorrow, but after hearing his story of making the movie that ensued, I was truly touched with how he moved through it all. You can see those results for yourself as well, as The Convert is currently showing in theaters and on demand for all who seek it.

Arriving shortly on the 2024 movie schedule, director Lee Tamahori’s The Convert allowed him to finally achieve something he’s been working toward for 25 years. This achievement was the New Zealand filmmaker working with Australian actor Guy Pearce. Now, the collaborators can finally cross being work colleagues off their respective bucket lists; and Pearce can say he holds two distinct connections to the legacy of the James Bond movies.

Not only was Tamahori the director of Pierce Brosnan's final 007 entry, Die Another Day, but Guy was once actually suggested for the role by a pretty notable party. All these years later, Guy Pearce has some stories to tell about his own "little chat" about the role of a lifetime, as well as his thoughts on what that prospect would have meant, in hindsight.

How Guy Pearce Was Tipped For James Bond, And How Close He Came To The Role

It should be noted that back in 2011, author Jeffery Deaver had the honor of writing a 007 one-off novel entitled Carte Blanche. A modern affair that saw Commander Bond facing off against a waste disposal magnate, the book is a fantastic read for fans of both classic and modern incarnations of the character.

During an interview in 2014 with The Wrap, Deaver said flat out that if his book were to be adapted, Guy Pearce was the actor he best saw as James Bond. Remembering this while I sat with Mr. Pearce during a press day for The Convert, I had to ask if he’d known about this, and had made any sort of moves to pursue the role of 007.

It’s thanks to that question that Guy Pearce revealed the following while speaking with CinemaBlend:

Now I can’t say this with total certainty, but I have a feeling that Guy is talking about the 00-handover that saw Pierce Brosnan’s surprise James Bond firing after Die Another Day and Daniel Craig’s eventual hiring for Casino Royale. Which, based on a previous interview from the CinemaBlend archives, would have been around Guy Pearce’s “hating everything” period that saw him make The Time Machine and The Count of Monte Cristo.

It makes a lot of sense, as he would have still been riding pretty high off of his success in L.A. Confidential around that time. As director Martin Campbell tested several actors for the role at the time, Pearce would have undoubtedly been an attractive candidate for the honors. Though it doesn't sound like he was necessarily in the headspace for an extended engagement in any role of this type.

Perhaps it was a good thing that The Convert lead only got as far as light conversation, as that seems to be all that really came from the matter. Which, based on my educated guess, would have taken place between Guy and his reps. But again, I can't confirm that. What I can confirm though is how Guy Pearce looks back on it all in hindsight.

Guy Pearce’s Current Feelings On The Potential To Play James Bond

While Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies would bring the character into the 21st century, Guy Pearce’s resume only continued to blossom in the absence of that very role. Pearce landed everything from a part as a comedic family movie villain in Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories to the nefarious Aldrich Killian in the Marvel movie Iron Man 3, as well as many more notable opportunities.

Now, with over two decades separating the world from Die Another Day, and a little over 10 years since Carte Blanche was published, Guy Pearce has reflected on that “little chat” and what it could have held for his future. Continuing to speak with CinemaBlend, he put the matter to rest with these words:

With the eclectic resume that Guy Pearce has assembled over the years, which includes long-term gigs like the Jack Irish mysteries, it feels like the man has no regrets. After all, the part was never truly his to pursue or reject, and the opportunities that he racked up as a result of being allowed that freedom wouldn’t have been as plentiful if he was locked into that ironclad tuxedo.

On the bright side, while Pearce may not be within the parameters for Bond 26’s 007 candidates, there are still plenty of opportunities for him in the world of James Bond. In fact, if he’s up for such a steady gig, there’s always the chance he could make either a fantastic Bond villain or a great new pick for M. So maybe the legacy of Ian Fleming’s superspy isn’t quite as finished with Guy Pearce as he’d like to think.

That’s something we’ll have to keep an eye on in the near future, as Bond 26 continues to occupy a sort of development limbo at the time. However, you won’t have to wait too long to see Guy’s face on your screen of choice, as The Convert is heading to both theaters and on-demand, starting July 12th.

Liam Neeson is set to star in Memory, an English-language remake of the Dutch film The Memory of a Killer (also known as The Alzheimer Case), and it definitely sounds like something you'd find on the roster of upcoming Liam Neeson movies. The action thriller will see the actor as Alex Lewis, an expert assassin who refuses a job and must go on the hunt for those who want him dead. Making that quite a bit more complicated is the fact that Alex is afflicted with severe memory loss that affects his every move. 

Critics have had the opportunity to screen the film ahead of its April 29 release, and the reviews are in to help us decide if we’ll be scheduling a trip to the theater. The movie was directed by Martin Campbell, who is known for his work on the Bond films Goldeneye and Casino Royale. It also stars Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci and Taj Atwal.

Let’s get right to the reviews, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of Memory. Our own Mike Reyes rates the movie 3 out of 5 stars, saying this was one of Liam Neeson’s better projects in recent years, allowing the actor to showcase his charm and relatability rather than leaning only on his acting chops: 

At the time of this writing, there seems to only be a handful of reviews for Memory; and the overall consensus is rather negative. With Liam Neeson's comments about an eventual action retirement apparently being written off as a joke, some critics might not be laughing. This is especially true with reactions like this next one from Movie Nation's Roger Moore:

Making a Liam Neeson action movie is a certainly a fine line to walk, especially since there's so many of them to choose from. In such a well worn tradition, it's easy to accidentally fall into the pitfall of coming so close to parody that it robs a film like Memory of the serious energy it's attempting to embody. That leads us to Alonso Duralde from The Wrap's review, which echoed that very sentiment thusly:

That's not to say that Memory doesn't seem to have anything new to add to the pot. Morris Yang's review at In Review Online seems to credit director Martin Campbell with contributing some fresh blood to the Neeson Action oeuvre. The problem is, there's not enough of that present in the mix, as Yang notes in his criticism: 

Our last review in this roundup comes from Derek Smith at Slant Magazine. Continuing the negative trend of reactions to Memory, Smith seems to think that the film is a little too memorable in terms of the beats it employs. As such, that colors Smith's overall view on the film in the following light:

By now fans of Liam Neeson’s best movies have a pretty good idea of what to expect from the actor in these types of action movies, and it sounds like Memory adds even a little more to that in this psychological thriller. This isn’t the end for Neeson either, as the actor clarified that he isn’t planning to retire from the action genre after all. Memory is set to arrive in theaters on Friday, April 29, and be sure to check out our 2022 Movie Release Schedule to see what’s coming soon to a theater near you.

When director Ridley Scott returned to the world of the Alien franchise, his prequels introduced an important figure we’d never laid eyes on before. Through Guy Pearce’s role as Weyland Corporation CEO Peter Weyland, one half of the series’ antagonistic power structure was proven to be more integral to the evolution of the Xenomorphs than we’d thought. Playing Peter through both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, Pearce may not know if Scott is tackling a sequel to the most recent film, but he has some intriguing thoughts on the potential for such a prospect.

Promoting his most recent film, Zone 414, Guy Pearce has been making the usual rounds speaking with the press. And in his interview with Comic Book Movie, the actor was asked if he knew anything concrete about the intended sequels that Ridley Scott had planned to follow up Alien: Covenant. Pearce’s denial came with a lot of praise for his experiences in the series, as you'll see below:

While the official word is that Guy Pearce doesn’t know if Ridley Scott is doing anything connected to an Alien: Covenant follow-up, it certainly sounds like he’d be in on the ground floor. Even if it sounds like Scott is, once again, changing his tune on how satisfied he's been with the prequel stories thus far. At least, that assumption seems true provided Peter Weyland is set to return in the Alien franchise yet again. It wouldn’t be a total stretch, as audiences who saw Prometheus were probably as surprised as Pearce himself when Peter Weyland made an appearance in Alien: Covenant.

Though the 103 year old Peter was killed off towards the end of the former film, thanks to pissing off the Engineers he sought for guidance on immortality, Alien: Covenant saw Mr. Weyland returning in a flashback from Michael Fassbender’s David. Highlighting just why David has an axe to grind with humanity, the scene shows David’s perfection in sharp contrast to the imperfect rage Peter Weyland has against his own creation. That antagonism couldn’t be further from the feelings that Guy Pearce has on Ridley Scott including him in the Alien prequel saga, as the actor thinks that should there be an opportunity to continue that story, the legendary director won’t pass it up:

As Guy Pearce is intensely grateful to Ridley Scott’s decision to cast him in both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, his claim to know nothing of any sequel progress feels valid. But then again, that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for Pearce’s Peter Weyland to appear again. Whether it’s through the FX series being developed with Noah Hawley, or in a hypothetical secret sequel that the actor is keeping secret, the human story in the Alien universe could see one of its coldest figures return in due time. Should he be able, you can bet that Mr. Pearce will return to keep that thread alive and well; and hopefully without all of the prosthetic makeup he had to endure on Prometheus. You can catch Guy Pearce playing a hero once more in Zone 414, which is currently available to rent on VOD.

Without Remorse is Amazon Prime’s exciting new action thriller based on Tom Clancy’s book of the same name. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as John Clark. Clark loses what he holds dear, his family, so he sets off on a mission for revenge but also ends up helping the United States government in their ongoing battle against Russia. One of the things that makes this film so exciting is because of Michael B. Jordan and the entire Without Remorse cast.

The Without Remorse cast includes some award-nominated actors and some who have appeared in critically acclaimed TV shows and movies. Without Remorse should appeal to huge Michael B. Jordan fans, Tom Clancy fans, or just action movie junkies. If you plan to see Without Remorse or have already seen it, you may be wondering what TV shows and movies you’ve seen the Without Remorse cast in before. Here’s a quick rundown of their past and future projects.

Michael B Jordan (John Clark)

Michael B. Jordan plays John Clark, a former U.S Navy SEAL who goes to prison after beginning a mission to hunt down the men who assassinated his wife Pam (Lauren London). Jordan’s early works include roles in The Wire, All My Children, Chronicle, The Assistants, Friday Night Lights, and Parenthood. In recent years, Michael B. Jordan has become one of the most bankable and well-known names in Hollywood. He has appeared in the films Fantastic Four, Fahrenheit 451, Black Panther, Just Mercy, and The Creed films.

His TV work has included Raising Dion and Gen: Lock. Some of the upcoming Michael B. Jordan movies and TV shows include reprising his Black Panther role as Erik Killmonger in Marvel’s What If...?. He’s also filming the Denzel Washington-directed A Journal for Jordan. Soon Michael B. Jordan will make his feature directorial debut with Creed III.

Jamie Bell (Robert Ritter)

Jamie Bell plays Robert Ritter in Without Remorse. Ritter is a CIA officer and one of the main players involved in Clark’s special mission. Without Remorse marks the on-screen reunion of Michael B. Jordan and Bell, who both appeared in 2015’s Fantastic Four. At only 13 years old, Bell made his screen debut in Billy Elliot. He then appeared in films such as Nicholas Nickleby, The Chumscrubber, Jumper, Defiance, Skin, and The Adventures of Tintin. In 2013, he had a supporting role in Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer.

From 2014 to 2017, Jamie Bell played Abraham Woodhull in TURN: Washington's Spies. He took on the role of Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s long-time music partner, in Rocketman. He was criminally not nominated for an Oscar for that role. Bell’s upcoming projects include a drama called Surrounded.

Jodie Turner-Smith (Karen Greer)

Jodie Turner-Smith plays Karen Greer, a Lt. Commander and a former member of Clark’s SEAL team. Turner-Smith gained attention when she appeared as co-lead with Daniel Kaluuya in Queen & Slim.She also appeared in the films The Neon Demon, Newness, and Lemon. Turner-Smith will be the star of one of the most buzzed-about 2021 TV shows, Anne Boleyn.

Jodie Turner-Smith’s TV show credits also include The Last Ship, Jett, Nightflyers, Mad Dogs, and True Blood. Her next big film project is Kogonada’s sci-fi film After Yang. The cast of that film also includes Justin H. Min, Colin Farrell, Haley Lu Richardson, and Brett Dier. She’ll also be starring in Borderland with John Boyega and Felicity Jones.

Luke Mitchell (Rowdy)

Luke Mitchell plays Rowdy, a member of Clark’s SEAL team. Those who are still mourning the cancellation of The Tomorrow People will remember him as John Young on the canceled too-soon CW series. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fans will also remember him as Lincoln Campbell, Daisy's (Chloe Bennet) Inhuman and doomed boyfriend. Mitchell also played Roman on Blindspot, Romeo on Home and Away, and Abe on The Code.

Luke Mitchell’s TV and film credits have also included H2O: Just Add Water, Neighbours, 7 Minutes, and Black Water: Abyss. He'll play Danny on the upcoming CW drama The Republic of Sarah.

Jack Kesy (Thunder)

Jack Kesy plays Thunder, another member of Clark’s SEAL Team. Kesy may best be known for playing Gabriel Bolivar on The Strain. He played him from 2014 to 2016. He also plays Roller Husser on Claws, which was originally set to end in 2020, but now he’ll play the character until Claws officially ends, likely in 2021. Jack Kesy’s TV credits also include The Alienist, Ray Donovan, and Deputy.

Marvel and Deadpool fans may recognize Jack Kesy for playing Black Tom Cassidy in Deadpool 2. He’s also appeared in the films Intruders, Hot Summer Nights, Baywatch, 12 Strong, Death Wish, Blood Brother, The Outpost, and Dark Web: Cicada 3301.

Brett Gelman (Victor Rykov)

Brett Gelman plays Victor Rykov on Without Remorse. Stranger Things fans may recognize Gelman as Murray, the conspiracy nut who actually might not be so nutty after all. Stranger Things fans will see a lot more of him in the upcoming fourth season. Gelman also played the most punchable guy Martin in Fleabag. Gelman’s TV credits also include Mr. Mercedes, Camping, Twin Peaks, Another Period, American Dad!, Love, and Eagleheart.

Brett Gelman has also appeared in episodes of Happy Endings, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, Drunk History, and Mad Men. His film roles include The Other Guys, 30 Minutes or Less, A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas, The Disaster Artist, and Like Father. Gelman will also be appearing in the upcoming film Surrounded, the same film as his Without Remorse co-star Jamie Bell.

Colman Domingo (Pastor West)

Colman Domingo plays Pastor West in Without Remorse. Fear the Walking Dead fans may recognize Domingo as Victor Strand. He also plays Ali in Euphoria. Other TV credits for Domingo include The Twilight Zone, Lucifer, The Knick, The Big Gay Sketch Show, and Nash Bridges. You may also recognize Domingo for his performance in the Oscar-nominated movie Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He played Cutler, one of Ma Rainey’s band members.

Colman Domingo’s other prominent film credits include Lincoln, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, The Birth of a Nation, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Selma--where he played Ralph Abernathy. Domingo’s upcoming projects include Zola, The God Committee, and Candyman.

Guy Pearce (Thomas Clay)

In Without Remorse, Guy Pearce plays Secretary of Defense Thomas Clay, he’s one of the leading forces behind Clark joining the team against Russia. Many may remember Pearce from the critically acclaimed Christopher Nolan film Memento. Pearce has been playing the character Jack Irish since 2012 in various TV movies, but has been the character on the series Jack Irish since 2016. Pearce’s TV credits also include Neighbours, Home and Away, Mildred Pierce, When We Rise, The Innocents, FX’s A Christmas Carol, and HBO Max’s Mare of Easttown.

Pearce has also appeared in the films The Time Machine, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Road, The Hurt Locker, The King’s Speech, Animal Kingdom, The Catcher Was A Spy, Bloodshot, and Mary Queen of Scots. He played supervillain Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3. Guy Pearce’s upcoming projects include Memory, Zone 414, Blacklight, and Back to the Outback.

Lauren London (Pam Clark)

Lauren London plays Pam Cark, John Clark’s wife. Her murder starts his revenge mission. Lauren London may best be known for playing New New in ATL. Yes, from the infamous gif. London has also appeared in the films The Christmas, I Love You, Beth Cooper, Madea's Big Happy Family, Baggage Claim, and Always and Forever.

London also has many TV credits. Her recent series Games People Play began airing on BET in 2019, with Season 2 expected in 2021. She also appeared in the series Everybody Hates Chris, 90210, Keeping up with the Kardashians, The Game, and Single Ladies.

Jacob Scipio (Hatchet)

Hatchet (Jacob Scipio) is another one of John Clark’s SEAL team members. Jacob Scipio has appeared in the films Hunt Killer, We Die Young, and plays Armando Aretas in Bad Boys for Life and potential future movies. His TV credits have included Pieces of Her, Bob the Builder (UK), Damned, Dixie, Some Girls As The Bell Rings, and White Teeth.

Cam Gigandet (Keith Webb)

Cam Gigandet plays Keith Webb, another member of Clark’s SEAL team. Twilight fans may recognize him as James from the first movie. Gigandet has been in countless popular shows and movies, so even if you may not recognize his name, you probably recognize his face. He’s been in well-known TV shows like The O.C, Jack & Bobby, Ice, and The Young and the Restless.

Cam Gigandet has also appeared in the films Never Back Down, The Unborn, Easy A, Burlesque, The Magnificent Seven, Dangerous Lies, and The Roommate.

Todd Lasance (Dallas)

Todd Lasance plays Dallas, yet another one of Clark’s SEAL team members. Many The Vampire Diaries fans will remember Lasance as Julian, a major villain in the seventh season. Like a few of his Without Remorse co-stars, he also appeared in the Australian soap opera Home and Away. He also appeared in the series Rescue Special Op, Crownies, Spartacus, Bite Club, and The Flash. He played Edward Clariss aka The Rival on The Flash.

Todd Lasance has also appeared in the movies Fool’s Gold, Terminus, and The Divorce Party.

Catch Michael B. Jordan and the rest of the Without Remorse cast when it begins streaming on Amazon Prime on April 30, 2021. Without Remorse is one of the best Amazon Prime movies to watch this weekend.

Created by Brad Ingelsby (The Way Back) and directed by Craig Zobel (Compliance), Mare of Easttown, HBO's latest limited series, appears to be the next great prestige drama. Led by Kate Winslet, this detective drama doesn't sound especially original from its synopsis, but critics have praised the mini-series for its great understanding of tone, character, and sense of place. Likewise, the performances are also highlighted. With a supporting cast that includes Guy Pierce, Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Angourie Rice, Cailee Spaeny, and Evan Peters, this is an A-list ensemble, and you've certainly seen their work in the past. If the Mare of Easttown cast looks familiar, here's why!

Kate Winslet (Mare Sheehan)

As Mare Sheehan, a small-town police detective navigating her own personal traumas while investigating her most recent case, Kate Winslet plays the titular protagonist in Mare of Easttown. Previously, Winslet won an Emmy for another title role in another HBO mini-series, Mildred Pierce, which also co-starred Guy Pierce. This limited series marks their reunion. She was also Emmy-nominated for her guest appearance in HBO's Extras. Her other TV credits include Get Back, Dark Season, Casualty, and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. Additionally, Winslet lent her voice to the animated series, Moominvalley.

Outside of television, Kate Winslet won an Oscar for The Reader. Most famously, she's known for her Oscar-nominated performance as Rose DeWitt Bukater in 1997's Best Picture-winning mega-hit, Titanic. Additionally, the acclaimed actress received Oscar nominations for her lead roles in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Little Children and her supporting turns in Sense and Sensibility (1996), Iris, and Steve Jobs.

Kate Winslet's other notable film credits include Heavenly Creatures, Revolutionary Road, Finding Neverland, Carnage, Labor Day, The Holiday, Contagion, Hamlet (1996), Divergent, Quills, Enigma, and last year's Ammonite. Away from acting, Winslet won a Grammy for her work in Listen to the Storyteller. Next, she'll be seen in Avatar 2, Lee, and Fake! She will also be heard in Naya Legend of the Golden Dolphin.

Julianne Nicholson (Lori Ross)

In the role of Lori Ross, Mare's childhood best friend, Julianne Nicholson is a close companion in HBO's Mare of Easttown. Notably, Nicholson played NYPD Detective Megan Wheeler in NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Jenny Shaw in Fox's Ally McBeal. Also, she appeared in HBO's Boardwalk Empire and Showtime's Master of Sex. Additionally, the TV actress had main roles in NBC's Conviction, USA Network's Eyewitness, NBC's The Others, CBS's Presidio Med, and NBC's Law & Order: True Crime. Last year, Nicholson played the part of Glory Maitland in HBO's The Outsiders. Her other TV credits include The Red Road, The Good Wife, ER, Covert Affairs, and Royal Pains.

Outside of TV, Julianne Nicholson is seen in August: Osage County, Kinsey, Seeing Other People, Little Black Book, Keep the Lights On, Novitiate, Monos (which she also produced), and Togo. Her other film credits include Who We Are Now (which she also produced), From Nowhere, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and I, Tonya. Next, she will appear in Blonde and the anthology film, With/In, where she also writes and directs.

Jean Smart (Helen Sheehan)

Playing the part of Helen Sheehan, Mare's imposing mother, Jean Smart plays a stern character in Mare of Easttown. Most notably, Smart is known for her two-time Emmy-winning performance as Lana Gardener in NBC's Frasier. She also won an Emmy for playing Regina Newley in ABC's Samantha Who? Additionally, Smart was Emmy-nominated for playing Floyd Gerhardt in FX's Fargo Season 2. She's also recognized for playing Martha Logan in Fox's 24, as well as the lead role in CBS's Designing Women. Her other notable television credits include Watchmen, Legion, Halt and Catch Fire, Psych, Hawaii Five-0, and Arrested Development. Additionally, Smart voiced Dr. Ann Possible in Disney Channel's Kim Possible and Depression Kitty in Netflix's Big Mouth.

Outside of TV, Jean Smart was nominated for a Tony Award for her lead performance in Broadway's 2000 revival of The Man Who Came To Dinner. Her film credits include I Heart Huckabees, Garden State, The Accountant, Hope Springs, Homeward Bound, The Odd Couple II, and Life Itself, as well as Youth in Revolt, Sweet Home Alabama, A Simple Favor, and Superintelligence. Most recently, Smart starred in Senior Moment.

Angourie Rice (Siobhan Sheehan)

As Siobhan Sheehan, Angourie Rice plays Mare's teenage daughter in HBO's Mare of Easttown. Most notably, Rice is known for her breakout role as Holly March in The Nice Guys. Additionally, the actress plays the part of Betty Brant in MCU's Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home. Also, she played the lead role in 2018's Every Day. The actress's other film credits include The Beguiled, Walking with Dinosaurs, These Final Hours, Jaspar Jones, Ladies in Black, and Nowhere Boys: The Books of Shadows. Most recently, Rice voiced the title character in Daisy Quokka: World's Scariest Animal. Outside of film, she can be seen in Black Mirror, as well as Mako: Island of Secrets, Worst Year of My Life Again, and The Doctor Blake Mysteries.

Evan Peters (Detective Colin Zabel)

In the role of Detective Colin Zabel, a county detective who's called in to assist Mare in her investigation, Evan Peters plays an inquisitive character looking from the outside in in Mare of Easttown. Most notably, Peters plays Peter Maximoff, i.e. Quicksilver, in X-Men: Days of Future Past, along with X-Men: Apocalypse, Deadpool 2, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. His other film credits include American Animals, Kick-Ass, The Lazarus Effect, Sleepover, Adult World, Elvin & Nixon, Never Back Down, and Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown. Also, he appeared in The Pirates of Somalia, Safelight, The Good Doctor, Gardens of the Night, and An American Crime. Recently, Peters starred in I Am Woman.

Outside of film, Evan Peters is most well-known for playing an assortment of characters in various seasons of FX's American Horror Story. Additionally, the actor earned praise for his performance as Stan Bowes in FX's Pose. He also played Jack Daniels in The CW's One Tree Hill. His other notable TV credits include Phil of the Future, Invasion, The Office, House, Monk, and The Days. Most recently, Peters reprised his role as Quicksilver in Disney+'s WandaVision. Next, he'll play Jeffrey Dahmer in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Also, the actor will star in American Horror Story: Double Feature.

Guy Pearce (Richard Ryan)

Playing the part of Richard Ryan, a local creative writing professor who crosses paths with Mare during her investigation, Guy Pearce plays a lead role in HBO's Mare of Easttown. Most notably, Pearce is an Emmy winner for his supporting performance in HBO's Mildred Pierce, which also starred Kate Winslet. Additionally, Pearce played Mike Young in nearly 500 episodes of Seven Network's soap opera, Neighbours. Furthermore, the actor appeared in Snowy River: The McGregor Saga, Home and Away, When We Rise, Jack Irish, The Wizards of Aus, The Innocents, and BBC One's A Christmas Carol.

Furthermore, in film, Guy Pearce starred in Christopher Nolan's Memento. He was also acclaimed for his performance in L.A. Confidential. His other notable film performances include King Edward VIII in The King's Speech and Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson in The Hurt Locker. Also, Pearce can be seen in Ravenous, The Rover, Lockout, Lawless, Animal Kingdom, Iron Man 3, Factory Girl, Brand New World, and The Time Machine. Most recently, Pearce starred in The Last Vermeer. Next, the actor appears in Tom Clancy's Without Remorse, Zone 414, Back to the Outback, Memory, and Poor Boy, which he'll also direct.

Cailee Spaeny (Erin McMenamin)

As Erin McMenamin, an isolated teen with a tragic fate, Cailee Spaeny plays a haunting supporting character in Mare of Easttown. Most recently, Spaeny was among Zoe Lister Jones' The Craft: Legacy cast. Additionally, the actress reunited with the writer-director for How It Ends, which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Also, Spaeny played Jane Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex and Young Lynne Cheney in Vice. Her other film credits include Pacific Rim: Uprising and Bad Times at the El Royale. Furthermore, Spaeney played one of the main characters in FX's limited series, Devs. Additionally, the actress can be seen in The All-American Rejects' "Send Her to Heaven" music video.

David Denman (Mark Sheehan)

In the role of Mark Sheehan, Mare's ex-husband, David Denman plays a distant paternal character in HBO's Mare of Easttown. Most notably, Denman is known for playing Roy Anderson in NBC's The Office. He also had a recurring role as Ed in NBC's Parenthood. Additionally, Denman had main parts in Fox's Traffic Light and Cinemax's Outcast. His other notable television credits include Drop Dead Diva, Angel, Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, ER, The X-Files, Grey's Anatomy, and Mad Men. The TV actor was also seen in True Detective, Angel From Hell, Dolly Parton's Heartstrings, and Two and a Half Men.

Outside of TV, David Denman can be seen in Big Fish, Brightburn, The Replacements, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Power Rangers, Puzzle, The Gift, Out Cold, and Logan Lucky. The actor's other big-screen credits include Shutter, Smart People, Fanboys, Jobs, When a Stranger Calls, The Nines, Fair Game, and Men, Women, and Children. Most recently, Denman provided a supporting turn in Greenland.

Phyllis Somerville (Betty Carroll)

Playing the part of Betty Carroll, a sweet, elderly lady who can take up a lot of Mare's time, Phyllis Somerville gave her final screen performance in Mare of Easttown. The veteran actress passed away on July 16th, 2020. She was 76. Most notably, Somerville played a recurring role as Marlene in Showtime's The Big C. Her other television credits include Daredevil, Outsiders, NYPD Blue, Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, and Castle Rock. She also appeared in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Madam Secretary, and Chappelle's Show, as well as two HBO favorites: The Sopranos and Sex and the City.

Additionally, in film, Phyllis Somerville appeared in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Little Children, Stoker, The Double, Broken English, Bringing Out the Dead, and Surviving Family. Her other movie credits include Arthur, Leap of Faith, The Imposters, Diane, Simply Irresistible, and Our Souls At Night. Somerville's final film was Poms.

John Douglas Thompson (Chief Carter)

As Chief Carter, Mare's boss at the Easttown police department, John Douglas Thompson plays an authoritative character in Mare of Easttown. Most notably, Thompson is a Tony-nominated actor for his lead performance in Broadway's 2017 revival of Jitney. The acclaimed actor has garnered many other awards and nominations for his stage work throughout the years. Outside of this HBO miniseries, Thompson can be seen in ABC's For Life. He also guest-starred in Bull, Madam Secretary, Conviction, Law & Order, Person of Interest, and Law & Order: SVU. Additionally, Thompson was seen in HBO's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Next, he'll appear in HBO's The Gilded Age, which is expected to premiere later this year.

Recently, in film, John Douglas Thompson appeared in HBO Max's Let Them All Talk and the Oscar-nominated short film, The Letter Room. His other film credits include Michael Clayton, The Bourne Legacy, A Most Violent Year, Wolves, and 21 Bridges.

Mare of Easttown premieres on April 18th on HBO.

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Guy Pearce has done a number of different projects over the course of his career. The actor has starred in dramas like Momento and The Hurt Locker and blockbuster films like Iron Man 3 and Prometheus. Of course, one of the more family-oriented films is most known for is Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories, which saw him play the role of snooty Kendall Morgan. It was a fun part, and fans likely enjoyed watching Pearce flex his comedic muscles. The actor himself actually found starring in the film to be “quite the thrill,” and he recently opened up about why this was the case.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Guy Pearce about his work in The Last Vermeer and, during our chat, he spoke on how he came to be involved with Bedtime Stories. And as it turns out, he had a very personal reason for wanting to team up with Adam Sandler and Adam Shankman for the Disney film, which made it all the more satisfying for him in the end:

Having starred in a string of films with such heavy material, one can definitely understand why Guy Pearce needed a bit of a palate cleanser. And it looks like the film did just that for him. The film's fun vibe, paired with the family-oriented nature of an Adam Sandler production, would likely make for an enjoyable filmmaking experience. The storybook comedy is currently available to stream on Disney+, which you can sign up for using this link.

Guy Pearce’s Bedtime Stories role really allowed him to humorously chew scenery as a villain, and the actor has since learned quite a bit about playing a bad guy. However, his recent role as Dutch folk hero Han van Meegeren, is an example of a character who has a few more shades of gray. But most would agree that whatever kind of role he’s playing, Pearce can nail them all.

Guy Pearce was a fun part of Bedtime Stories, and it would be nice to see him get even more silly in another film. And even more, seeing him and Adam Sandler team up in another movie would be fun as well.

The Last Vermeer is now available on Digital, Blu-ray and DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

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Death is rarely permanent in comic books, and the same has proven to be more or less true for comic book movies. Just because a character has died does not mean that we've seen the last of them. Even if the actor that originally played the role has no interest in returning, we can still see their character return. But in the case of one Aldrich Killian, that won't be an issue. As Guy Pearce, who played the character in Iron Man 3, says he'd love to come back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While Guy Pearce is the first to admit he's not sure how such a return would happen since his character was clearly killed at the end of Iron Man 3, the actor tells ScreenRant that if given the chance he would absolutely reprise his role. Namely because he had such a great time making the third Iron Man film. According to Pearce,

Based on this statement, the biggest hurdle to Guy Pearce returning might be the fact his collaborators from Iron Man 3 wouldn't be involved. At this point, it seems clear that both Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow have moved on from the MCU. We certainly could see Shane Black direct another entry in this particular cinematic universe, but I get the feeling if Black wanted to return, and Marvel wanted him back, that would have happened by now.

Guy Pearce's time in the MCU is available on Disney+. You can use this link to sign up for the streaming service.

The bigger question might simply be whether MCU fans would like to see this. Guy Pearce's character became one of the more controversial decisions made in this universe, when Iron Man's popular villain The Mandarin, traditionally an Asian mystic character with magic rings of alien origin, was replaced by an actor pretending to play that part. What's more, Pearce's Killian was revealed to be the power behind the throne. Fans of classic Iron Man were largely unimpressed by this decision, even if it did make for one of the better twists in the MCU to date.

There's no indication Guy Pearce was called in to bring back Killian in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which is set to debut the "real" Mandarin. The upcoming blockbuster could therefore connect to Iron Man 3, and Killian could seemingly return in that way. But that doesn't mean such a reprisal is actually happening. Although given enough time in the MCU, basically anything is possible.

Over the years, cinema has given viewers a number of characters that can firmly be classified as heroes or villains. One end of the spectrum includes the likes of Ben-Hur and Ellen Ripley, while the other features Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader. There are even some like Michael Corleone and Severus Snape who can be referred to as antiheroes. Some roles are easy to classify, but others, like Guy Pearce’s turn as Han van Meegeren in The Last Vermeer, are harder to pin down. Pearce views his character from a very nuanced perspective, but it appears that his work in the Marvel Universe did teach him something about villains.

The Last Vermeer centers on the exploits of Han van Meegeren, the Dutch folk hero and art forger who swindled millions of dollars from the Nazis by selling them replicas of highly sought-after artwork. The role allowed Pearce to really dive into the eccentricities of Van Meegeren and chew up a bit of scenery in the process.

Still, the role is a far cry from his performance as villainous think tank founder Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3. And when I recently spoke to Guy Pearce about his work on The Last Vermeer, he revealed that he didn’t even view Han van Meegeren as a villain or hero. However, he did explain that his time with Marvel Studios helped reinforce one key fact ahead of his portrayal of Van Meegeren:

In regard to playing a villain, Guy Pearce’s work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe helped drive home the point that in bigger films, many antagonists tend to fall into that over-the-top (or even mustache-twirly) mold that audiences have become accustomed to. But with Han van Meegeren, Pearce was able to find the layers within the somewhat “questionable” character and in the process, find his humanity.

Guy Pearce tries not to look for a heroic or villainous label for his characters, especially ones that are as multidimensional as Han van Meegeren. The actor went on to tell me that he seeks to answer other kinds of questions when examining a role:

Guy Pearce certainly puts a considerable amount of thought into the roles he plays and how he approaches them. And with The Last Vermeer’s Han van Meegeren, he ultimately managed to paint a vivid portrait of a truly complex and complicated man.

The Last Vermeer is now available on Digital, Blu-ray and DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

There was a time, before he redefined the comic book movie, the war-era period piece, and, pretty much, the sci-fi genre in general, when Christopher Nolan destroyed the rules of film noir and rewrote them from scratch. He did so with a thriller starring Guy Pearce as a man struggling to overcome horrific short-term memory loss in order to find his wife’s murderer. For just about every member of the Memento cast, the extraordinarily clever, turn-of-the-century indie darling was not really a big break, but one of the brightest highlights in each of their careers.

As I mentioned before, Guy Pearce’s character in this sleeper hit from 2000 does not have the most reliable memory, typically lasting a good five minutes before anything that happens to him within that time it is completely wiped away. To put you in his shoes, Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan’s Oscar-nominated screenplay for Memento (based on the latter brother’s short story) brilliantly tells the story in reverse so that you always know only what he knows.

What sounds like a tedious process on paper is widely considered one the most engrossing brainteasers ever put to celluloid, leading many cinephiles to dedicate colossal amounts of time to gaining a deeper understanding of what it all means. Well, at this point the only mystery I am interested in getting to the bottom of is what the cast of Memento has been up to lately. Let’s breakdown the careers of this criminally entertaining crime thriller’s most memorable performers, starting with one whose character can’t remember a damn thing.

Guy Pearce (Leonard Shelby)

This Emmy-winning Australian broke out on popular soaps Neighbours and Home and Away (like many from down under) before landing films like 1994’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and L.A. Confidential in 1997. Guy Pearce has since been two comic book movie villains (in Iron Man 3 and Bloodshot, as a sort of reverse of his Memento role), joined the Alien franchise as Peter Weyland, and even played Ebenezer Scrooge in 2019. He will next play an exorcist in The Seventh Day, a cult leader in a series based on Alantown, joins a voice cast of other Aussie A-listers in Back to the Outback, and teams up with a machine to solve a mystery in the futuristic crime thriller Zone 414.

Carrie-Anne Moss (Natalie)

Machines were the enemy to Carrie Anne-Moss in 1999’s The Matrix, which, coincidentally, is also the title of one of the Canadian actress’ TV series. Since playing a suspicious bar waitress in Memento, the now 53-year-old has played Shia LaBeouf’s mother in Disturbia, the love interest of a domesticated zombie in an alternate 1950s in Fido, an alien “pirate queen” in the Mass Effect games, and also (technically) joined the MCU as a lawyer, showing up in three Netflix original Marvel series. Moss will soon return to her best known role of Trinity in the highly anticipated fourth installment of the Matrix movies.

Joe Pantoliano (Teddy)

The Ringer’s The Rewatchables podcast has an “award” named after Carrie Anne-Moss’ The Matrix and Memento co-star, Joe Pantoliano, (which is given to the best “that guy” from a movie) because of his recognizable face and prolific character acting career. He's popped up in favorites like Risky Business and The Goonies, and scored an Emmy-winning stint on The Sopranos. The 69-year-old recently returned to the Bad Boys franchise as Captain Howard and will soon play a cop again in the upcoming comedy Spring Break ’83.

Jorja Fox (Leonard’s Wife)

Outside of her tragic role at the center of Memento, Jorja Fox is probably best recognized as Sara Sidle from CSI, of which she starred in 296 episodes total, including a few guest appearances while she took a leave from her position as a regular cast member from 2007 to 2012. Since the long-running CBS crime procedural solved its final case in 2015, the Canadian-American has also pursued music and continues to promote various causes benefitting humanitarian and animal rights. As for her regular job, Fox recently appeared in a gender-swapped remake of the 1983 miniseries Chiefs and will star in the upcoming Amazon Prime original romantic fantasy The Map of Tiny Perfect Things as the mother of Kathryn Newton’s character.

Mark Boone Junior (Burt)

Christopher Nolan cast Mark Boone Junior as a veracious motel clerk in Memento and as a dirty-as-they-come cop in Batman Begins - both of which easily provide a convenient summation of the majority of roles the 65-year-old has played in his 40-plus years in the business. These include “Greasy F.B.I. Man” in Se7en, Detective Whitworth in 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Robert 'Bobby Elvis' Munson on Sons of Anarchy, to name just a few. His most recognizable appearance as of late was on Season 1 of The Mandalorian and he will soon reprise his role from 2017’s American Satan in the upcoming series spin-off Paradise City.

Thomas Lennon (Doctor)

Another Memento star who also appears in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is Thomas Lennon, who plays a doctor in both - leading the Emmy-nominee to believe that they might as well be the same person. Easily his most iconic role to date, however, is Lt. Jim Dangle on Reno 911!, which he also co-created in 2003, and came back to for a seventh season in 2020. However, drama is not lost on the versatile comedic talent just yet, as he will soon appear opposite Tom Holland in Anthony and Joe Russo’s gritty crime thriller Cherry, which premieres exclusively on Apple TV+ in February 2021.

Stephen Tobolowsky (Sammy Jankis)

Another highly prolific “that guy” from Memento is Stephen Tobolowsky who, before playing a man who supposedly suffered from Leonard’s same memory condition, also appeared in crime thrillers like Basic Instinct, but was best known for comedies such as Groundhog Day, in which he played Ned Ryderson. The 69-year-old still switches between genres often, but, he is best recognized lately from TV roles, such as Jack Barkeir on Silicon Valley’s third season, Dr. Leslie Berkowitz on Netflix’s short-lived One Day at a Time, and Principal Ball on both The Goldbergs and its sequel spin-off Schooled. His next big projects are Stay@Home, a comedy set during the Covid-19 era, and the John Kennedy Toole biopic Butterfly in the Typewriter, which is now in post-production.

Harriet Sansom Harris (Mrs. Jankis)

Playing Stephen Tobolowsky’s ill-fated wife in Memento is Harriet Sansom Harris, who made her film debut in Addams Family Values in 1993 before going on to star in acclaimed modern classics like the Oscar-nominated Quiz Show in 1994, and Phantom Thread opposite the great Daniel Day-Lewis in 2017. Of course, like her onscreen husband Stephen Tobolowsky, the Juilliard-educated actress has best made a name for herself on television, especially on Frasier and Desperate Housewives in memorable recurring roles. Harris still thrives on the small screen to this day, having recently played Eleanor Roosevelt in two different series in 2020 alone and a melancholia patient on Ratched, Netflix’s hit prequel series to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Sarah Paulson in the title role.

Callum Keith Rennie (Dodd)

Memento might hold a record for the most “that guys” in a single film, considering the impressive career Callum Keith Rennie has led without becoming a household name before or after playing a drug dealer at odds with Leonard Shelby, including the 1996 film, Unforgettable, which sounds a lot like a more sci-fi take on Christopher Nolan’s 2000 flick. The 60-year-old Canadian has since starred in TV favorites like Battlestar Galactica, 24, The Man in the High Castle, and Jessica Jones, but as for work on the big screen, you may recognize him from 2016’s Warcraft movie, a detective in 2017's Jigsaw, or as Anastasia Steele’s father, Ray, in Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels.

Marianne Muellerleile (Tattooist)

If, like Leonard Shelby would, you also found yourself trying to figure out where you saw the woman tattooing him in Memento before, it is surely not by accident. Marianne Muellerleile has more than 200 acting credits to her name dating back to the late 1970s, including 1984’s The Terminator as another Sarah Connor Arnold Schwarzenegger kills before finding Linda Hamilton’s character or Max’s teacher in the opening scene from Jim Carrey’s 1997 hit Liar Liar. The 72-year-old most recently lent her voice to Disney’s animated The Rocketeer series and will next be seen in the seniors-centered rom-com Never Too Late.

Russ Fega (Waiter)

You may recognize Russ Fega, who has a brief role in Memento as a waiter at a diner Leonard stops at to see Natalie, from the other times he has popped up in a Christopher Nolan movie - namely The Prestige, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, and Interstellar. He has done plenty of acting elsewhere, but most of his work in Hollywood has been in set locations management, from 1989’s Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and even for Memento, as well.

Larry Holden (Jimmy Grantz)

The role of a drug dealer named Jimmy in Memento was also the first of multiple appearances in a Christopher Nolan feature for Larry Holden before he played a detective in Insomnia and in Batman Begins as a Gotham City district attorney. Today, we can only imagine how many more times the actor, writer, and director could have collaborated with Nolan if not for his untimely death due to cancer in 2011 at only 49 years old.

At least we can say that Larry Holden will never be forgotten thanks to his famous appearance in Memento, which clearly has its fair share of memorable actors. If there are any more talented people from classic movies and TV shows whose whereabouts you have been curious about lately, you can find plenty of other lists like this, as well as more news and information related to Christopher Nolan’s brilliant American debut, here on CinemaBlend.

There are upsides and downsides to pretty much any job. That’s even true if you’re an actor in an iconic movie franchise. Just ask Guy Pearce. He’d be happy to tell you all about the most awesome (and least awesome) part of starring in an Alien movie.

In Prometheus, Guy Pearce plays Peter Weyland -- a CEO with a huge god complex. The character is, for much of the film, considerably older than he is in real life. So Guy Pearce often had to sit through five hours in a make-up chair so he could look the part. And according to the actor in a recent GQ interview, that part wasn’t exactly the most fun:

Peter Weyland plays a pivotal role in Prometheus -- he’s the dude who funds the whole expedition that the movie centers around. But his actual screen-time is pretty limited, especially in comparison to some of Guy Pearce’s co-stars like Charlize Theron and Idris Elba.

That meant that Guy Pearce had a limited amount of time on the Prometheus set, too -- which meant that he was more aware of days when all the preparation to be on screen ultimately didn’t amount to much:

Despite all the inconvenience, it seems like Guy Pierece was still happy to be a part of the Alien franchise. After expressing enthusiasm for reprising his role in the Prometheus sequel, he eventually came back for Alien: Covenant in an uncredited, brief appearance as the younger (and prosthetic-free) Peter Weyland.

Robert Downey Jr. gave over a decade of his life to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and, while that journey was relatively smooth, it wasn’t without its share of pitfalls. Guy Pearce, who co-starred alongside Downey in Iron Man 3, can remember when the actor injured himself during production. Downey ultimately healed up but, based on Pearce’s description, it seemed like a pretty scary ordeal in the moment:

Guy Pearce recalled the situation during a recent interview with GQ. The specific scene he appears to be referring to takes place during Iron Man 3’s third act. The exact sequence is the climactic battle between Tony Stark -- who is hastily donning various suits of armor -- and Pearce’s Extremis-infused Aldrich Killian.

At one point, Stark is forced to jump from a platform and into an Iron Man suit in midair. The finished scene appears to have been executed as planned. However, it’s not hard to believe that there was still a bit of risk involved in having Robert Downey Jr. actually perform the sunt.

Marvel Studios has proven to be very protective of their talent when it comes to stunt work, which is completely understandable since they wouldn’t want to lose stars to injury. The studio also has a strong team of stunt actors who are more than willing to put themselves through the wringer for their counterparts.

Nevertheless, some Marvel actors actually welcome the opportunity to do their own stunts. Scarlet Witch actress Elizabeth Olsen has been open about how much she enjoys performing wire work when permitted. Similarly, Spider-Man star Tom Holland almost always seems to be up for scaling a building or doing a quick flip.

Outside of the MCU, there’s a select group of actors also prefer to perform their own stunts. The most well-known actor to do this is arguably the ageless Tom Cruise. Just recently, the 57-year-old actor performed some treacherous stunts for the opening scene of Mission Impossible 7, all in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.

It’s probably a safe bet that Robert Downey Jr.’s days of doing stunt work are over for the time being, seeing as Tony Stark is now dead. Still, anyone who wants to relive Stark’s battle with Aldrich Killian can stream Iron Man 3 on Disney+ today.

In this, the Golden Age of comic-book movie adaptations, Marvel and DC undoubtedly are kings. Name recognition for heroes like Wonder Woman, Batman, Spider-Man and the Avengers means that films centered around them have a distinct advantage in luring people to local theaters. But that doesn’t mean the two comic conglomerates have a monopoly on mesmerizing stories being told in the funny books. There are great characters coming out of companies such as Dark Horse, Image Comics, IDW Publishing and Valiant Comics, and one of them – Bloodshot – gets a crack at silver-screen stardom thanks to this intriguing but ultimately convoluted and overly-CGI’d origin story.

Launched in the 1990s by for Marvel Comics EIC Jim Shooter, Valiant Comics prided itself on having grounded characters who often embraced the role of antihero. Bloodshot was (and is) a one-time soldier enrolled in the Project Rising Spirit program, where his bloodstream is injected with countless nano-tech creatures that give him the power of regeneration and invincibility. The movie, like the book that it’s based on, dabbles in futuristic sci-fi gimmickry and bare-knuckle military firepower. And it kind of works, until first-time director Dave Wilson loses control of the narrative and prays that chincy-looking CGI will bail him out of trouble. It doesn’t, and that’s a shame.

The Bloodshot story is actually original and intriguing.

And for this, I’m going to give proper credit to the comic books. It’s one thing that former soldier Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) is granted the extreme powers of regeneration and immunity. That power’s hardly new in comics (hello, Wolverine and Deadpool). It’s what Bloodshot chooses to do with the character that’s cruel, but fascinating.

This much of the plot can be found in the Bloodshot trailer, and I’ll stop before things get spoilery. The scientists at R.S.T. that bring Garrison back to life have a goal in mind, as well as a devious plan. They want to eliminate a laundry list of high-powered adversaries, so they repeatedly send Garrison back inside of a brutal memory, where he must watch his ex-girlfriend, Gina (Talulah Riley), get killed. Only, the person pulling the trigger changes each time, meaning that when Ray wakes up, he’s immediately seeking vengeance on the NEXT person on a list he’s never even seen.

Cool concept. And it’s set up in such a way that Bloodshot references just enough of Groundhog’s Day while also dabbling in routine vendetta-thriller nonsense. This is why you hire Vin Diesel, but when you notice that the script is credited to Oscar nominee Eric Heisserer (Arrival, Bird Box), you understand why the surrounding science-fiction plays better than expected in this story. Of course, Jeff Wadlow (Fantasy Island, Kick-Ass 2) is credited as the other writer on Bloodshot, so that explains why it all falls to shit before the end credits roll.

Casting almost saves the movie. Almost.

Bloodshot basically accepts that Vin Diesel is Vin Diesel, and when you cast him as your lead character – because he happens to be biding time between Fast & Furious chapters – you are going to get some slight variation on the characters he “created” for Pitch Black or xXx. He’s angry. He’s tough as nails. He’s physically capable. And that’s pretty much it.

The best one can do is surround Diesel with personality, which Bloodshot basically does. The scene-stealer is Lamorne Morris (New Girl), who plays the sarcastic and overly confident Wigans, a super-tech who’s able to hack virtually anything and help Ray on his missions. But director Dave Wilson also creates a throwback vibe to 1980s sci-fi thrillers built around colorful and strange teams, with similarly enhanced soldiers first fighting with Bloodshot, and eventually fighting against them. Eiza Gonzalez, for example, was a deep-sea soldier injured in battle who now has a valve in the middle of her chest that allows her to breathe underwater like a fish. Sam Heughan (Outlander) boasts equally unusual physical enhancements that help keep Bloodshot interesting until it all careens off the tracks.

Cheap special effects eventually spend all of the film’s goodwill.

No matter how interesting Bloodshot starts off being, the film eventually caves to a barrage of ludicrous plot turns that muddy almost every character motivation, as well as a series of terrible-looking CGI fights. One, which involves two elevator cars on the outside of a tall building, essentially presents “Cartoon Vin Diesel” fighting “Cartoon Adversaries,” boasting on-screen graphics that video games from 15 years ago would scoff at. The CGI becomes so disappointingly mediocre in Bloodshot, I began to further appreciate the lunacy of Hobbs & Shaw, which tests the limits of credible physics but still looks borderline realistic in doing so.

Bloodshot is meant to be the start of a franchise, as is basically anything that Vin Diesel touches in Hollywood. And with the history of Valiant Comics at its disposal, it's one that could have fueled engaging stories for years to come. Unfortunately, after this debut, I’m afraid that the series won’t share the rise-from-the-dead powers of its titular character, and will slowly bleed out at the box office and the multiplex in due time.

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is a tale that stands the test of time. Whether it's the classic story of an old rich man learning the moral cost of his greed, or it's ability to be adapted in several different ways that makes it timeless. In either case, the story is still going strong, although its latest iteration at FX is so dark, it received an TV-MA rating.

Yep, families best put the children to bed before firing up FX's A Christmas Carol, as it's violent, disturbing, and features some nudity. It's certainly more intense than other past adaptations, though audiences so far tend to be responding positively to it. While there is a tonal shift in how it is presented, it's still one of the greatest Christmas stories ever told!

That said, there's no shortage of people who enjoy A Christmas Carol, so why would FX go out of its way to make it more extreme and risk alienating people? There's no denying this star-studded affair has the right home, and is in line with other popular programs on FX. This version of A Christmas Carol could've aired right after shows like Legion and Mayans M.C., and I don't think anyone would've batted an eye.

Plus, there's no denying an adaptation that opens with someone swearing and pissing on the grave of Jacob Marley (who, let's be honest, deserved that) is going to get some reactions this holiday season. A Christmas Carol has an adaptation that was done with Muppets, it was going to take something startling to move the needle and get people interested in yet another one.

The internet is watching A Christmas Carol both on FX and abroad on BBC One, and it's certainly drawing some reactions. It's hard to say whether or not the buzz is mostly good or mostly bad so far, but many are taking note of the more mature themes, and the fact that Scrooge is a bit of a foul mouth.

There's definitely no shortage of haters, and purists who hopped online just to let others know they prefer Michael Caine's Scrooge to that of Guy Pearce. There's also a fair few English teachers tuning in, and joking about how they'll probably have to correct student's papers for years to come for all the things featured in the adaptation that aren't in the source material. It appears that, while this story is an adaptation, it does take a few creative liberties. One of which being a deviation from Dickens' dialogue, which have ruffled quite a few feathers.

Emilia Clarke's Last Christmas Has Quietly Made Solid Money At The Box Office

Have you enjoyed FX's take on A Christmas Carol? Sound off in our poll below, and be sure to add any additional thoughts in the comments below. Be sure to stick with CinemaBlend throughout the holiday season and beyond for all the latest news in television and movies.

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Guy Pearce and Netflix are almost certainly in agreement about wanting subscribers to binge-watch the service's new original series The Innocents, although the star shared some interesting info he recently found out that might suggest something else. Pearce revealed that despite the popularity of "binge-watching" as a buzzword and as an early advantage Netflix formed over its traditional television competition, the company apparently doesn't like the term itself. :

Guy Pearce didn't know the specific reasoning behind why he wasn't allowed to talk about "binge-watching," while promoting The Innocents in the U.S., but did confirm to The Empire Film Podcast that he wasn't given any other form of wording to use to describe the action. Pearce's explanation seemed to imply the restriction was specific to the U.S. leg of the press tour, and it's perhaps also indicative of the rule's possible exclusivity that he mentioned the issue to a U.K. media outlet. Does this mean it's fine for Netflix stars to talk about "binge-watching" in other countries other than the United States?

It's a question that, unfortunately, neither Pearce nor Netflix has any available answers for. We can speculate, however, that the word "binge" itself can be interpreted to have a negative connotation, since it's usually used when describing excessive and unhealthy eating or drinking. So perhaps there are those who feel "binge-watching" means one is watching way more television in a single sitting than one should. If that was the case, it'd be understandable that Netflix would want to disassociate the practice from its brand, especially given the practice could generically account for any long time spent watching television.

But that's not quite the pop culture definition that people think of with Netflix's form of binge-watching, however, which is basically watching many episodes of the same show in a short time frame. Even so, Netflix may be searching for a more fitting way to describe that action, despite the masses having already adopted the term. And people will almost certainly sniff out and destroy any attempts by Netflix to promote a new term to replace it. For that reason, "binge-watching" probably isn't going anywhere for a while, and Netflix may just need to embrace it.

The Innocents is currently streaming on Netflix, and subscribers can currently binge-watch, or marathon-partake, it if they so choose. For a look at what else is coming to the platform in the near future, be sure to visit our Netflix premiere guide. Those interested in what else is coming to television in the near future can check out our summer and fall premiere guides.

Robert Downey Jr. has had quite a stunning Hollywood story, with his upswing into notoriety and acclaim starting with 2007's Iron Man. RDJ's Tony Stark has been at heart of the MCU for the last decade, starting with his own trilogy of movies. By the time Iron Man 3 arrived 2013, Downey had become used to walking in Iron Man's high tech shoes, although newcomer Guy Pearce figured out a way to break him on set. Because while filming Aldrich Killian's fight sequences with Tony and Pepper, the King's Speech actor wore chose footwear that threw the film's lead off: Birkenstocks. As Guy Peace tells it,

While Tony Stark had come into conflict with Gods and an alien invasion, there was one thing that threw off the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist: the wrong pair of shoes.

Guy Pearce's comments to People's Couch Surfing is sure to be an enjoyable story for all the Marvel fans out there, especially given the somewhat grim state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The stakes are currently sky high, so its nice to go back to a simpler time. Iron Man 3 was the first film in Phase Two, serving as a follow up to Joss Whedon's massively successful The Avengers. Tony Stark once again took the spotlight, and battled both the infamous Mandarin and Pearce's suave and deadly Aldrich Killian.

While Marvel's fight sequences are always massive and exciting, Iron Man 3 stood out because the trio of protagonists weren't suited up during the last conflict. Guy Pearce's Killian and Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts were both given enhanced abilities through the Extremis virus. And while Tony Stark tried time and time again, he was prevented from becoming Iron Man and using his normal methods of battle. As a reminder, you can check out the scene below-- free of Birkenstocks.

While Robert Downey Jr. might have broken character in response to Guy Pearce's Birkenstocks, it definitely didn't show in Iron Man 3's final cut. Aldrich Killian comes very close to ending Iron Man's superhero career before it could get started, but luckily Pepper Potts steps in and kicks some serious ass with a mixture of Extremis and Stark tech. Bye bye Killian.

Tony Stark will return Avengers 4 on May 3rd, 2019. In the meantime, check out our 2018 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

Riding high on the likes of The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar, Christopher Nolan is one of the biggest filmmakers working today. That, of course, wasn’t always the case, and in 2000, the little known director burst onto the scene with Memento, a twisted indie mystery thriller with a clever hook. Despite only being 15-years-old, and a movie that still totally holds up, Memento is getting a remake, because why not.

AMBI Pictures recently acquired the back catalog of Exclusive Media Group, a library that also includes Donnie Darko, Sliding Doors, Cruel Intentions, and hundreds more titles. According to The Hollywood Reporter, following this windfall, they gave a green light to the Memento remake. In a statement, AMBI head Monika Bacardi said:

With a remake like this, of a fairly well-known, fairly recent film, the biggest question is, as usual, what is the new movie going to bring to the table? Though it was a decent hit, especially by independent standards, and garnered Academy Award nominations, it wasn’t massive, though it left a sizeable footprint on popular culture and has remained influential regardless.

The original film, directed by Christopher Nolan and co-written with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, stars Guy Pearce as a man with short-term memory loss. Unable to form new memories due to an injury, he uses an intricate system of notes, photographs, and even tattoos to keep facts straight as searches for the man who murdered his wife. Told in reverse order, the structure and approach were unique and innovative at the time, but it inspired so many copycats that, so many years down the line, it’s going to be interesting to see if it still feels fresh or if we’ve grown weary of it by now.

Aside from the fact that a Memento remake is apparently happening, there’s not much more to go on. It’s still early in the going, and there don’t appear to be many people involved just yet—there’s no word on a writer, producers, director, that sort of thing—but you can be we’ll be keeping an eye on this as it develops.

Guy Pearce's role in Iron Man 3 attracted a lot of controversy. As weapons designer Aldrich Killian, he provided a threat to Tony Stark that left the board room and entered the real world, before revealing his relationship to the Mandarin. It was a chaotic turn, one that emphasized not only Pearce's oily handsomeness and charisma, but also his intimidating intellectualism and bloodthirsty conviction. Pearce has starred in a number of films over the years, but it's not a surprise that in a recent interview, he hints at difficulties adjusting to the "Marvel way."

In an interview with Total Film (via JoBlo ), Guy Pearce claims he was very close to bailing on Iron Man 3 for a very specific reason. He confesses that his agent promoted the mainstream appeal of the Marvel movies, and Pearce says he loves what Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow did in the previous films. But there was one crucial obstacle:

Pearce goes on to rave about Iron Man 3 as a finished product, calling it a "great movie." But you can't blame him for seeking this Get Out Of Jail Free card if the script sucked. Even if an actor does see a finished script, it's a massive leap of faith that the director is going to be able to put the pieces together and provide a decent interpretation (unless, of course, the script is re-written). A great script does not mean a great movie – look at all the scripts that reach the top of Hollywood's "Black List", and see how many of them resulted in forgettable movies like The Beaver and Draft Day.

Marvel's policy, like many geek movies, is meant to limit exposure to the public. Which means actors rarely, if ever, get to see a script, and assume a film will be good based on a leap of faith regarding the talent attached. Filming a blockbuster is a huge decision to make – not only do you have to spend months on set, but you also have to stand by the film and be proud of it during a promotional circuit, whether it's good or not. Guy Pearce sounds like a lot of veteran actors; they don't want to be flown around on a company's dime to different reporters only to lie about the quality of the company's product. Fortunately, Iron Man 3 went on to be a billion dollar success that was well-liked by audiences and critics. Pearce ultimately had nothing to worry about, but it's good that he was able to at least check out a script beforehand.

Guy Pearce was hidden behind a lot of questionable age makeup in Ridley Scott's Alien prequel, Prometheus, yet still managed to bring some chops to his portrayal of Peter Weyland – the man who wanted to live forever. With Prometheus 2 looming in the not to distant future, and The Rover making the rounds at the moment, it seems as good a time as any to ask whether Peter Weyland will return for the further voyages of Elizabeth Shaw and David!

IGN was the brave outlet to approach the subject, and as always, Guy Pearce took it with charm and grace. Will Peter Weyland return? More than likely not, according to Pearce – who remembers, as well as we do, that David's head was used by an Engineer to knock Peter Weyland into an overdue grave. However, much like we do, Mr. Pearce also acknowledges that the technology in Prometheus 2 could help bring him back in some way, as he said:

Guy Pearce has faith in Ridley Scott coming up with some sort of awesome way for a Weyland relative (or replicant?) to make their way into Prometheus 2, and even expressed enthusiasm to get the chance to work with the legendary director on a sequel. But does the audience have faith that it'll jive with whatever story screenwriters Michael Green (Green Lantern) and Jack Paglen (Transcendence) will come up with? As if people didn't already joke about Damon Lindelof's presence in the writer's room on the first film, we now have a script being written by the men behind two of Warner Bros biggest under-performers of recent years. This gives me pause, because I thought Ridley Scott was trying to bring people to his sequel, not chase them away.

While it's still a little off in the distance, Prometheus 2 could definitely benefit from some more Guy Pearce action. Even when he's chewing scenery, the man just has an air about him that makes it all the more enjoyable to watch. What's more, with the rumor of multiple Michael Fassbenders in the next film, this could be an opportunity for the creation to lord himself over his creator/father. After all, if Peter Weyland does come back as a replicant/synthetic human, David would finally be on equal – if not superior – footing over his once human father. I know this is all about the Alien franchise and all, but I seriously want that Blade Runner crossover to happen, so Weyland and David can have their own two handed spinoff where creator and creation square off for the full film. If I were Guy Pearce, I'd be getting my agent on the phone and pitching this idea at once. After contacting Cinema Blend management for the film rights, of course.

Prometheus 2 has been heavily hinted/pseudo confirmed for a March 4, 2016 release date.

Australians are doing it for themselves, at least when it comes to Screen Australia, a production company who recently entered into a deal where they’ll invest a handful of millions into six different features. One of these films is the greenlit indie thriller Strangerland, which just signed stars Nicole Kidman, Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving for the leading roles. What, no Paul Hogan?

The film will follow parents Catherine and Matthew Parker, who we’ll assume will be played by Kidman and Pearce, who are driven to the point of madness whenever their two teenage children go missing somewhere in the distant Australian outback, and they’re soon “forced to confront the mystery of their children’s fate,” according to the description from THR. That’s a pretty hardcore phrasing, and we’ll stretch our character assumptions to include some kind of a maniac played by Weaving. Perhaps the male roles will be opposites, but I can easily picture Weaving as a malicious bearded madman.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to mention here that another Australian, Hugh Jackman, gave one of his best performances in the recently released dramatic thriller Prisoners, in which he played the parent of a missing child. I’m not so sure this film will reach that heightened level of tension however.

Strangerland will be directed by Kim Farrant, most notable for her 2007 documentary Naked on the Inside and a few episodes of the Australian crime drama Rush. The script was written by Fiona Seres, who has written for many Australian series and co-created the familial drama Tangled, and Michael Kirirons.

Kidman, last seen in Park Chan-wook’s excellent slow-burn thriller Stoker, is entering a potentially noteworthy period in her career, as she’ll be seen both as Grace Kelly in Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco and explorer Gertrude Bell in Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert. Those roles will be balanced by Jonathan Teplitzky’s historical drama The Railway Man, Paul King’s Paddington and of course Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, a film that needs no description.

You probably saw Pearce in Iron Man 3, one of this year’s biggest films, or perhaps in Drake Doremus’ festival-going drama Breathe In. He’ll soon be seen with Kristen Wiig in the Alice Munro short story adaptation Hateship Loveship, and in David Michôd’s suspenseful drama The Rover. After a pretty strong 2012 with Lockout and Lawless – his role in Prometheus is worth less of a mention – it’ll be good to see Pearce in a straight thriller again.

The always dependable Weaving was busy for a while filming The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: There and Back Again for Peter Jackson, and somehow still found the time to team up with Screen Australia for Ivan Sen’s crime drama Mystery Road,Tony Mahony’s crime flick The Mule and Craig Monahan’s prison drama Healing.

There’s no word yet on when Strangerland will begin production, but you can bet we’ll be bringing you more news about it, even if you’re stuck out in the middle of the Australian desert.

Let's be honest-- this weekend's 2 Guns doesn't look like anything special, an off-the-rack action thriller that teams up two special agents trying to figure out who set them up and…. sorry, I nodded off midway through that description. But what 2 Guns is really about isn't the plot, but its actors-- it's the first chance we've ever gotten to see Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington team up, and that's enough to make it worthwhile. You'd think the two charismatic stars would have crossed paths by now, but it might be very logical Hollywood math that's kept them apart. Either one of them is enough to draw in a huge audience who will see them in anything. Neither really needs the backup.

Even if Wahlberg and Washington don't do it for you, you know what we're talking about. Everyone has a certain actor who, for whatever reason, they will watch in anything, even when so much of what that actor does is crap. It's how Bruce Willis movies like A Good Day to Die Hard make $300 million worldwide. It's how Adam Sandler has created a mini-empire. There are actors we will all forgive over and over again, because for whatever reason they're compulsively watchable no matter what. And as we prepare for 2 Guns to prove that point about Wahlberg and Washington, we're pausing to celebrate some of our other favorites-- the actors we can't stop watching, even when the movies that surround them are terrible. We just can't let them go, and no matter what crap we sit through for them, we don't even want to.

Tom Cruise

Three years ago, I walked into a movie theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota with confidence. I knew, despite all the horrible trailers, the lame marketing and the objections of my extended family, that what we were about to watch would be passable. I knew, regardless of how uninspired and aimless the script and direction might be, Tom Cruise would find a way to make Knight And Day not suck. Through sheer force of talent and swagger, I knew he would will the project to mediocrity, and by Maverick, he sure as hell did. I and everyone else in my extended family left the theater not hating ourselves.

You see, Cruise might not make as many gems as Tom Hanks or deliver as many thoughtful performances as Philip Seymour Hoffman, but he is a goddamn virtuoso at making everything he’s in better. Jack Reacher would have been needlessly complicated and boring without him. Instead, it’s needlessly complicated and pretty damn fun. Rock Of Ages? My biggest complaint is that movie doesn’t have enough Stacee Jaxx. I still have no idea what the hell the point of Vanilla Sky was, but that doesn’t mean I don’t watch it whenever it’s on TV. I have no idea whether Cruise’s upcoming science fiction, video game-esque Groundhog Day inspired event film Edge of Tomorrow will be great when it’s released next year, but I can promise you it won’t suck. Paul Newman

You can’t magically create the Everyman archetype. An actor either has it, or they don’t. Paul Newman had it, whether playing a con artist (The Sting), a pool shark (The Hustler), a convict (Cool Hand Luke) or a past-his-prime hockey player (Slap Shot). And his relatability, his down-to-earth accessibility, ensured that I’d watch him in any movie he tried. You aren’t always rewarded. Newman started in television in the 1950s, and acted on screen until 2005. They weren’t all Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. But Newman always attacked each role with a glint of mischief in his eye and the calm cool that comes with confidence of craft.

As big of a movie star as he was – and few were bigger, ever – Newman always made a connection with the material, and with the audience watching said material. He elevated generic genre films (Fort Apache the Bronx; his Harper films), and salvaged soapy melodramas (often made with his beloved spouse, Joanne Woodward). We lost Newman in 2008 at the age of 83. But his legacy as a scene stealer and a silver-screen savior will live on for an eternity.

Nicolas Cage

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know Nic Cage, but I remember clearly when I became a die-hard fan: 1997 Con Air. I’ve watched that movie so much I seriously wonder what percentage of my life has gone toward that activity. (20%? 30%?) Since then, Cage’s name has brought me into literally dozens of other movies, some good, some bad, some downright terrible. But I regret nothing because Cage is always worth the price of admission.

Cage never phones in a performance. The guy radiates energy, and whether he’s playing a maybe vampire, a cop wearing the face of his terrorist nemesis, a Batman wanna-be, or a knight charged with executing an evil witch, he’s incredibly fun to watch! Better yet, his star power extends beyond his films to make him seem too weird to be real, yet we accept it. Anytime you read about him naming his son after Superman, or buying a pyramid, or wanting to shut down production on a film so he can switch parts, don’t you 1) believe it instantly, and 2) think “Fuck yeah, Nic Cage!” I do. Nic Cage is the movie star I’d be in my wildest imagination, and for that I’ll follow him anywhere. Reese Witherspoon

It's been hit or miss for Reese Witherspoon for the past decade or so. As one of many who was won over by her performances in American Psycho, Cruel Intentions and Legally Blonde, I remain hopeful to the point of blindly optimistic that Witherspoon's next great movie is just around the corner. The last five years haven't exactly been a bevy of stellar credits, with films ranging in quality from decent (Water for Elephants) to barely watchable (How Do You Know) but I'll continue to watch because Witherspoon brings enough charm, charisma and talent to the table to put the "watchable" in "barely watchable." Had someone else played Marlena in Water for Elephants, I'm not sure I would've remembered seeing the film at all. Witherspoon shined in the role, and also captured the necessary spark between her character and Robert Pattinson's Jacob. In fact, their connection on screen may have been the best the film had to offer. Not all of Witherspoon's films are winners, but her performances never falter. She's funny when she needs to be funny, she's dramatic and believable when the role calls for it, and she has the kind of screen presence that always makes her movies worth watching.

Jason Statham

Unlike some of the other names on this list, it's totally unlikely that Jason Statham is ever going to win an Oscar. Not only has he never really shown too much range as an actor, he doesn’t typically take on parts that the Academy pays much attention to. But boy, is he a hell of a lot of fun to watch on the big screen.

Since arriving on the scene via Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch - following careers as a model, black market salesman and a diver for the British National Diving Team – Statham has carved out a niche for himself as one of the biggest action stars in the world, and it’s a title that suits him perfectly. The projects he takes on aren’t typically filled with complex and interesting themes, but it’s hard to find a reason to complain watching him take out a room full of dudes with nothing but his fists. He may not have the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, but thanks to his abundance of charisma, his cool Cockney accent and his all-around badass-ness, I’d be game for Transporter 20 if it were to ever get to that point.

Guy Pearce

For a long time Guy Pearce was an actor you didn't have to feel guilty for enjoying, popping with charisma in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or leading with grim noir appeal in Memento. Then came the dark days of the 2000s, and Pearce went from "promising actor on the rise" to "making the most of the bad stuff that comes his way.

And though roles in films like Iron Man 3 and Prometheus mean Pearce is back on an upswing, he still shines the most when he's rising above the crap that surrounds him. The ultimate example, and maybe, seriously, Pearce's best role to date, is last year's Lockout, the movie so insane and loud that its true name is obviously Space Jail. Pearce is channeling pure Kurt Russell as the ex-con charge with rescuing the President's daughter from a space prison in the middle of a mutiny, and he's amazing, as if he's injected the essence of every B-movie into his veins. He's stolen scenes in much better movies, from The King's Speech to Lawless, but his power is in elevating much worse stuff-- something I hope he doesn't lose now that he's regularly got competition for being the best thing in his movies.

The Twilight series made Robert Pattinson a star, but also put the 26-year-old actor into a deep dreamboat hole that can threaten the longevity of an actor's career. So, taking a page from the smart pretty boys who came before him (Brad Pitt, Jude Law and Leonardo DiCaprio come to mind), he followed up his heartthrob role with something deeply indie, and niche-shatteringly deranged. David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis forced critics worn out by Twilight to reconsider Pattinson as he played a smarmy billionaire so numb he turns to self-destruction for salvation. And now, he's gearing up for a different version of grittiness in David Michôd's The Rover.

Aussie writer-director Michôd is best known for his scorching Oscar-nominated crime drama Animal Kingdom, and developed the story for his feature follow-up with that film's star, Joel Edgerton. However, it's Animal Kingdom co-star Guy Pearce who appears opposite Pattinson in this dystopian thriller, and in that first-look image, thanks to EW.

The Rover is named for the object Pattinson's character, Reynolds, is seeking: his stolen car. In a world where a financial crisis has devastated society, many have fled to the still viable mines within the Australian outback to scrounge for gold. “It’s like a new gold rush,” Michôd tells EW, “Where people from all corners of the world have come out to the desert to scrape out an existence. Petty criminals and miscreants and hustlers.”

Among these cruel and conniving characters is Pearce's Eric, who Michôd describes as "a really dark, dangerous, murderous person." By contrast, he calls Reynolds "a quite troubled and damaged, but beautiful and naïve, soul,” who must scour the Outback for his lost car.

Of course, since many have a limited awareness of Australian cinema, Michôd realizes his film—what with its desert setting and cars—might draw comparisons to the 1979 sci-fi action movie Mad Max. (Not the new one featuring Tom Hardy). But he shrugs off any deeper connection, explaining, "With all due respect to that film — and I stress that — I think The Rover is going to be way more chillingly authentic and menacing.”

The Rover is now in production. It's anticipated to hit theaters later this year. In the meantime, look for Pearce in Iron Man 3.

We all know already that Tony Stark is going to get the snot beaten out of him before saving the day in Iron Man 3. It's been right out there in the open from the moment they brought the first footage to Comic Con last summer, showing his Malibu house crumbling into the ocean. While in Iron Man 2 Tony was mostly beating himself up, this time he's facing external forces-- and he's showing signs of it in three new images that have dropped online.

There are actually a lot of intriguing details in these images from the latest issue of Empire Magazine (via Stitch Kingdom), and let's be honest, it starts with the amazing combination of patterns on geneticist Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce. Check out that menswear!

OK, fine, so fans of the comics might be more intrigued by what Tony Stark is wearing in another image. It might just look like your average white T-shirt, but that shirt's logo AIM stands for Killian's Advanced Idea Mechanics-- the company that creates the nanobots that empower Ben Kingsley's Mandarin villain. Is Killian like so many other Iron Man villains, a perceived ally until he turns bad? Or is Iron Man playing some kind of role in spreading those nanobots himself?

Finally we've got a look at Tony back at work in what looks like an improvised version of his lab-- or maybe snooping around someone else's office entirely. He still looks pretty rough, but at least that nasty cut on his face has started to heal.

Iron Man 3 comes to theaters on May 3 this year. You can click here for everything else-- including a whole ton of images-- we know about it so far.

Guy Pearce should have had a breakthrough year in 2012. OK, yes, he's been a star since the 90s thanks to LA Confidential and even Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but since his promising star career slid into nonsense like The Count of Monte Cristo and The Time Machine, he struggled to snag roles that got him much-deserved attention-- until last year, when he killed it with a supporting turn in Lawless, a very small supporting turn in Prometheus and an insanely charismatic role in Lockout.

Yes, two of those movies were seen by almost no one, and Pearce's role in the final cut of Prometheus wasn't nearly as good as his TED Talk viral video, but he's on an upswing for sure, and ought to only be continuing it with his turn in this summer's Iron Man 3. We haven't been certain how large his role in the superhero movie will be, but the fact that he's at the center of a new character poster is a strong sign. Check it out below:

Though he looks almost identical to Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer character from Iron Man 2 (seriously, compare and contrast those glasses and gray suits), Pearce isn't a rival to Tony Stark but a geneticist named Aldrich KIllian, who is probably responsible for creating the Extermis virus, which in the comics is used by the Mandarin to no good end. Pearce has described his role in the movie as "cameo stuff", similar to his role in Prometheus, but given all the secrecy and misdirection that goes on around Marvel movies, who knows if he's just pulling our legs or not.

Pearce's poster is one of just many that have debuted in recent weeks, with Don Cheadle's Rhodey and Iron Man himself both getting their moments. For all the other images and posters we have for the movie so far, you can click here

Both Kristen Wiig and Hailee Steinfeld broke out with big studio films, starring in Bridesmaids and True Grit respectively, but now they are heading down the indie route together. It's being reported that the two actresses, Guy Pearce and Nick Nolte have all taken parts in Hateship, Friendship, the new movie from director Liza Johnson.

THR says the project is based on a novel filled with short stories called "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" that was written by Alice Munro. Steinfeld will star as "a rather wild teenager girl" who uses email to try and hook up her nanny (Wiig) with her father (presumably Pearce). Nolte will play Steinfeld's characters grandfather, who blames Pearce's character, a former drug addict, for the death of his daughter (the girl's mother). Johnson last wrote and directed the 2011 drama Return, which starred Linda Cardellini, Michael Shannon, and John Slattery.

While Steinfeld has yet to make an appearance in a film since her breakout role, she has a big year coming up with Can a Song Save Your Life, Romeo and Juliet, and Ender's Game all due out in 2013. Wiig recently wrapped production on Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and her latest, Imogene, just premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival. After a big 2012 that has included titles like Lawless, Prometheus, and Lockout, Pearce will be back in 2013 with Iron Man 3 and David Michôd's The Rover. Lastly, Nolte will appear at the start of 2013 with the release of Gangster Squad, followed by Robert Redford's The Company You Keep and Parker with Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez.

Warning: Some of what you read below could be considered spoilers for Iron Man 3. Read at your own risk.

Those of you excited by the idea of Guy Pearce playing a major role in Iron Man 3 might want to dull their expectations. While the actor has been confirmed to play the scientist Aldrich Killian in the upcoming superhero sequel, which is being directed by Shane Black, according to Pearce his role is really little more than a cameo.

With Lawless coming out this week, Vulture recently had a chance to speak with Pearce about his part in the blockbuster, and responding to a question about how being a part of blockbusters now was different than when he starred in The Time Machine back in 2002 he said that the key thing is the size of role. "The main difference was that, when I did The Time Machine, I was pretty much in all of it, so it was a really grueling experience," Pearce said. "Prometheus and Iron Man are really kind of cameo stuff, so the experience of shooting them ... I mean, on some level, it's tricky because you feel like a bit of an outsider. You don’t really live the experience that you do when you're there all day every day with everybody. But at the same time, it can be more fun sometimes because you're just working in concentrated spurts."

It's been said that Iron Man 3 will be based on the comic book arc Extremis, and Killian's part is indeed quite small: in fact, the character is actually never seen alive (he's only introduced after committing suicide). In the story the character is a geneticist who helps develop a version of the super solider serum called Extremis, and then steals and sells the formula to a terrorist organization. Unable to deal with the guilt, he decides to take his own life while sitting at his computer, leaving a note with a full confession.

In the same interview, Pearce also talks about why he was open to being a part of the superhero film. While the actor famously turned down the part of Daredevil in 2003 - that role eventually went to Ben Affleck - he says that he has relaxed a bit in the last 10 years and made himself more available to those kinds of parts. "'ve probably loosened up, and I feel a little more experimental in what I'll take on these days, but I still don't know that I would want to play the superhero myself, since I'm playing a different kind of character in this film. And I think that, based on the first two movies, there's a great chemistry between Robert [Downey Jr.] and Gwyneth [Paltrow], and I just think the films have a fun, joyful sort of quality about them. I've just enjoyed them. So I just felt like I wanted to be a part of this."

Iron Man 3 will be in theaters on May 3, 2013 and and you can read more about it in our Blend Film Database.

With Iron Man 3 now in production in Wilmington, North Carolina, Marvel Studios is probably pretty eager to lock the lid down and keep any more story details from coming out until much closer to the movie's May 3 release date next year. And yet, there's been a trickle of information coming out anyway, a lot of it thanks to the folks at Latino Review, who just dropped a few tidbits of information in a new post. As always, these ought to be treated as rumors for now, and that goes double for what they're saying about the movie's villain, since it goes directly against what Marvel has been saying for months.

When Ben Kingsley was first brought on to play the villain, it was with the specific denial that he was playing The Mandarin, one of the most famous villains in the Iron Man universe. But the Mandarin rumor stuck around, and Latino Review says it's for good reason-- Kingsley is indeed playing The Mandarin, but Marvel is going to continue denying it. And you won't be seeing as much of him onscreen as you might think-- Guy Pearce's scientist character Aldrich Killian will be the face of the organization that creates the Extremis virus, and Kingsley's Mandarin will be the veiled threat behind the scenes.

So, again, there's pretty much on confirming this until the movie gets closer to release-- I'm betting that when the first Iron Man 3 trailer comes out, we'll get a pretty clear sense of how Pearce's and Kingsley's villains fit into the world. But if you've been sticking to your guns believing that Kingsley really is playing the Mandarin, you've got Latino Review-- and their well-connected sources-- on your side. If I had to put my money on it, I'd say you're all right-- how else to explain all the time they'll spend filming in China this summer?

The Rover, on the surface, sounds like an art-house take on Dude, Where’s My Car?. A character named Reynolds pursues the strangers who’ve taken his vehicle. His quest leads him across the Australian Outback. And the main reason we’re interested is because David Michod will direct. Oh, and I guess because Twilight star Robert Pattinson has snagged the lead role.

Deadline says Pattinson will join Guy Pearce in Michod’s film. The director got our attention with the riveting crime-family thriller Animal Kingdom, which co-starred Pearce and earned the terrifying Jacki Weaver an Oscar nod for her portrayal of a protective gangster mom. Michod’s supposedly moving on to a short film that will be part of the ensemble piece Sydney Unplugged, but can tackle The Rover after that.

Pattinson, meanwhile, has a slew of projects on the horizon, and for the first time in a while, they’re not all Twilight-themed. Just this morning, we teased a new clip from the actor’s Cosmopolis, which he’s making with esteemed director David Cronenberg. The passionate period drama Bel Ami drops in the fall. And, yes, Twilight wraps in November with the release Breaking Dawn: Part 2.

But we’re still interested in what direction the Twilight players will head as they test the choppy waters outside of the safe harbor of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga. Kristen Stewart is amping up the action for films like Snow White and the Huntsman, while Pattinson commendably attempts to challenge himself in period films and art-house efforts. Will they succeed? We’ll see in time, but pairing himself with directors like Cronenberg and Michod is an excellent step in the right direction for Pattinson.

Between his standout starring role in the B-movie Lockout and his upcoming part in the ensemble of Ridley Scott's Prometheus, Guy Pearce is having a great year in the spotlight. Now he seems to be making sure that winning streak continues into 2013. Variety reports that Pearce is close to signing on to Iron Man 3, the superhero sequel in which he'd play the geneticist Aldrich Killian, who in the comics at least was responsible for inventing the Extremis serum, which both terrorists and Iron Man used to make themselves more powerful.

We already knew that Iron Man 3 would draw from the "Extremis" arc from the comics, and that Ben Kingsley's villain character will be responsible for spreading a virus through the use of nanobots. The Variety report doesn't exactly name Pearce as a villain, but presumably he'll be on Tony Stark's bad side once his invention starts being used for evil, though if Iron Man also gets to benefit from Extremis he might be an important ally. I imagine Marvel will shy away from calling Killian a "villain" either way just to avoid comparisons to the bad-guy-stuffed Iron Man 2, which had so many foes for Tony Stark to face that I tend to forget Sam Rockwell was even in the damn thing.

Production on Iron Man 3 begins very soon in and around Wilmington, North Carolina, all rushing so that it can make its May 3, 2013 release date. With Shane Black on board as writer-director but Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle and Scarlett Johansson all returning, the third film seems to have a good mix of old and new that might help us move on from the disappointing second film. And at this point, Guy Pearce is on such a hot streak that his addition to the cast is an automatic plus.

I find it hard to recognize Guy Pearce in movies sometimes, not because I'm not familiar with the guy's work, but because he's a very specific kind of chameleon, an actor who doesn't need prosthetics or a fake accent to disappear into a role. He broke out big time in the late 90s with the one-two punch of L.A. Confidential and Memento, and that success in prestigious dramas funneled him into a brief career as a blockbuster star in movies like The Time Machine and Count of Monte Cristo.

Don't remember those movies? Pearce would probably rather you keep it that way-- he refers to the time when he made them as "a period of hating everything," and since then he's built up a much more interesting career for himself as a supporting actor in a lot of interesting movies, from the Australian import Animal Kingdom to back-to-back Best Picture winners The Hurt Locker and The King's Speech to the HBO drama Mildred Pierce. This weekend he's taking another shot at movie stardom but in a very different kind of leading role, playing the gruff, wisecracking government agent Snow in Lockout. Pearce might be unrecognizable again in this, with huge muscles and a sharp haircut, but his energetic and devil-may-care performance actually brings back his breakout role in Priscilla Queen of the Desert-- a buff action hero and a drag queen, both connected as Pearce performances that seem to be pure id.

I talked to Pearce earlier this week about why he avoided watching other performances-- including Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken in Escape from New York-- to prepare to play Snow, and how the little break he had to take in 2001 helped him figure out how to be the kind of actor with the kind of career he truly wants. Lockout is in theaters today.

I know you didn't look at specific characters or movies to prepare for this, but the DNA of Kurt Russell seems pretty ingrained in this character. Did you watch his movies when you were younger and just have that influence even if you didn't know it?

I think I do. It's been so long since I've seen Snake [Plissken] and his world that I honestly can't remember, which is a bit of an embarrassment, I feel like I should have watched them again. Funnily enough, we didn't even talk about that film when we did Lockout. Stephen said I want to get back to those early 80s action movies, where the leading guy is humorous and he's got the snappy one-liner. He didn't specify any specifically, but I didn't need him to in order to understand what he was going for. I didn't want to look at anything when we shot the film, because I didn't want to go "Oh, right, I'm just playing…" I think if I had looked, I would have wanted to look before saying yes, and it would have led me to say, "No, I can only see this as stepping into somebody else's shoes."

Do you worry that you would overthink it if you went into it like that?

Yeah, it just infiltrates your originality. If you spend all your energy trying to get away from what someone else is doing, you're already on the back foot, not actually honestly just being the character. Potentially every time you do something that feels real to you, if there's any reflection in a character you've seen in the past, you think "Oh, I can't do that." I'm really wary of tagging on old films or characters, unless it's something from longer ago I suppose. Even when we did Mildred Pierce I was reticent and reluctant to look at the original, but I was curious, because Todd kept saying to me, "What we're doing is so completely different from the original film." And once I started watching, I kind of went "Oh, well this guy is nothing like they want me to play it, nothing at all.

So you kind of freed yourself up.

Yeah, whereas Kate Winslet watched 10 minutes of it and said "OK, can't do anymore, can't do anymore." I get that it's easy sometimes and tricky sometimes.

But on something like L.A. Confidential-- I know it was forever ago, but do you have to dig back into the past then to get a sense of what the 40s was like, and that style of acting?

Absolutely, and with that for example, Curtis was very keen to show-- he has connections with UCLA, so we were off to UCLA every week watching two or three film noirs a week. I think because of the difference in time between making a movie in the 90s and when those films were made in the 30s, I was fine with it.

Yeah, because you can't be Humphrey Bogart, you just have to understand how he worked.

Yeah, and if someone says to me, "Oh you're just copying Bruce Willis," that's so cringeworthy to me.

What I saw reflected in Lockout was your character from Priscilla Queen of the Desert, that kind of bold, unfettered id character.

Sure, and I guess that smart aleck, that sarcastic-- and probably in a way they come from the same place, because they use that to mask everything they're both burying. The sadness and anger and difficulties that one person can feel in their life. They kind of come from a similar place even though they're obviously very different people.

Are those similarly kind of fun for you to play, where you get to cut loose in that way?

I don't know, because I find hard work is fun. Fun isn't necessarily being flippant. I really enjoy hard work, and being able to sort of dance the dance of something that's very precarious. And it was great fun playing this guy, no doubt about it. And I take him as seriously as I would other characters. It's also hard to say, because I probably have more fun these days than I used to because I'm more confident than I was 10 or 15 years ago.

Was there a tipping point for that, like a certain role that gave you that comfort?

No I think it just gradually crosses over over time. I had a period in 2001 [the year he filmed The Time Machine and The Count of Monte Cristo] where I needed to step back and do an assessment of myself and the whole thing. I kind of had a bit of a, not a breakdown, I just went through a period of hating everything, and I needed to step back and go, "Am I doing what I want to be doing? What is it I want to be doing? Do I actually understand what I'm doing? OK, just let me take some time out, and everyone fuck off for a while and let me sort this out." I had been acting since I was a kid, so I really needed to reassess it from an adult's point of view and find some validity in it. I actually was going through a period where I was going, "This is all just meaningless shit," and sort of struggling with the idea-- and also , when you're constantly faced with that idea of going "The more you get your name out there, the more choices you can make-- your name out there, your name out there!" You're like, "Hang on a second, what the fuck does that mean?"

Sometimes you have a big movie and then they say "OK, you're a star now," and try to put you into that star box.

Yeah, and I tend to run away from that.

Yeah, it seems like you said no. What was the path that you decided on after that reassessment?

Still no path. I was always very aware and I still am very aware of how important it is for me to be surprised by a script and be inspired and excited by something I'm totally surprised by. That's how I have to find things. I think I became more conscious about having breaks between things, and it was just a matter of that assessment through that 12-month period of understanding if there was anything important in there, anything valid about it, if I had any skills and if there was anything valuable about what. And of course going through a lot of therapy and having a lot of discussions about it. And going, "OK, I can actually understand what it is I'm doing. "

James M. Cain’s 1941 novel, set in the Depression and the events thereafter, is a hardboiled melodrama about a woman who comes into her own but struggles with the prospect. In 1945, Michael Curtiz turned Cain’s novel into a film noir mystery about a mother who devotes her life to a daughter who turns out to be a rotten egg. Why would Todd Haynes bother to return to the story, keep most of the author’s ruminations, and forget the added mystery? It seems he felt he could squeeze a little life out of Mildred Pierce’s characters and settings. In that way, Haynes largely succeeds.

Mildred Pierce employs an ensemble cast featuring the likes of Guy Pearce, with a thin mustache to match his rail-thin physique; Evan Rachel Wood, whom we get to see naked; Melissa Leo as a wise cracker; Mare Winningham as a wise worker; and an exhausted and exhausting Kate Winslet, who lands on the ballot as our own Mildred Pierce.

Let’s talk for a moment about Mildred. At the beginning of Part 1 of the five-part miniseries, Mildred is a housewife with a knack for baking. She lives in California in a modest, middle class home with her husband and her two young girls, Veda and Ray (Morgan Turner and Quinn McColgan). Mildred’s husband (Brian F. O’Byrne) seems a nice enough sort, for the most part honest and hardworking -- but oh, he’s cheating on his wife.

It’s 1933, and the job opportunities for an unskilled housewife are slim to none, but you have to give it to good ‘ol Mildred here, who swallows her pride, kicks out her husband, and gives it a go as a working woman in the "unsavory" profession of waitressing. Mildred struggles, but for the first two portions of Haynes’ miniseries Mildred’s struggle is one of overcoming obstacles and finding success with a restaurant business of her own, through willpower, guile, and a little networking between the sheets. To her credit, Winslet makes this unglamorous and difficult work captivating, making us believe Mildred can do anything -- even if we know by the rules of melodrama things are bound to go south.

The last three parts of Haynes’ miniseries chronicle the downfall of Mildred Pierce. For the most part, Mildred’s faltering is due to her own poor decision making. Mildred uses men and is used by them, and her daughter, Veda, is a snake, yet she is stubbornly unaware not only of her treatment of others but also their treatment of her.

That brings us to Veda Pierce, first played by Morgan Turner as a bratty, class-obsessed vixen of a girl who plays at being grown up as often as she speaks with a falsified accent. Later, Veda is an anathema, portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood, a young, sexual thing who thinks nothing of anyone but relies on others to usher her ever closer to a popular success. Despite multiple warnings about her daughter, Mildred does not see these faults in her Veda until the very end. The last three parts are painful to watch, with Mildred again compounding bad decisions into worse ones until she has lost the life she built.

This may be the curse of the mother who will give up all for an ungrateful child, but it also means, in its final act, Mildred Pierce is as obsessed with the incorrigible Veda as it is with Mildred’s downfall. This makes for an awfully slow storyline later, when some build-up of Veda’s character is still needed to create push-and- pull momentum between her and her mother. Don’t worry, though, if the length is too much, HBO, thankfully, has built in a written recap at the beginning of each segment to remind us of what came before.

As noted before, Haynes spends a lot of time with the details. Academy Award-winning designer Ann Roth was hired to work Winslet through sixty-six wardrobe changes during the series. The costumes and settings are magical windows into the Depression era, but it is almost more impressive to see parts of New York turned into southern California, a change that is well addressed in the disc’s "Making of" featurette. What this segment doesn’t focus on is the somber, silky soundtrack accompanying many scenes, with a gratifying clarinet that is able to distance us from the utter compelling fight for lifestyle Mildred Pierce relishes in.

Mildred Pierce is all about sad moments and triumphant moments, but very few happy ones. It provides us a window to peek into a certain worldview, but often that window does not show us anything much.

Length: 300 min.

Rated: Not rated

Distributor: HBO Home Video

Release Date: 1/03/12

Starring: Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce, Evan Rachel Wood

Directed by: Todd Haynes

Produced by: Todd Haynes, Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon, John Wells

Written by: Todd Haynes, Jon Raymond

Visit the Mildred Pierce Official Website

Guy Pearce has a pretty heavy upcoming slate, but one of the biggest titles on that list is Prometheus, the new science-fiction epic from director Ridley Scott that may or may not be a prequel to the Alien franchise he began in the last 1970s. But that's not the only time that Pearce has spent in space recently. Also on his slate of upcoming movies is Lockout, a Luc Besson-written and produced science-fiction project directed by James Mather and Stephen St. Leger. Sadly we still haven't seen the first trailer for Prometheus (though it is expected sometime this month), but today delivers our first look at the second film.

Check out the trailer for Lockout below.

While there's no denying that the second half of the trailer is more action-packed and exciting, I actually really love the first portion of this trailer. Pearce seems to have a real "Brad Pitt in Fight Club" quality going for him and I really like the way that the names of the actors in the film are presented. Add the fact that Peter Stormare is the guy asking all the questions (we don't see nearly enough of him anymore) and you have my interest.

Lockout stars Pearce as a man wrongly accused of spying on the United States, but in lieu of punishment he is offered the chance to help rescue the president's daughter (Maggie Grace), who is trapped in a space prison that the inmates have managed to take over. Basically, Guy Pearce is Snake Plissken and Manhattan Island has been moved to the stars. This may be the closest to an Escape from New York remake we'll ever get. The film will hit theaters on April 20, 2012.

There’s a reason Guy Pearce has seven movies in various stages of production--he’s kick ass. In Justice he gets to do something he doesn’t do too regularly, play the bad guy in a film. Led by Nicolas Cage, Justice follows Cage after his wife is traumatized by an attack as he searches for, you guessed it, justice. It presents itself in the form of Guy Pearce, a suit-clad man offering to take out the man responsible for hurting his wife, played by Mad Men’s January Jones, but at a price.

A new poster has emerged over in the UK for Justice sporting the tagline “Would you cross the line for vengeance?” It hints that Cage, while not paying money for Pearce’s services, will have to perform some tasks that he may not be comfortable with. Check out the poster below courtesy of HeyUGuys.

Last week we got our first look at Justice in trailer form showing off Cage’s desperation for vengeance for the attack on his wife, and just how bad a situation he gets himself caught up in with Pearce, whose suit and tie is no disguise for his sinister plans. Dante’s Peak director Roger Donaldson is at the helm for Justice returning to the chair after a three year rest after his last film, The Bank Job with Jason Statham.

Justice doesn’t have a release date for America yet, but has already been released in Italy. We should be hearing about some for of distribution soon.

The Guillermo del Toro-produced Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark was one of the last projects Miramax put into production before decided it wanted to focus on mining its back catalog rather than producing new content. As a result the movie got kind of lost in the limbo, absent a distributor who cared about it, despite the fact that it starred Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce and, based on a teaser trailer released last summer, looked genuinely terrifying.

Now, at last, the movie has found itself a home. FilmDistrict has acquired the U.S. rights to Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark and is planning an August 12 release-- a nice end-of-summer spot for a horror movie. The remake of the 1973 horror film stars child actress Bailee Madison as a girl who started hearing voices from the basement of the new home where she's moved with her father (Pearce) and his new girlfriend (Holmes). The film is directed by Troy NIxey, making his directorial debut under del Toro's tutelage.

We've been excited about this project since the Comic Con panel, and glad to see del Toro succeed in his latest effort to save modern horror from its self-created woes. Glad to see this story have a happy ending.

After coming back from the dead, John Hillcoat's The Wettest County in the World has already managed to amass quite an impressive cast. Originally set to star Shia LaBeouf, Ryan Gosling, Michael Shannon and Amy Adams, the new group includes LaBeouf (the only consistent cast member), Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain. Now the prohibition drama has added four more names that will certainly raise your eyebrows.

Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska and Jason Clarke have all signed on to join the Hillcoat film, according to THR. Adapted from the book by Matt Bondurant and based on a script by Nick Cave, the plot comes from the true story of the Bondurant boys, who were bootlegging siblings who operated in in Prohibition-era Virginia. In the film Pearce will be playing an "overly violent" deputy who proves to be the Bondurant's biggest oposition; Oldman will play a gangster who hires the Bondurants; Wasikowska will play a " local Mennonite girl" who will also be LaBeouf's love interest; and Clarke will play the third Bondurant boy. While Oldman, Wasikowska and Clarke will be working with the director for the first time, Pearce previously starred in Hillcoat's The Proposition.

Considering how close the project came to not happening, this is pretty damn impressive. Currently in pre-production, the film is set to start up later this month. Given Hillcoat's filmography and this cast, I think it's more than okay to be excited.

With Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Eat Pray Love and The Expendables all hitting theaters this weekend David Michod’s Animal Kingdom has some serious competition. All three of those wide releases target different demographics. Scott Pilgrim will pull in the younger crowds, Eat Pray Love primarily woman and The Expendables all the guys craving action. However, Animal Kingdom can’t be assigned a specific category; it’s different and if you’re looking for something other than the typical summer blockbuster, it delivers big time.

Animal Kingdom is Michod’s very first feature film, but having gone to film school, written Hesher and directed a number of short films, he’s certainly no novice in the industry and it shows. The piece is about the Cody family, a family very well known in the Melbourne crime underworld. Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) is the oldest of three brothers, Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) falls in the middle and Darren (Luke Ford) is the youngest. Baz (Joel Edgerton) is Pope’s partner and practically part of the family. Their mother Smurf (Jackie Weaver) is always busy watching over them and even agrees add another to the clan when her young nephew’s (James Frencheville) mother passes away. But when the Cody legacy begins to crumble, they’ve all got to reevaluate where they stand and try to survive while J just has to figure out where he belongs in this jungle.

Michod first began working on this story right after he finished film school and the time he’s put into it really paid off. But the script isn’t the only thing that required a significant amount of attention; there isn’t one element of Animal Kingdom that isn’t clearly well thought out, making the final product extremely effective. Check out what Michod had to say about every aspect of the filmmaking process from developing the script to casting the Codys, all the way down to the editing process.

Colin Firth, who has made a career out of playing the slightly nervous love interest, may be headed for an Oscar nomination with a new kind of role in A Single Man. But when that's over, he will be playing one of the most famous stammering, nervous men in history-- King George VI, the British royal who took over the throne when his brother Edward abdicated, and eventually gave birth to the current Queen Elizabeth II.

In The King's Speech, Firth will play the young George as he struggles to overcome his speech impediment, with Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the King's speech therapist. Today's Variety announces that a whole slew of people have joined the cast as well-- Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Guy Pearce, Derek Jacobi, Timothy Spall and Michael Gambon will all be part of the proceedings as well.

If you're counting-- and I know I am-- that's three Harry Potter regulars on that list, giving us a chance to see Bellatrix Lestrange (Carter), Peter Pettigrew (Spall) and Dumbledore himself (Gambon) in an entirely new context. And that's ignoring the fact that this is an impressive lineup of Brits (and two Aussies and an American!), meaning this movie will be on our radar no matter how good it turns out. A king overcoming his speech impediment isn't exactly the most traditional source for a movie, but most of us long ago decided that we'll see Firth in anything, so let's see where he takes us.

Tired of seeing Kiefer Sutherland save the world in the present day? How about we let him end the Cold War for a change? According to Production Weekly's Twitter feed Jack Bauer, Billy Crudup and Guy Pearce have signed on to star in Trust, a Cold War-era thriller written by Robert Edwards.

Edwards is a writer and director you've probably never heard of, given that his debut feature, Land of the Blind, went direct to DVD after premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006. But when Rafe reviewed the film, he called it "a film with an interesting statement on terrorism, fascist governments, and the patriots who get caught in between." Sounds like a guy with the right credentials to make a Cold War movie. We'll be waiting for official confirmation of this casting, but since Production Weekly's Twitter feed has been reliable in the past, it's probably safe to start anticipating this one.

UPDATE! The guys at Production Weekly have been kind enough to email us with a full plot synopsis for Trust: "Two FBI counter-intelligence agents in Los Angeles 1969 find their partnership—and their whole world—shaken when a fellow American walks in and confesses that he has been spying for the Soviets, and volunteers to turn double agent. The slippery nature of truth gets a workout as they cross paths not only with the KGB, but also Hollywood execs, undercover cops, suspicious wives, and shady private eyes. When deception is your business, is it really possible to leave your work at the office?"