With the release of Bloodshot, which hit theaters recently and will be available through streaming video on demand platforms on Tuesday, Guy Pearce takes on his first comic book movie role since Iron Man 3, in which he played the villainous Aldrich Killian, the film’s central antagonist. Speaking with GQ as par of their new feature where A-list actors look back on some of their most popular roles, Pearce reflected on Iron Man 3, from his approach to playing villainous characters generally, to some of the nuts and bolts of playing Aldrich personally. Among other things, he shared that sometimes he feels like he’s a bit of a jinx to his co-stars.
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Of course, he was joking. We assume.
“With any of the villains that you play, you get to the heart of where it started, why it’s appearing, what the initial intentions were,” Pearce explained. “Somebody’s got a chip on their shoulder and it just develops and develops and develops where somebody just needs to get revenge or needs to feel like they need to have a place in the world. That’s great stuff to play, because are they a villain, or are they just kind of out of kilter? And they then can just get carried away with themselves. Aldrich Killian’s a young man who’s quite a science nerd, but somebody who’s really rejected from society. And through the brilliance of his innovation and invention, he’s able to create something that enables him to morph into the most perfect version of himself and comes back supposedly a better man. So we go from one extreme to another, which was really quite fascinating.”
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He also talked about his Birkenstocks, which appeared in a fight scene kind of unintentionally when he figured that as long as his feet weren’t going to be on camera, he might as well be comfortable. He noted that star Robert Downey, Jr. mocked them a little — but maybe Pearce has the better idea, since Downey broke his ankle trying to do a stunt in that movie (not, as you can imagine, in Birkenstocks).
In Iron Man 3, plagued with worry and insomnia since saving New York from destruction, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), now, is more dependent on the suits that give him his Iron Man persona — so much so that every aspect of his life is affected, including his relationship with Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). After a malevolent enemy known as the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) reduces his personal world to rubble, Tony must rely solely on instinct and ingenuity to avenge his losses and protect the people he loves.
