Eric Bana has been a rather unsung hero in the world of acting. The Australian native made his American breakthrough in the film Black Hawk Down, but found himself inadvertently stumbling into big-budget, box office disappointments like Hulk, Troy, and Lucky You. However, Bana has managed to make some headway in films like Munich and The Other Boleyn Girl. Now the 40 year-old’s latest role is in J.J. Abrams’s new film version of the classic science-fiction TV series Star Trek and Eric says there was one simple reason that sold him on doing the film. “A lot of these movies have gotten darker and darker and darker and more and more adult over the years,” Bana notes, “And it’s hard to turn around to a ten year-old kid and say, ‘You know what, you can’t watch Batman, you can’t watch The Hulk, and you can’t watch Star Trek. So I read this script and it was very obvious that it was like, wow, these gates can be reopened again to a portion of the audience that, unfortunately, a lot of them have seen a lot of these dark films when they were way too young.” “I mean, I say that all the time because a lot of people think it’s OK to let little kids see these types of movies because when we were kids, all of those products were completely kid-friendly,” he continues, “So I think we all collectively felt pretty good that this was one of those movies where we’re going back into that direction of being a little happier and I guess young-person-friendly, as well as being sophisticated enough and plenty there for adults clearly that kids don’t have to miss out necessarily.” What made the decision simple for Bana, he says, was also his desire to simply try to pick roles that appeal to him the most. “To be completely honest, there’s no sort of hard rule there,” Eric explains, “I enjoy whatever I’m having fun doing. Sometimes, believe it or not, making a really dark drama can be a lot more fun than making comedy. Sometimes, playing a tortured, conflicted character can be hilarious on set compared to playing a character that’s having all the fun and getting all the girls. I just think it depends a lot on the director and the people you’re working with and what the shoot is like.” “I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule,” he continues, “I think it’s always hard. It’s always a lot of pressure, no matter what film you’re on, whether there’s heaps of fans or no fans or a $2 million budget or a $250 million budget, I think the pressure is pretty much the same. But I think the enjoyment factor really depends more on the collective personality of the production rather than does the character sometimes.” Eric’s role in Star Trek is as the film’s villain, a Vulcan named Nero who travels from the future and crosses paths with the very young crew members of the Starship Enterprise. And as he notes, playing a Star Trek villain was challenging to say the least. “Well, for Nero, really enough, the first challenge for myself is when you put all that prosthetic makeup on,” he recalls, “I have a lot of prosthetic makeup on. I mean, my pace and Clifton starts at the tip of the nose and goes through over your eyebrows over the bridge of your nose all the way to the base of your skull. And what happens when you look in the mirror and your whole face is as if nothing happens.” “Your face just stays completely still,” Bana continues, “So there’s this process of recalibrating yourself as an actor, so the camera can pick up anything at all. I think that was a big challenge initially and a lot of fun because you realized you had to really work through the mask for anything to be picked up on at all. I would rely on the camera and the playback sometimes to make sure that what I had on in my head that I wanted the audience to read was actually being picked up.” However, despite the long hours in the makeup room and lack of sleep, Bana says that playing a Star Trek villain was a genuine thrill for him. “I didn’t feel some of the same pressures as the Starship Enterprise,” he feels, “This was the plum gig. It was about a four-week role for me, which is hardly unusual, a lot of pleasure. So I didn’t have the same level of fatigue that these guys did, which I know that feeling very well. That’s something that gets deep into your bones and sometimes, you wake up and you think, I can’t get out of bed.” “You want to act today?” Eric adds, “So I think you get so tired when you’re playing those sort of roles. But I didn’t have that on this film. And Clifton and I had about three hours each morning in the makeup chair to wake up. So we could actually afford to drive to work asleep and wake up during having your makeup put on, right?” Eric also shoots down any notion that playing a bad guy was at all stressful for him. “I did pass out partially during one of the takes, with Bruce Greenwood and I was carrying on and yelling and screaming and spitting and frothing,” he says, “And then, I suddenly saw stars and went down and about twenty seconds, thirty seconds later, wake up, look down on the floor, and saw all these cables, and then looked up and saw a film crew and saw that they were still filming. So I thought, better get up, and keep going with my lines, so that’s what I did. I got a couple of headaches from Nero, but it’s all in good fun.” We asked him to explain for us the rigorous and thorough martial arts training that was said to be involved in preparation for the film’s stunts, which had been likened by fellow cast member Chris Pine to a “Star Trek boot camp”. “The physicality was matched to the psychology of each character,” he explains, “It wasn’t specific. I just had to kind of throw them around, so I did a little bit with the stunt guys, just to loosen up and stuff, but no, I didn’t have to learn a specific discipline.” In an age where big name blockbusters are plentiful and very few people outside of the franchise’s longtime hardcore fans, the “Trekkies”, know or understand what the now-massive world of Star Trek is, Eric says his confidence in the film’s success was sealed when it premiered in his home country. “One thing I really hope,” he says, “And the one thing I’ve experienced from seeing the film with a massive audience is that I know there’s a lot of big movies, there’s something very unique about this film in the way that the audience is collectively involved in the spirit of the film that’s really, really special and unique and I say that because I think it’s one of those films that that people who go out in those first couple of weeks and watch this in a jam-packed cinema are going to have a really syncly unique cinema experience. Because there just seems to be this weird kind of level of positive energy towards the watching of this film and the experience that people are getting from it.” “It’s really, real exciting,” Bana adds, “The first time I saw it was at Sydney at the world premiere at the Opera House. I think there were 1,600 people and I can tell you, as an Australian, Australians don’t do standing ovations. To see 1,600 people jump out of their seats en masse at the end of that film and turn around and face J.J. was just seriously one of the most exciting moments of my film career. There’s no comparing it at all. I think the level of satisfaction you get out of seeing it play to an audience back home in a theatre and sort of the reaction it has gotten, it’s been nothing but fantastic and a really great experience.” And hopefully, that will run through to the opening week of the film.” It will not be long though before we see Eric Bana once again possibly defy expectations. He has a role this summer in the new Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow film Funny People, his first Hollywood comedy. He even put together his own pet project, a documentary called Love The Beast. “I’m very excited,” he says, “Look, it’s a tiny documentary that I made over the last three years and we’re at Tribeca with it and I absolutely loved making it. It was incredibly difficult, but it was something I wanted to go back to, storytelling. It was my background, in stand-up comedy and sketch comedy and done a lot of writing over the years and sort of closed that door, shut it, and locked it for a long, long time.” “We had felt great to go back to it and I’ve had a chance to work with some of the great filmmakers and cinematographers and I just love filmmaking and learning as much as I can about it,” he continues, “So getting the chance to apply that to a very tiny idea was like really, really exciting and I’m really thrilled with the end result.”