Guy Pearce was "insecure" when he shot 'Memento'.
Guy Pearce
The 53-year-old actor starred in Christopher Nolan's 2000 neo-noir psychological thriller as a man with anterograde amnesia (the inability to form new memories) and Guy wonders if he would have given an even better performance if he did not receive the full script before shooting.
He told The Hollywood Reporter: "It might actually be advantageous. When I did that film, I spent two weeks with Chris Nolan doing a bit of rehearsal. Different actors would come in and we’d talk through scenes and just try and understand what each scene was about and get a sense of it. And then I had to forget all of that. I had to put all that down and just remember that, ultimately, Leonard really only exists in a 10-minute bubble and then forgets what happened before and doesn’t really know what’s coming next. So to have done the film in the way that you suggest might have actually been advantageous because it really felt to me, in a way, that I could just let all that stuff go and treat each scene like its own little comedy sketch. After I read the script the first time, because Chris’ writing is so beautiful, I really felt a connection to the inner emotionality of Leonard that I probably could’ve started shooting the next day."
However, he admitted that he is not sure if that would have worked for him 21 years ago as he was less secure about his acting abilities.
Guy explained: "Having said that, I’d be more capable of doing that now, as a 53-year-old, than I would’ve been back then when I was 30 or however old I was when I made the film. I was more insecure as an actor back then, and I probably would’ve been far more anxious about doing it daily — without knowing what the rest of the script was about — than I would in 2021."
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