Joel Edgerton is rapt yet philosophical about his ‘overnight’ success.

In the past year, Joel Edgerton has gone from Animal Kingdom, via Warrior and The
Thing, to The Great Gatsby, becoming the next big thing in Hollywood on the way.

But far from being an overnight sensation as some in the industry might perceive
him to be, the actor, writer and director from Blacktown has worked diligently at his
craft for decades in Australia.

”By the time I got any kind of real momentum in the States, I’d done a tonne of work
here,” he says. ”Now I feel equipped and I feel ready and yet at the same time people
over there are saying this guy’s a relatively new person.”

Instead of focusing all his energy on Hollywood, the 37-year-old will continue
making films in Australia, too. In his latest, Wish You Were Here, Edgerton plays
Dave Flannery, a family man whose holiday with his wife (Felicity Price) goes
horribly wrong. Shifting back and forth in time, the film gradually reveals the details
of a fateful night in Cambodia alongside the consequences back home in Australia.
The story also reveals more about Edgerton than he is entirely comfortable with.

Ecstasy before agony … in Wish You Were Here, Joel Edgerton and Felicity Price
play a couple who return from a disastrous holiday in Cambodia.

Despite being single, Edgerton says his character ”is a lot of me. So the tricky thing
becomes: Do you know yourself well enough to then portray that on screen? And for
me, I find that really hard. I’d rather hide behind accents and funny walks.”

Far from an inflated ego, success has given Edgerton a fresh sense of responsibility.
”There’s the pressure of being a No. 1 on the call sheet, being a lead actor,” he
explains. ”There’s almost this feeling like being captain of the team. You want to put
a bit of energy into actually setting a good example. If you’re an idiot, if you’re
behaving badly, then forget rumours and gossip, just think about the examples you
set for young children who are working on movies.”

As well as displaying this on-set maturity, Edgerton has developed a good nose for
choosing worthy projects and characters that resonate, which is important now with
big money offers flooding in. ”It’s tricky,” he says. ”I’ve never been standing at the
top of the tree with tonnes of money thrown at me. I’ve never really had a profile. So
in a way I have this ‘nothing to lose’ attitude. I don’t want to blow it all now by
suddenly taking the money and running, having a gun in my hand in every project
and spitting out cheesy lines.”

In addition to on-camera success Edgerton has ”been writing a tonne of stuff for
years and now it’s all starting to come together. He has written One Night Stand for

Fox, another unnamed script that will bring him home again to perform later this
year, as well as planning to direct a third in the US early next year. ”It’s a disturbing
suburban Hitchcock-style thriller,” he says.

Before that, Edgerton heads to the Middle East for a couple of months to work
on Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the Navy Seal team that caught
Osama bin Laden, a topic he enjoys teasing journalists about: ”I could tell you loads
… but I’m not allowed to.”

In high demand, Edgerton is now linked seemingly to every major Hollywood project
announced, although big-name roles aren’t his ambition. ”I’m on the list that I
thought I’d never be on,” he says. ”I’m not sitting here thinking, ‘God, I might get this
part’ or ‘is it too late for me to play Hamlet?’ It’s really about: who do I get to work
with? There’s so many people on that list.”

The schoolyard dreamer can be seen lurking within Edgerton as he considers the
opportunities that now seem possible. ”I got sent something the other day that Clint
Eastwood’s directing. I’ve sent a few audition tapes for Clint’s movies in the past but
now it feels like maybe I could actually work with him.

”It’s all happening so quickly and so weirdly, and it’s all shifted so dramatically,”
Edgerton says. ”I don’t want to get too bogged down in the seriousness of it all, I
want to have the gratitude for it all, because it’s kind of awesome.”

CRITICAL BUZZ: Great slow-burn thriller that twists with every new revelation
about an ecstasy-fuelled night in Cambodia and its impact on life back in suburban
Australia.

SMH – April 13, 2012 – Giles Hardie