Since making his name on Neighbours, Guy Pearce has transformed himself into a bona fide movie star. First with a head turning role as a drag queen in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and with subsequent acclaimed performances in LA Confidential, Memento and now The Proposition.

In this Australian western he plays Charlie, the middle of three brothers operating an outlaw gang pursued by Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) into the harsh environment of the outback. When he and younger brother Mike are captured Stanley offers Charlie a deal – to track down and betray older brother Arthur (Danny Huston) in return for Mike’s life.

The film also stars Emily Watson, John Hurt and David Wenham and is directed by John Hillcoat from an original screenplay from cult music star Nick Cave.

Did you have a clear idea about your character, Charlie, and what kind of man he might have been?

“There was a period prior to making the film where it suddenly dawned on me that I really had no idea who Charlie was, and I went through that process that actors are supposed to go through where they ask lots of questions. Nick Cave was on the receiving end of a lot of them, but in the end it felt on some level that it didn’t really matter who he was, what was important was the situation that he was in. And that kind of environment, being there and getting a sense of the period and the harshness of survival in that time, I think was informative as to how Charlie might be played.”

You learn a little of what it must have been like to walk in his shoes then, don’t you?

“Absolutely. Every film you do is like a little history lesson, it’s a learning experience on a number of levels. You inhabit somebody who is different to you, so you cultivate certain levels of emotional detail that you wouldn’t normally experience, which can be wonderfully beneficial as time goes on. You can come away from something feeling quite changed by it.”

Is there anything in particular that made an impact upon you?

“The thing that has affected me the most in doing the film is what we found out about the aboriginal culture and lifestyle. I’m reluctant, like most Australians, to look into white settlement and what really went on. But I want to face it, and I want to understand the repercussions that continue to this day, how aboriginal people are experiencing life in Australia because of the people who took it over.”

What about the physical discomforts of filming in the Outback, in the town of Winton?

“I don’t think it seemed as difficult for me as, I guess it might have been for Emily Watson or Ray Winstone perhaps. I know Ray went to Dubai on the way over to try to acclimatise and I think by the time he got to Winton he realised that Dubai was a waste of time. But it’s informative, there’s something you can’t ignore when you’re working in those kind of extreme temperatures. The thing I was concerned about initially was when was trying the costume on, which was made out of wool and leather. I thought that was going to make things impossible. I’d worked in extreme heat about four years ago and that really sapped my energy but there was something different about this, because it was dry rather than humid so I didn’t feel like I suffered the energy loss I had in the past.”

You obviously don’t choose your acting jobs with an eye on the easy life, do you?

“I’ve got a particular view of the world so maybe I pick work that feels in line with that. When I do work that is challenging I actually feel as though I have a better time. I have the hardest time when I pick something that seems frivolous and a bit dim to me, that other people might want to do because they get to be a hero or something like that. I end up hating myself for choosing it. So I’m aware that there are physical aspects to things like The Proposition or even Two Brothers.”

So you’re the leading man with a character actor’s taste, are you?

“Someone actually said about Johnny Depp that he’s a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body. I was talking to somebody about it, and they asked if I felt the same way. I said ‘I don’t want to big myself up and call myself a great character actor and at the same time I don’t want to call myself a leading man’. I feel a bit uncomfortable with it, I don’t know how to categorise myself, I’ve just got to do what I do I suppose. But people continually say to me ‘why aren’t you out there playing leading roles in big Hollywood movies?’. I’d be happy to if I found scripts that I liked. But if there’s a good script for a big Hollywood movie I’m not the person they’re going to come to.”

Was this a script you found you couldn’t refuse?

“The funny thing is, once I was in the right frame of mind I couldn’t refuse it. But I actually read it about a year before, when I’d done a bit too much work back-to-back, and was feeling a bit overloaded. It’s a bit like when you eat too much, someone can put the nicest thing in front of you and you just don’t want it. So I read it with a bunch of other things, and I remember thinking that it was great, Nick Cave, wow, it was just a pity I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to want to go and do anything. I was actually at the point where I wanted to have a year off and slow things down, it was all a bit much.”

It was Nick Cave himself who rang you up about it, what did he say?

“He rang me at home and reminded me about the script. I think I’d forgotten about everything I’d read during that period and immediately launched back into reading it again, feeling nervous that it nearly got away.”

The quality of the piece is that you can understand what motivates all the characters, even if you don’t necessarily agree with them, can’t you?

“Absolutely. All of us in this world are just doing what we think is right. You then have to look at the meaning for all of us of what we think is right, how we define it. We’re all able to justify certain things in certain ways. We’re all able to trick ourselves into thinking that we have a reason for something. If we’re trying to survive something, as Nick has said, morality becomes a luxury for certain people who are trying to survive.”