The Hurt Locker

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Actor

Guy Pearce

Bio

GUY PEARCE (Sergeant Matt Thompson) recently portrayed Harry Houdini in Death Defying Acts, appeared in Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler and starred in Traitor with Don Cheadle. Pearce was born October 5, 1967, in Cambridgeshire, England. His father, a member of the Royal Air Force, moved the family to Australia when Pearce was three. Interested in acting from a young age, he wrote to various members of the Australian television industry requesting a screen test when he was 17. His efforts proved worthwhile as he was invited to audition for a new daytime drama called “Neighbours.â€� Pearce won a significant part on the show, where he remained from 1986 to 1990. After additional TV roles, Pearce made his big screen debut in the 1992 film Hunting. He acted in a few more small films and in “My Forgotten Man,â€� a 1993 television biopic of Errol Flynn, before coming to the attention of film audiences everywhere in the 1994 sleeper hit The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. As the flamboyant and often infuriating Adam/Felicia, he gave a performance that was both over the top and immensely satisfying. The role led to his casting in Curtis Hanson's 1997 adaptation of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential. The film was an all-around success and drew raves for Pearce and his co-stars, which included Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance) and fellow Australian Russell Crowe. After the success of L.A. Confidential, Pearce went on to make the indie A Slipping Down Life, which premiered at Sundance in 1999. He followed that with Ravenous, Antonia Bird's tale of chaos and cannibalism, which cast Pearce alongside David Arquette and Robert Carlyle. Though his role in the following year's military drama Rules of Engagement would offer a commendable performance by the rising star, it was another film the same year that cemented his status as one of the most challenging and unpredictable performers of his generation. Cast as a vengeance seeking, tattoo-covered widower whose inability to form new memories hinders his frantic search for his wife's killer, Pearce's unforgettable performance in Christopher Nolan’s backwardsstructured thriller Memento drove what would ultimately become one of the biggest sleepers in box office history. Pearce was now officially hot property on the Hollywood scene, and producers wasted no time in booking him for as many upcoming blockbusters as they could. A memorable performance as the villain in The Count of Monte Cristo found Pearce traveling back in time and his subsequent role in The Time Machine sent him so far into the future that mankind had reverted to prehistoric ways. A return trip to the land Down Under found Pearce next appearing as a hapless bank robber in the crime effort The Hard Word, and the actor would remain in Australia for the 2002 elliptical drama Till Human Voices Wake Us. In 2004, Pearce played a lion hunter in the family24 oriented epic Two Brothers. The following year, Pearce won acclaim for his portrayal of the pop artist Andy Warhol in the film Factory Girl.

Appearing as:

Sergeant Matt Thompson