If Joel Edgerton could choose his career path, it would be completely varied. Judging from his roles in Animal Kingdom, Warrior, and the new The Odd Life of Timothy Green, the actor is doing just that.
“I’m trying to avoid doing the same thing all the time,” he said in an interview with NBC. “That’s always been the way. I’ve done all sorts of varied things in the theater and in film, once I started. Maybe it’s by being an Australian actor, too, and starting work there. There’s not enough of a film industry for every actor to just pick one thing and just stick with that. You can’t be an action hero in Australia because there’s not enough budget to make an action movie, and so you tend to kind of sort of manipulate yourself in all different shapes and sizes just by way of survival. But I enjoy that.
“I enjoy trying to mix it up. It so happens that now that I’m here getting a sense of momentum in America that I get drawn to different projects with different rhythms and tones to them. If I could keep convincing people to let me mix it up over here then that’s great for me. I don’t want to get stuck.”
Edgerton also admires actors who work with one director for long periods of time. “The ideal thing, actually, would be to keep working with David Michod who made Animal Kingdom,” he said. “I want to keep working with Gavin O’Connor who made Warrior and I would love to do another movie with Peter [Hedges, who worked on Odd Life]—and I’d be happy to just keep evolving a relationship with these same people. I’m about to make a movie in Australia with a guy called Matt Saville—I’ve wanted to work with him for the longest time and I said to him the other night, I feel like—if we don’t kill each other during the making of this movie—it could start something good.
“I look at the relationship [Michael] Fassbender has with Steve McQueen and there’s something really great that comes with that. The same with directors keeping the same crew, when you can have shorthand and you can sort of work on and evolve ideas together. And then occasionally in the mix you want to work with new people, and first-time directors, who are really exciting.”
The Odd Life of Timothy Green is in theaters now.
