Conversations with Joel Edgerton (2015)

Career Q&A with Joel Edgerton.  Moderated by Jenelle Riley, Variety.

Joel Edgerton currently stars as John Connolly in BLACK MASS alongside Johnny Depp.  He was honored for his performance as Tom Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby,” Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel.  Edgerton won Australian Film Institute (AFI) and Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCCA) Awards and was nominated for an Australian Film Critics Association Award, all in the category of Best Supporting Actor.

Edgerton more recently directed, wrote, produced and starred in the psychological thriller “The Gift,” also starring Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall.  The independent film delivered tremendously, with a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score and an opening weekend of $12 million.  He also starred opposite Christian Bale in Ridley Scott’s biblical epic “Exodus: Gods and Kings.”

Edgerton’s upcoming credits include starring roles in Jeff Nichols’ sci-fi thriller “Midnight Special,” and Gavin O’Connor’s Western “Jane Got a Gun,” with Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor.  He is currently reunited with Nichols on the fact-based drama “Loving,” about the couple whose challenge to Virginia’s interracial marriage ban led to a landmark Supreme Court case.

In 2012, Edgerton gained international attention with his role in Kathryn Bigelow’s award winning true-life drama “Zero Dark Thirty.”  That same year, he starred opposite Jennifer Garner in Peter Hedges’ “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” and in “Wish You Were Here,” winning an FCCA Award for Best Actor.  

His other recent film credits include the drama “Felony,” which he also wrote and produced and which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival; Gavin O’Connor’s drama “Warrior,” with Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte; the horror thriller “The Thing,” the prequel to John Carpenter’s cult classic; and David Michôd’s “Animal Kingdom,” for which he won AFI and FCCA Awards for Best Supporting Actor.

Edgerton had earlier starred in such films as “The Square,” directed by his brother Nash Edgerton; the Australian feature “Acolytes”; “Whisper,” with Josh Holloway”; the crime thriller “Smokin’ Aces”; the drag comedy “Kinky Boots”; and George Lucas’s blockbusters “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones” and “Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,” playing the young Owen Lars, who would become Uncle Owen to Luke Skywalker.  He also lent his voice to Zack Snyder’s animated feature “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole” and the Oscar nominated animated short “The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello,” performing the title role.

Born in New South Wales, Australia, Edgerton attended the Nepean Drama School in western Sydney.  He went on to appear in various stage productions, most notably with the Sydney Theatre Company in “Blackrock,” “Third World Blues” and “Love for Love”; and the Bell Shakespeare, where he appeared in “Henry IV.”

In 2009, he returned to the stage to star as Stanley Kowalski, alongside Cate Blanchett’s Blanche DuBois, in the Sydney Theatre Company’s acclaimed production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”  The pair also performed the play to sold-out audiences at the Kennedy Center in November of that year, followed by a run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in December.

On Australian television, he is known for playing the role of Will in the long-running series “The Secret Life of Us,” for which he was nominated for an AFI Award.