The Film Forum

Man in the 'Munich': Q&A With Eric Bana

By Patricia Chui

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When Steven Spielberg's 'Munich' was released last fall, the film sparked debate among critics, pundits and moviegoers alike. But no one was arguing about Eric Bana's nuanced performance as Avner, the Mossad agent whose systematic assassination of Palestinian terrorists is complicated by his growing doubts about the mission. Bana's made a career out of playing conflicted characters: the reluctantly heroic Hector in 'Troy,' the dangerously repressed Bruce Banner in 'The Hulk.' The former stand-up comic and bartender phoned us from his native Australia to talk about Spielberg, the real Avner and a nasty-sounding cocktail called the Fluffy Duck.

How did the role in 'Munich' first come to you? Did Steven Spielberg just give you a call?
Kind of. I had no idea what it was about, but I met with him and we spoke about a bunch of things. But it wasn't like, "Steven wants to speak to you about a job." It was just like, "Steven would like to meet with you," and that was the premise. I was by no means expecting to be going into a quasi-kind of audition. And we had a very, very casual chat over lunch -- he was on location shooting 'The Terminal' -- and we just had a good ol' chin wag. He told me about him possibly doing this project called 'Munich,' and told me what it was about. I'd known a fair bit about [the massacre] because I'd seen a couple documentaries on it, but I drove back from there not quite sure whether he was offering me the part, or whether that was it. I had no idea. I was kind of in shock ... The project was so secretive, very little information had gotten out -- in fact no information. No one really knew anything about it at all. And you know, he's always developing four or five things. It could've been any number of projects that he wanted to speak to me about. So I had no idea. It could've been a villain, it could have been anything. Obviously I was completely beside myself.

When you started making this film, did you have any idea it was going to be as controversial as it was?
Hell, no! I'll be completely honest … I knew it would be controversial, but I had no idea it would get hijacked at the level that it did. I knew it would be generally well-received and be respected and so forth, but not being an American and not living in America, I probably naively underestimated the political intentions of a large portion of the media. So a lot of that came as a shock.

You did almost two years of research. What did that research entail?
I knew absolutely bugger-all. You know, the beauty of things taking their time to get up and running is that you end up having time that you don't always get. So I had to make the most of it. And when the film was put back, I used that time to just read. I did a hell of a lot of reading. There were certain things that I wanted to understand about life in Israel at that time, and what it was like to be a Mossad agent, and all that sort of stuff. So it was a lot of reading, and a lot of phone calls with Steven, and we kept in touch the whole time during the development process.

You were able to meet the real Avner. Was he how you thought that he would be? Or was he different from that image you had in your head?
I didn't have much of an image in my head at all. How can I put this in the nicest possible way ... I knew that he would be fairly nondescript. I knew that he'd be someone that could sit in the hotel foyer and you would never look twice at him. And that was exactly him. And it's only because I've had some contact with military people through 'Black Hawk Down' that I can sort of tell that there's something going on in someone's eyes that I wouldn't have known five years ago. And so once I met him, there were things that I could pick out that would make him stand out. It's an incredible alertness in his eyes, and so forth. But he was absolutely fantastic, and he's been really great to me and very generous.

A lot of the characters that you portray tend to be dark, brooding, slow-burn types. What draws you to those roles, or are they just the sorts of roles that fall in your lap?
What is it with that? [laughs] That's a really great question because I kind of wonder myself. It's funny, I was just talking to my wife about this on the weekend because I've made an observation about myself, which is, I'm one of those people that can come across as far more tense than I actually am. So I'm probably naturally predisposed to drama as an actor, because even when I personally don't feel as though I'm very stressed, I can sometimes look as though I am. And my size works against me, because at 6-2 or 6-3 and a couple hundred pounds, it's not necessarily always a good look. I used to joke about it a lot -- how I could be at a bar, back in the day, when I was single, and have girls come up and say, "Awww, you look so sad," and I'm like, "Well actually, I’m having a really good time."

Speaking of bars ... When you used to tend bar in Melbourne, what was your favorite drink to make?
Oh my God, when I was a really young bartender, we had this shocking drink in Australia called a Fluffy Duck that was more like a scientific experiment than a cocktail. It was yellow, it was fluffy, it had a plastic duck that went in it with a straw, and it looked kind of biological. All I know is that it had banana daiquiri, and I gladly forget all the other ingredients. It had some vodka. No cocktail should be yellow.

What are you working on now?
I'm sitting here in a tiny little shack in the middle of a country town that has a population of about 500 people. The film's called 'Romulus, My Father,' and it's a beautiful, very tiny-budget Australian film based on a book of the same name, which is set in the late '50s, early '60s. It's a European migrant story about a Romanian immigrant who came to Australia. It's a family tragedy, but a really beautiful story, and I'm playing the father, Romulus. It's directed by Richard Roxburgh, an Australian actor who is brilliant and who was in 'Moulin Rouge.' He played Ewan McGregor's nemesis. This is his directorial debut.

Did you have to do another accent for this one?
Yes, another freakin' accent! My first film at home in years and I'm doing an accent. The only time I get to speak in an Australian accent is when I do interviews.