Actor Eric Bana is such a car nut he made a movie about his. He talks to Helen Barlow
Eric Bana turns up regularly looking tough in Hollywood blockbusters - that's him playing the evil Romulan in Star Trek - yet the Australian has a reputation as one of acting's nice guys.
And at 40 it would seem that the actor, who started out as a comedian, has everything in place - a career that goes from strength to strength and a family he adores. He ensures his wife and children travel with him to movie sets, though he still lives in Melbourne so he can be close to his parents, follow the footy and hang out with his mates.
What he shares with his mates, and indeed with his father, Croatian-born Ivan Banadinovic, is a love of driving fast.
He has one special car, an XB Falcon that he calls "the beast". His love for the muscle car borders on obsession and he now has made a movie about it - Love the Beast, which also marks his directing debut.
"Cars have been my life since I was born, they've always just been there," he says. "One of the reasons I wanted to make the film is because car films are usually made by people who don't have much of a clue and I knew car people would appreciate the film and probably love it. But I didn't really make it for them."
A surprisingly moving story, Love the Beast draws on Bana's understated movie star appeal, honesty and humour.
The film interweaves all aspects of his life, from early on when he looked particularly fetching in tight footy shorts - "I unfortunately have grown out of them and I no longer play football," he chuckles - to having a beer to muster up courage for the red carpet, to his close relationship with wife Rebecca, daughter of former Australian High Court Chief Justice, Murray Gleeson.
The couple married in 1997 and have two children, Klaus, 9, and Sophia, 7.
"My target audience was the partners as much as the actual people who've had a beast in their lives," Bana explains. "The title for me is a metaphor; the beast is your passion, your football team or whatever sport you gave up as a teenager that you haven't had time for, because you've gone off and had kids or for whatever reason. We've all had them, got them, should have them or deserve to have them. I feel really passionate about that and that was the starting point."
In 2007, Bana hit the headlines when he crashed his beloved beast during the Targa Rally in Tasmania. He was already making the movie at the time. The film becomes a kind of ticking-clock thriller and at its climax as we are inside the car with Bana when he hurtles at 80km/h into a tree. He came away shaken but uninjured.
"I guess it was very handy that the camera was there," he says. "When it happened obviously I was devastated, but you would kill yourself trying to recreate that. I had no idea it was even being filmed until Tony [his co-driver] just appeared a metre away from my face with this camera."
Far from a movie-star moment, we watch as Bana comes to terms with his failed attempt at racing muscle cars in the countryside and his decision to stick to racing on the track in future.
"What I'd actually done was I'd tried to drag this car, which was from another part of my life, into an event and treat it in the same way that I would treat a race car," explains Bana, who grew up adoring Mad Max. "Then just as I was starting to get some of that pure joy, that driving enjoyment, it bit me. It just doesn't work. But I haven't stopped. I still compete on the Australian circuit and in Australian GT championships and things like that. I won't ever stop that."
Bana is not the first movie-star to have such a passion, which he shares with the likes of the late Paul Newman, whom he calls "a bit of a hero but unfortunately I never met him", and Patrick Dempsey.
For the film he interviewed various celebrities, including American talkshow host Jay Leno, a kindred spirit and car collector.
Then there are the experts: Dr Phil examines the psychological motivations while Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson offers his opinions, as always.
Love the Beast marks the second film Bana has produced via his Pick up Truck Pictures, after Romulus, My Father, which won a slew of awards in Australia, though made little impression overseas.
"Whether the film is seen overseas is a long shot," he admits. "We probably won't see our money back and I don't want to say how empty our pockets are. I probably gave up a couple of movies to make it, but I did it out of love. We definitely didn't do this out of potential financial gain."
His wife has been supportive of his latest cinematic effort, he says, and of his racing in general. "I'm sure she'd rather see me pack some golf clubs into the back of the car," he muses, "but she also knows that's the person she married.
"She doesn't know another version of me and she also knows how important it is to me. So I guess she'd be asking for a major fundamental change in who I am, which she's not really interested in."
Initially Rebecca wasn't in the film. "I tried to keep her out of it and then one of my producing partners made the correct call that she was overly conspicuous by her absence. She was one of the last people we shot."
Some of the film's most tender moments are with his father, the man who encouraged him not to make his hobby his job, but stressed the importance of having one to keep his life in balance. At 67, his father looks as fit as a fiddle. "My dad retired at the end of last year," explains Bana. "He'd worked at Caterpillar for 46 years and was one of their longest-serving employees in the world." Interestingly, when he was a child, Bana's German-born hairdresser mum, Eleanor, wouldn't even allow him to race go-karts. "The irony is my mum's actually quite a petrol head now. She just loves the racing and comes to everything."
LOWDOWN
Who: Eric Bana
Born: Eric Banadinovich, August 9, 1968, Melbourne
Key roles: Full Frontal (1993-1996), The Castle (1997), Chopper (2000), Hulk (2003), Troy (2004), Munich (2005), Romulus, My Father (2007), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Star Trek (2009).
Latest: Love The Beast in cinemas from June 4.
