Guy Pearce life and biography

Guy Pearce is an English-born Australian actor and musician, known for his roles as Leonard Shelby in Christopher Nolan's Memento, Lieutenant Ed Exley in the film L.A. Confidential, a drag queen in the cult film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Mike Young in the popular Australian television series Neighbours and King Edward VIII ("David") in the 2010 Best Picture Oscar winner The King's Speech.

Pearce was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire. His mother, Anne Cocking (née Pickering), was a County Durham-born schoolteacher specialising in needlework and home economics, and his father, Stuart Pearce, was a New Zealand-born air force test pilot who died when Pearce was nine. When he was three years old, Pearce moved to Geelong, Australia, where his mother ran a deer farm. He attended The Geelong College, a local private school, and was a member of the GSODA Junior Players. From ages 15 to 22, he was a competitive amateur bodybuilder, leading to the title of Junior Mr. Victoria. He also did fencing. He lived in Box Hill North, Victoria in the late 1980s while working on the Australian drama series Neighbours.

Pearce's Hollywood debut was in the Oscar-winning 1997 film L.A. Confidential (with former Neighbours co-star Russell Crowe). His onscreen intensity and that film's success led Pearce into big-budget features in the early 2000s such as Rules of Engagement (2000, starring Tommy Lee Jones), The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) and The Time Machine (2002). But it was his turn as Leonard in Chris Nolan's psychological thriller Memento -- a man with no short-term memory, trying desperately to solve the mystery surrounding his wife's death -- that made him an art house favorite. Guy Pearce then slowed his career to one or two independent features a year, including The Proposition (2005) and Factory Girl (2006, playing Andy Warhol), and began taking smaller roles in well-received movies. His other films include The Hurt Locker (2008, starring Jeremy Renner), The Road (2009, starring Viggo Mortensen), Animal Kingdom (2010, with Jacki Weaver) and The King's Speech (2010, as England's King Edward VIII).

Guy Pearce's father was a test pilot who was killed in a crash when Guy was a young boy.

Filmography:

2011 : Mildred Pierce
Nominated Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
2011 : Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
2011 : The Hungry Rabbit Jumps
2011 : 33 Postcards
2012 : The Wettest County in the World
2012 : Thicker
2012 : Lockout
2012 : Prometheus

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