Guy Pearce, who stars as a notorious real-life WWII Dutch art forger in Friday’s “The Last Vermeer,” began as a kid and what’s never diminished is a belief that acting is all about “play.”
“To begin with a character,” Pearce, 53, said last week from Australia, “I stand here in my living room, imagining whether I can play this character or not. And if I have that moment where I think ‘Oh yes’ — that’s the most exciting stuff.
“That’s the stuff I felt when I was a 10-year-old doing theater That’s the real playful childlike imagination that you tap into that propels you forward and you go, ‘Let’s begin!’”
Until he read “The Last Vermeer” script, Pearce had never heard of Holland’s Han van Meergeren (pronounced Make-ray-in), still considered among the most successful art forgers of all time.
“I play him as a colorful, sort of peacock. This is a wonderfully flamboyant character who’s trying to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes.
“As an actor that stuff is great fun. But of course, the real work — and what is really fun — is to make that person human. Not just be the colorful character but to give him a heart.
“In a way Han von Meergeren was an actor. He knew he could charm. He was probably somebody who was easily charmed himself.
“But he was a failed artist and I think very bitter about that. Very, very bitter. He didn’t want to allow that bitterness to turn him into a kind of bitter person. So almost as a survival technique he rose above it.”
He rose in Nazi-occupied Holland as a notorious collaborator who sold Vermeer paintings, the nation’s great legacy, to Hitler’s rapacious No. 2, Herman Goering.
“You have to remember Holland was occupied by the Nazis most of WWII,” Pearce said. “Being occupied for many years is not endurable. I mean, we all know what it’s like to have to go to any kind of lockdown for a few months for our own survival.
“For that country to believe that he was conspiring with the enemy was the worst crime ever. For a period of time he was an absolute pariah.
“But then, of course, through the court case you learn that he was in fact swindling the Nazis.
“All of a sudden, he’s lorded as a hero and then strangely – not strangely but you know unfortunately for him — he died six weeks later of a heart attack.
“He had six weeks of reveling in his heroism.”
“The Last Vermeer” opens Friday
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Play’s the thing for ‘Last Vermeer’ star Guy Pearce - Boston Herald
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