Eric Bana plays a loving father who taught his daughter everything he knows. It just so happens that he’s a trained killer who went into exile with an encyclopedia and a book of fairy tales. Now comes the movie “Hanna” where Eric Bana (Saoirse Ronan) parts ways with this daughter as she embarks on a mission of vengeance.
EXCLUSIVE: Saoirse Ronan Will Kick Push The Ish Out Of You
GlobalGrind sat down with Eric Bana for an interview and you can read it all below. Buy your tickets to see Hanna by clicking here.
GG: Sounds like you had a lot of fun on the set. But what was the least amount of fun you had?
I didn’t have that moment on this film, seriously, it was all fun. Saoirse is just a sweet, fun, young girl. You know, she’s not some precocious 30 year old wrapped up in a 16 year old body, she’s just a great young girl. Our dynamic, in actual fact, was far more brother-sister than, you know, father-daughter. So the only thing we had to be careful of was not mucking around too much. We had a great crew. Joe is wonderful with actors so there was nothing that wasn’t fun. I mean, the cold in Finland was something I wasn’t used to, being from Australia. I mean, we were looked after.
But the funniest thing about that was that we got issued a memo of how to diagnose hypothermia, not in yourself, but in your coworker because apparently it’s easier to diagnose hypothermia in someone else rather than yourself. You’re not actually aware it’s happening. And one of the things was erratic behavior. I thought, shit we’re on a movie set, everyone’s gonna be erratic. But that was the only one that was different for me.
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GG: What about injuries? Did either of you accidentally hurt each other?
No, but you do get paranoid about it. Not about getting hurt. The only thing I get paranoid about, especially on a movie set like this, where it’s very physical, you just think you cannot get sick and you cannot get an injury. I don’t care what some people say, you actually can’t do those fight scenes with an injury. Like if you hurt yourself properly, you can’t do them, you can’t do the scenes properly. So you have to go for it but you’re also really hoping that you’re not going to twist an ankle, or for me it’s a back issue or something like that. You have to remain in shape through the whole production, it’s not about just turning up on Day 1 and being ready to go. You have to then hopefully maintain it without getting yourself or your co-star in trouble.
So that’s the thing you kind of worry about in the back of your mind. You always come into contact, but a bruising is not an issue, but you’re more worried about tweaking an injury especially for Saoirse, I had to be careful because the physicality has to be convincing but at the same time you’ve got to be careful. So that’s probably the balance for both of us.
GG: So being from Australia you’ve done a bit of travelling in your day. Were there new places for you during the shoot? Was Berlin new to you?
Finland was completely new. I’d never been to Finland before and that was pretty amazing. Berlin was and wasn’t. I’ve been there many times on film festivals and junkets, but I don’t think that really counts, so it was very cool to be there for a couple months and experience Berlin properly and really get into the city. That was my favorite part of shooting the whole film actually was just being there for an extended period of time. I didn’t go to Morocco in the end because my character doesn’t go there, but I have done Morocco in the past. But yeah, that is a cool part of the job. I remember a couple of our locations in Finland where you’d get to base camp, you’d go on a four wheel drive for about 10 to 15 minutes to a pretty remote spot, then they would put Saoirse and I in the back of an enclosed toboggan on a skidoo and it would be another 10 or 15 skidoo ride through the forest to get to our location. So those sort of things were pretty cool.
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GG: What about the scene where Hanna’s dad tells her to press the button. Would you have been behind that, letting someone so wild and innocent touch that button?
Yeah, when she’s about 40 (laughs). I hide the buttons in my house. But I think it was a really cool device and I like the fact that she finds it and that it’s her decision to flick the switch. Which is just a really cool touch by Zach. I enjoyed that because that was an important, you know, it’s a important part of the movie, that she’s the one who decides to set in motion the chain of events that’s going to potentially lead to her death. So I thought that was really cool. When I saw it on the set for the first time, I said, “Is this it?” and Joe’s like, “This is it.” I love that it’s such a switch, like a switch switch. Like a remote control airplane kind of switch. But I thought that was a good device, a literal device and an actual device.
GG: Did you think you were the right guy for this part?
The stuff that I say yes to very selfishly, I obviously don’t sit there and imagine who else could play me. If I really script it and I see 100 other people it slides straight across my desk. But luckily, the stuff that gets sent to me is the more difficult to cast stuff and I’m very fortunate for that for whatever reason. So it’s not necessarily always the lead guy, it’s not necessarily always the flashiest role, but to me it’s usually the more interesting stuff. So I tend not to question it to much and if I agree with what they’ve sent me then it’s game on. But selfishly I’m always looking for stuff that’s going to be interesting to me or a fresh challenge or a fresh genre.
GG: Well, We also think you added something to this character that could have been much more cartoonish. Is that something you sensed about it as well?
Well, I had a lot of faith in Joe (Wright-the director). I think there’s about 5 different movies here, potentially, and I think Joe made the most interesting one of the 5 and I think the sense of style he’s imposed on the movie is really cool and really well thought out and it’s there for a reason and I think it adds some depth to an already great script. It’s not like it read and then I spoke to Joe and then I decided to be on board. I read it and I was like, wow this is – for a start, let’s put it in context, it is so hard to find this right now. This is not an easy film for an actor or a director to find and it’s not a film that a studio throws a check at in a heartbeat. So these are getting harder and harder to find and on top of that it came in the middle of the most difficult period in the past 10 or 15 years for a project like this. So when it came along it was a huge breath of fresh air. And hats off to Focus, they took the script and decided to make it. When we made this movie the only things that were up and running were remakes, prequels, sequels and stuff.
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GG: What did you think about the score? Because the Chemical Brothers haven’t done anything like this and it plays like a music video at certain parts.
Well, I was saying earlier that I actually see the Chemical Brothers as characters in the movie. To me, and all through the film, because Joe has a close relationship with them and knew how he wanted to use them, so to me that’s actually a character in the film more so than a score normally is — when the collaboration is that tight and that thought out. I remember hearing Ridley Scott say once when he hears directors say they’re not sure yet what sort of scores they’re going to use for their movie they really don’t know what movie they’re making. I think that’s a really interesting observation and I think this is an example of that, where in a really pure sense the director is so clear about how important a role the music is going to play in the final washup. It also makes the movie play bigger, it reads smaller. It read really well but it read smaller and hats off to the production in the movie looks like it does because every dime went into moving around and getting to locations we needed to and yeah, the money was very well spent on the movie.
GG: We had the pleasure of talking with Geoff Imada (martial arts trainer) not so long ago, he has wonderful things to say about you. What you have to say about working and training with him to get in shape for this film?
Yeah, well, unfortunately I didn’t really have time to do any background training with Geoff, I had to sort of arrive and be ready to go. But we trained very intensely on specific choreography and briefly on just establishing the style and his real strength for me was getting a sense of my physicality and whatever sporting background I had and making that work for my character and my fighting style very, very quickly. He also had choreographed pieces that he then changed and trimmed according to Saoirse and my strengths and weaknesses. So he’s a very organic choreographer and like I said, the example with the tracking shot, we changed it on the day. So I think that’s a sign of someone who’s very fluid. It’s scary to work that way, but it does keep you on your game and I was really thrilled when I heard he was doing the film. John and Hira, the two guys we worked closely with, the stunt guys, were really terrific.
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GG: Your character transforms from the outdoors and then you shave and become something different. Did you go about that as two different people or were you just maturing in the role?
Yeah, kind of. That’s interesting actually. Luckily for me, the way the film was shot, it was chronological in the sense that we started in Finland where I had the beard and all the hair and the fur and then we went to Bavaria and we were actually in the cabin. So it did kind of work that way where by the time I did shave the beard we were in Berlin and shooting and all that stuff. So mentally, that helped and you were able to split the movie in two halves rather than – productions don’t usually take that into account, they’re usually just jumping around, backwards and forwards. But in this case, the production and logistics helped us. Yeah, it was kind of like 2 different characters. I also like the fact that it’s kind of a loss of innocence tale for Hanna and it’s kind of a loss of innocence tale for Eric as well. It’s like he’s going through it for a second time as a human being and there is a redemptive quality, or an attempt at a redemptive story line for Eric. I mean, he’s largely responsible for Hanna being in the predicament she’s in and I enjoyed the aspects of his journey, really starting with that tracking shot. I mean that’s the first time we see him in the city after a very long swim obviously (laughs).
GG: What are you doing next?
I’m in Montreal right now shooting a little film called “Blackbird” with Sissy Spasek and Olivia Wilde, Charlie Hanum from “Son’s of Anarchy,” Tret Williams, Kris Kristofferson. It’s directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, the guy who directed “The Counterfeiters,” which is such a great film. It’s a great script and the character I play is really cool.
