There are Aussie actors so enveloped in British and American pop culture that you might need to be reminded that they’re from the land Down Under. These are your “secret Australians”, your Margot Robbies and Rose Byrnes or your Jacob Elordis. Eric Bana, the strong-of-jaw star of Troy, Munich, and Ang Lee’s Hulk, is not a secret Australian. His accent is thick. His skin is sun-kissed. His surname sounds as if it needs to be shouted, rowdily, across the length of a busy pub. “Oy, Baa-naa!” some Crocodile Hunter-type might blare. So it feels wrong to find him sitting in a checked button-up shirt in a New York office, where he’s been promoting his new Netflix drama, rather than on a beach somewhere in Melbourne, feet up, tinnie in hand, boasting about his remarkable sense of chill.
“I’m really good at not working,” the 56-year-old jokes. “It’s never felt like a big risk to say no to things. I’ve never panicked about work. It’s just not how I operate.”
