Guy Pearce reveals shock reason he missed out on Batman role despite friendship with Christopher Nolan

Guy Pearce has revealed the startling reason he missed out on a role in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies - despite being friends with the director.

The acclaimed trilogy began with the 2005 release Batman Begins, starring Christian Bale as the title character opposite Liam Neeson as the villain Ra’s Al Ghul.

Pearce had previously played the lead role of an amnesiac in Nolan's 2001 neo-noir picture Memento, alongside The Matrix bombshell Carrie-Anne Moss.

When the time came to cast Batman Begins, Nolan thought highly enough of Pearce to fly him out to London to read for Ra’s Al Ghul.

However, Pearce, 57, was ultimately denied the role by circumstances out his control - and has in fact never worked with Nolan since then.

Now, he has finally revealed the real reason they have not done a picture together in almost a quarter of a century, in an interview with Vanity Fair.

The problem was that immediately after Memento, Nolan began a long professional relationship with Warner Bros., where one particular executive was not a fan of Pearce's acting and vowed 'never' to cast him. 

Nolan directed nine movies during the 18-year span he spent with Warner Bros., including some of his most enduring classics.

During his time with the distributor, he made his beloved Batman films, Dunkirk, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar and finally Tenet in 2020.

Nolan 'spoke to me about roles a few times over the years,' said Pearce in his new interview. 'The first Batman and The Prestige.'

He did not specify which role he discussed in The Prestige, a 2006 thriller starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as dueling stage magicians in Victorian London. 

The Australian actor recalled: 'But there was an executive at Warner Bros. who quite openly said to my agent: "I don’t get Guy Pearce. I’m never going to get Guy Pearce. I’m never going to employ Guy Pearce."'

He reasoned: 'So, in a way, that’s good to know. I mean, fair enough; there are some actors I don’t get. But it meant I could never work with Chris.'

Pearce noted that the executive 'just didn’t believe in me as an actor,' which was why the role of the Batman Begins villain was yanked away from his grasp.

'They flew me to London to discuss the Liam Neeson role and I think it was decided on my flight that I wasn’t going to be in the movie,' he dished.

'So I get there and Chris is like: "Hey, you want to see the Batmobile and get dinner?"' said the The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert star.

After Batman Begins, the trilogy included the fan favorite 2008 film The Dark Knight, for which Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar as the Joker, and then the 2012 release The Dark Knight Rises, in which Neeson returned as Ra’s Al Ghul in flashback. 

The door has evidently reopened for Pearce to work with the director, as Nolan has not been with Warner Bros. since his 2020 action thriller Tenet.

Tenet proved to be a box office bomb after Nolan negotiated with Warner Bros. to have it theatrically released, rather than going straight to streaming as some other films did amid the COVID-19 lockdowns of that year. 

The following year, Warner Bros. released its whole theatrical slate in cinemas and on HBO Max simultaneously, prompting a scathing response from Nolan.

'In 2021, they've got some of the top filmmakers in the world, they've got some of the biggest stars in the world who worked for years in some cases on these projects very close to their hearts that are meant to be big-screen experiences. They're meant to be out there for the widest possible audiences,' he told Entertainment Tonight.

'And now they're being used as a loss-leader for the streaming service - for the fledgling streaming service - without any consultation. So, there's a lot of controversy. It's very, very, very, very messy. A real bait and switch.'

His first movie since then was last year's critically acclaimed smash hit Oppenheimer, which he released with Universal Pictures.

Despite Warner Bros.' attempts to coax him back into their fold, Nolan will continue to work with Universal Pictures on his next film, slated for release in 2026.

Although the project remains shrouded in mystery, its all-star cast includes Tom Holland, Zendaya, Matt Damon, Charlize Theron and Anne Hathaway. 

This year, Pearce had a major role in the three-and-a-half-hour historical epic The Brutalist, playing an American industrialist who employs Adrien Brody's lead character, a Hungarian Jewish architect who survived the Holocaust.