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Starred Up

Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn isn’t quite a household name in the States, but you’ve seen him just about everywhere. He’s been in blockbuster films like The Dark Knight Rises, underrated indies like The Place Beyond the Pines, and even turned up on HBO’s Girls, Mendelsohn often takes on roles that share a similar common denominator: the foil. In Tribeca Film’s harrowing prison drama, Starred Up, now out in theaters and VOD, Mendelsohn plays Neville, or Nev for short, who meets his estranged teenage son, Eric (Jack O’Connell) while they’re both serving sentences.

At first, Nev’s intentions are unclear: is he looking out for Eric or himself in this violent wasteland? But as the film unfolds, Nev becomes both Eric’s and the audience’s only rock in a twist of corruption. We spoke to Mendelsohn about what he did to prepare for such a powerful role, what it was like working alongside O’Connell, and what he’s binge-watching these days.

“I was a bit anxious about Nev when I read it off the page,” Mendelsohn says, speaking of Jonathan Asser’s script. “It was a bit daunting, but there was something about the story,” Asser’s screenplay is based on his real-life accounts as a volunteer therapist in a men’s prison in South London. Mendelsohn was drawn to the uniqueness of the father-son dynamic of Asser’s story. “That guy had lived that film,” he says. “I thought it was very unusual.”

It seems to be a pattern of Mendelsohn’s — picking unusual roles that are notoriously dark and stormy. In The Place Beyond the Pines, his character pushes Ryan Gosling’s to rob banks with him. In Killing Them Softly, Mendelsohn stars opposite Brad Pitt as a mob-robbing heroin addict. And on Girls, you might remember him as Jessa’s selfish father who can’t get a grip on adult life. When Mendelsohn speaks about working with Jack O’Connell, however, he’s all cheer and pride. “[Jack] arrived to [Starred Up] fully formed,” he says. “If the old dog him taught him any tricks, then that makes me very happy.”

With the recent success of Orange is the New Black and before that, Prison Break, prison-themed shows and films have been hitting close to home with audiences in the US, but Mendelsohn assures us that it’s always been a major genre in Australia and the UK. “One of my first great loves of television was Prisoner,” a long-standing drama about life in a women’s prison. “It had a very big influence on me and they way I looked at the world at the time,” he admits. After contemplating what about prison life on screen resonates so powerfully with audiences, he decided, “You’ve got extreme characters in a very brutal environment that people don’t really get to see. There’s a fascination about it.”

Though rough and tough on screen, Ben Mendelsohn enjoys the company of some lighter characters like Homer Simpson. We quizzed Mendelsohn on his TV faves in our Decider Questionnaire.

Check out Starred Up on VOD. [GoWatchIt]

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