FOR A MOVIE STAR, Eric Bana is largely a private person, living away from the Hollywood spotlight with his wife and two children in his native Australia.
So, although he works frequently ("Black Hawk Down," "Hulk," "Munich," "Star Trek," etc.), he does not choose his projects lightly. A simple studio meeting means a 19-hour flight each way.
Finding the right projects, therefore, often depends on timing and luck as much as talent, and that's how Bana ended up starring in "Closed Circuit," a movie about, among many things, privacy.
Speaking last week at New York's Waldorf-Astoria, Bana told the Daily News that "Closed Circuit" came about because he was catching a flight from Australia to the U.S. to do research on another film.
"That film ended up falling apart," he said, "and I said to my agent, 'I'm done, I may just shut down for a few weeks.' And she called me up as I was getting on the plane and she said, 'I know what you said, but just listen to me. There's a script that's come in, I think you're going to really like it. If you get a chance, read it on the flight, because just by pure coincidence, when you land, the director, who's not from the States, is going to be in LA the same day as you and it's a one-day crossover.'
"So I read the script on the plane and said, 'This is fantastic.' I landed, called my agent and said, 'If there's any chance I can meet with him tomorrow, can it please happen?' And I met with director John Crowley the next morning, really enjoyed sitting down and talking to him, and this ended up being the next film that I did."
Primarily a story about how the British court system deals with cases demanding the utmost secrecy, in this case a terrorist bombing, "Closed Circuit" is also about our Big Brother society's invasion of privacy and may remind many Americans of the issues surrounding National Security Agency wiretaps.
Bana doesn't see himself as an overtly political actor, but said: "I don't think you need to be political to have a view on privacy. I'm not someone who really needs to complain about a lack of privacy. I've got it pretty good. But I don't agree with the notion that privacy is something that should be automatically dispensed with simply because the reach of technology demands that we smash the fence down. I think it's a conversation that needs to be had, and I think it's a conversation that needs to be had because of our youth - because I think it's very dangerous, as this younger generation is growing up and the notion of privacy is redefined, that we just allow them to their own devices. If you asked a 10-, 12- or 14-year-old what the notion of privacy should be, we'd all be in a lot of trouble."
As to Bana's own sense of privacy, he believes that there's been a bit of a calming in our paparazzi-fueled culture.
"I think the rest of the world has caught up to us," he said. "I'm actually feeling a lot less paranoid today than I was two or three years ago. Out in the world now, there are so many people putting themselves out there so aggressively, that if you're not part of that game, it's actually gotten a lot easier to hide."
A much greater portion of society, he added, now understands "what a lot of famous people have had to deal with, so they're actually more understanding of what it's like to have people comment on you and have an opinion of you. That just didn't happen 10 or 20 years ago. Younger people today are growing up with the notion that the people that they know - or don't know - are going to start posting likes or dislikes about them.
"That was the domain of public people and now it's the domain of the general public."
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