Guy Pearce on Memento: “I Watched It Again… and I Hate My Performance!”

During a recent interview with The Sunday Times, actor Guy Pearce opened up about his performance as Leonard Shelby in Christopher Nolan’s Memento. “I watched Memento the other day, and it left me feeling depressed—I think I was terrible in it,” he admitted.

Pearce revealed that his perspective shifted after a recent Q&A session about the film. “I’d never felt that way before, but I decided to rewatch it, and as it played, I realized—I absolutely hate my performance

Memento follows Leonard Shelby, an insurance investigator, who suffers from anterograde amnesia and uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife, which is the last thing he remembers.

The Brutalist actor’s latest comments come a few months after he told Vanity Fair in December that the reason he hasn’t worked with Nolan since Memento is because a Warner Bros. executive didn’t like his acting.

At the time, Pearce recalled 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.’ … But it meant I could never work with Chris.” (Nolan previously had a production deal with Warner but split with the studio in late 2020.)

However, the L.A. Confidential actor changed his perspective after rewatching the film. “So all this stuff about an exec at Warners being why I’ve not worked with Chris again? It came crashing down,” he said. “I know why I didn’t work with Chris again — it’s because I’m no good in Memento.”

“I was trying to do a flippant attitude but it was all wrong,” Pearce said of his performance as Leonard. “John Gielgud once said, ‘You can be good in a good movie, good in a bad movie, bad in a bad movie, but never be bad in a good movie.’ Yet I watched Memento and realized I’m bad in a good movie. Fuck!”

Pearce noted that he hasn’t shared his thoughts with Nolan “because I reckon he’d agree with me.”

“It’s funny; people say I should’ve been nominated for Memento. Now I understand why I wasn’t,” he explained. “Look, I’m pleased with L.A. Confidential, but I look at this and go, ‘Oof! Nails on a chalkboard!’ If I reckon my performance in Neighbours is two out of ten, Memento is a five.”