Guy Pearce: It's 800,000 years in the future and look who's here...

Guy Pearce, star of soap and screen, talks to James Mottram about life in 'The Time Machine'

The first time I ever spoke to Guy Pearce he was holed up in an LA hotel room preparing to shoot Christopher Nolan's thriller Memento. The chameleon-like Australian actor had already wowed cinemagoers with his bitchy drag queen in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and his serious-minded cop in LA Confidential – not that recognition was then fully forthcoming. "I kinda live a double life," he bemoaned. "In America, they only really know me from Priscilla and LA Confidential. But in Australia, they have the tall poppy syndrome. They tend to cut you down unless someone from overseas tells them you're good."

Little did he know, but it would be his role as Memento's memory-afflicted, revenge-driven, motel-dwelling Leonard Shelby that would establish him among Hollywood's elite, while the film's cult word of-mouth reputation eased it towards two Oscar nominations (though shamefully not for its star) and $25 million at the US box office.

When I encounter Pearce again he no longer leads the double-life, having muscled his way into two Hollywood blockbuster adaptations in the interim. All of a sudden, the 34 year-old is one of the tallest poppies in the field.

Most recently, he was in Kevin Reynolds' swash-buckling The Count of Monte Cristo, in which he played the "pompous, pretentious, aristocratic" villain Fernand Mondego. It was, he says, his first deliberate effort to have fun on a film set and flirt with the adventure genre. Pearce's preparations began with changing his hair to the required "coiffed and dandy" style. As trivial as it sounds, it underlines just what a methodical actor he is. "I get bored with myself and how I look on screen. I enjoy the extremes," he says. "But eventually I'm going to have to play characters who are a lot more day-to-day."

Such a concern was temporarily put aside for his other new film though, DreamWorks' $70-million spin on HG Wells' The Time Machine co-directed by the author's grandson, Simon Wells. His first commercial lead, he plays Alexander Hartdegen, the inventor whose machine propels him 800,000 years into the future. This time, he sports the bedraggled look – an appropriate style given the difficulties the production suffered after Hartdegen retired with exhaustion 18 days before the end of the shoot. Pearce admits that completing the 95-day project with pulled muscles and a cracked rib was a gruelling experience, but one that helped him test his abilities to act against a blank space where digital images would later appear.

The film is not Pearce's worst Hollywood outing to date (that would be Rules of Engagement) and it at least allows him his turn as the dashing hero. "I wonder whether, subconsciously, the reason why I've chosen such different roles is because I did the same thing for four years," he muses, referring to his Eighties tenure on Neighbours as goody-goody Mike. At the time Pearce, whose family had emigrated from Cambridgeshire to New South Wales, spent all his spare time bodybuilding – the first of his many physical transitions. "I was fascinated by the way you could change your structure," he says.

After his father died Pearce remained in Australia with his mother and experienced the down-side of fame. "It was all about screaming teenagers," he says of his soap days. "It wasn't hard to deal with but it was definitely a monstrous aspect of my life. The whole thing of becoming more well known, and having to answer to that, I find difficult to deal with, and it makes me retreat more into myself."

For the moment, having completed The Hard Word and Till Human Voices Wake Us with, respectively, Rachel Griffiths and Helena Bonham-Carter, Pearce is retreating to Melbourne to take a "gap year" out of Hollywood. He intends to spend some time with his wife, Kate, and tinker with his "cathartic" guitar in the garden. "I don't like to work too much," he says. "By the end of each film, there's a real need to just be Guy again."

'The Time Machine' is on general release. 'The Making of Memento' by James Mottram (Faber & Faber, £12.99)