Guy Pearce isn't known for taking on action roles, but with Lockout he gets into the action in a big way. The sci-fi action movie finds Pearce playing an ex-government agent who cracks wise while taking on prisoners who've captured the U.S. President's daughter (played by Maggie Grace) on a maximum security prison in outer space. It's definitely not a role we've seen Pearce play before, and in LA for the press day for Open Road Films release, he talked about what it took to get ready to handle the physically demanding role as well as the art of delivering one-liners.

On the training process:
Guy Pearce: "It was a lot of serious working out in a Belgrade gym. I just went back to the gym. I used to work out in the gym a lot when I was younger. I was a competition bodybuilder when I was 16 or something crazy like that for a short period of time. So, the gym is quite familiar and I know what I’m doing there. It was really about taking lots of protein and buffing up as much as I could, which stopped the day we finished shooting."

"For a number of reasons, and obviously for the look of the character, I think it was important that he looked like a serious action hero, even though he has this slightly irreverent sense of humor about the whole thing and feels a bit old and a bit afraid of heights. But it was good for me because it was a physical role. It was good to feel strong and feel like I was in shape, even though I kept injuring myself every week as well. It became a bit of a joke between me and the crew. 'Oh, what’s he done this time?'"

On doing wire work:
Guy Pearce: "[...] The wirework is fun.

It’s just awkward. It’s awful to be suspended by your groin for hours on end and try to remember what you’re supposed to be doing at the same time."

On switching things up and tackling a kick-ass character:
Guy Pearce: "Well, it’s not that I’ve always wanted that. I never really think about roles that I want to do. I just wait to read things, I suppose. I met with Luc Besson here just before I was going off to do Mildred Pierce and had a discussion about it. I liked the sound of the character. And then I met with the directors when I was in New York doing Mildred and they both said, 'Well, he’s a bit skinny, isn’t he? We might have to set up…' 'I’ll be fine. I’ll buff up.' So it wasn’t that I necessarily wanted to do something like that, but I just enjoyed where the character was coming from and I thought it was a nice change from things that I had been doing at the time, like The King’s Speech and various things like that."

On delivering the one-liners:
Guy Pearce: "They’re all written in there. Some I needed to adjust a little bit to make them work for me, which I do on any film anyway, I find. If something doesn’t come out of your mouth right, you’ve got to acknowledge the fact that you’re trying to deliver an honest performance. If it doesn’t come out of your mouth correctly, then it’s not going to work."

"I didn’t want it to be just a device or an aspect of the film; I needed it to be honest within the character. I needed to find somebody who was naturally like that, had reached a point in his life. I think that’s how I viewed it, that it was a guy who had done all this kind of stuff many times before. He’s sick of being beaten up. He’s sick of leading this kind of life and probably sick of being misogynistic. It was nice to work with Maggie (Grace), for example, who has such a mature level about her and was able to put him in his place when she could. He’s a bit of a smart aleck and hard to put in his place. I wanted it to feel like an honest character. I didn’t want to go, 'Oh, okay. It’s one of those movies. This is what they do. They deliver the sassy one line.'"

On the possibility of a Lockout sequel:
Guy Pearce: "I don’t know. I guess it depends on how successful it is. Then I may have to go back to the gym, wouldn’t I? I think it’s left open for that, but it’s obviously based on whether the film makes enough money, I suppose."

On having to hit Maggie Grace and the possibility of the act being perceived as misogynistic:
Guy Pearce: "As a singular action, I think it needs to fall within the realm of him as an entire character. So, if that comes off as misogynistic, then everything else should or probably would anyway. I think he’s generally kind of misogynistic. He loves women but he’s quite immature, so he doesn’t really know how the best way is to handle them. But, at the same time, there are also hints at how good he is at what he does. They’re in a life and death situation, so no matter how smart alecky he is with her, they’re on a prison with 500 other prisoners. And, as much as he probably took a liberty there by doing what he did, I think ultimately he comes from a particular world where things have to be done in a particular way and it’s brutal. That’s all there is to it. Otherwise, you’re going to get yourself killed. I can justify it in that way as well. And that, probably also, is connected to being a misogynist on some level, but that’s just the world that he lives in."

On the most difficult scene from Lockout:
Guy Pearce: "People are always asking what the most difficult thing was to do. Ultimately, the most difficult thing to do is be convincing, and sometimes that’s harder in some scenes than in other scenes. That’s my overriding feeling throughout any film is just to make sure that everything you do is as convincing as it can be. Things like putting on an uncomfortable spacesuit or hanging in wires by your groin or whatever just add to the difficulty of it. But we couldn’t hear anything. We couldn’t hear each other. We had to hold hands at one point and all you could feel was like clack, clack. 'Was that your hand? Do we look like we’re holding hands? Okay. Action!'"

On shooting in Serbia and how he spent his time off the set:
?Guy Pearce: "I didn’t really have much off time. I was in a lot of the stuff. Obviously, there are a few scenes that Maggie does that I’m not in. But I was at the gym...pretty much I was at the gym. I did have a driver who was insistent on taking me around and showing me Belgrade, which was great to do. Even if I wanted to do something else, he was still insistent on doing it. But it’s a fascinating place. Obviously, it’s got quite a tumultuous history. I thought the people were fantastic there because they’re obviously out for a good time. I guess when you live in a war-torn country, you want to have as much fun as you can in between bombs going off."

"I generally love Eastern Europe anyway. There’s an artistic, intellectual and psychological view of the world that I find really alive and engaging. It’s different in different countries, obviously, but it was fascinating being there, I have to say. I think Maggie had bigger chunks of time where she wasn’t working than I did. I would probably have half a day or a day somewhere, whereas Maggie had periods of six or seven days when she wasn’t working. I think that becomes difficult. I never experienced that; I was busy. And funnily enough, I was more isolated than they were because they all stayed in the one hotel in the new part of town over the river, and I stayed in the old town in an apartment. I had this fantastic apartment. I had a guitar with me, so if I had any free time, I could play the guitar. If I wasn’t too bruised, I had something to play. I had a nice time there."

On what he enjoyed most about being a part of Lockout:
Guy Pearce: "I think the character because normally the kinds of people that play these kinds of characters are like that in real life, and they play those kinds of characters a lot because that’s the kind of people that they are. So, for me to step into a character like that and take it on as a character rather than just a sort of another go of being myself, like other characters I play, is the point of it. Even though he has a difficult time with what he’s experiencing, he also takes the mickey out of what’s going on around him. I enjoyed that. But, being in Serbia too is fascinating, I have to say."

On the process of choosing film roles:
Guy Pearce: "I do like a variety of things so I’m always interested in finding something that I haven’t done before, if possible, to whatever degree that sometimes changes, and how much is something now that I wouldn’t have a year ago but sort of based on what I’ve done recently as well. Obviously, it has to feel honest. But it’s a difficult thing to explain because sometimes you might read a book, for example, and then the book stays with you for days afterwards - and that’s what I need from a script as well. I need to feel that it’s got this life that kind of bubbles away, whereas some scripts you read and you go, 'Well, I can see what you’re going for. It’s sort of an interesting idea, but it just kind of dies as soon as you finish the last page.' There’s no life that’s left in me when reading it."

"It’s about a feeling, I think. I don’t specifically look for certain characters. I don’t have one idea of a character out there that I want to play, and it does change at times as well. I was talking about having done Bedtime Stories the other day and somebody said, 'Why did you do Bedtime Stories?' I said, 'Well, in 2007, I’d done a film about a massacre at a café. I’d done this film about this girl being murdered in Australia. I did Hurt Locker about the Iraq War. And then, I did a movie about terrorism.' So, when Adam Shankman rang me and said, ‘We’re gonna do this crazy comedy with Adam Sandler. Would you be interested?,’ I said, ‘Yes! Fantastic!’ You work, I suppose, based on your emotional responses to things."

On his next movie: Prometheus:
Guy Pearce: "Everyone is very excited about that. [...] There’s an extra weight added to that movie because everybody has such an expectation. And, it’s an interesting time at the moment because there’s a lot of discussion going on about what we can say and what we can’t say that keeps changing. I’m reluctant to talk about it, really, because none of that is established yet. But it’s an interesting thing to be part of, obviously because of Ridley and because of Ridley’s history with other films. I’m just going, 'Whoa, this is a big beast to be attached to,' and I’m very curious to see it. I haven’t seen it myself, but the little bits that I have do look quite amazing, so we’ll see."

On mixing things up and working in various genres:
Guy Pearce: "If you look at the films that I’ve done generally, you would probably get an idea of what I’m most interested in, and if ever I do something unusual like a science fiction film or an action film or a comedy or something, then that to me feels like a step to the side to do something different. But, in a way, I don’t know what you would say is the typical film that I’ve done necessarily. I suppose psychological dramas might be it, if you look at L.A. Confidential and Memento or whatever, but I’m not really sure myself. I don’t feel like I want to take on a new path or anything like that. As I say, [I’m looking for] a real variety of films. I’ve also just done John Hillcoat’s film, too, which I think is now called Lawless; It was The Wettest County. But that’s a very different film again. It’s Prohibition times. It’s a really harrowing story about these three young brothers trying to make money out of selling illegal alcohol and the various people that come into their lives and try to stop them, and I’m one of them."

On the lasting impact of Memento:
Guy Pearce:  "It’s a film that people respond to still in the same way that they did [when it was first released]. A lot of people come up to me and say, 'We’re studying Memento in film school and it’s really incredible to watch it and dissect it again. Oh my God! I’m constantly being made aware of – I hate to say this – but the importance of a film like that, and in saying that, I’ll add Chris Nolan’s name to that because he is a highly innovative filmmaker who I think always reaches a new height every time he makes a film. When Memento came out, it was quite cutting edge and affected people in a particular kind of way and it stands out. I mean, we had a 10 year reunion screening of it at the New York Film Festival a couple of years ago because it was released in 2000. So, even then, we screened it and we had a Q&A afterwards, and the audience was just as enthusiastic about asking us questions about it then as they were 10 years before. Some poor people still hadn’t got the answers for 10 years. [Laughs] 'I’ve been waiting for 10 years to find out what really happened. Is Joey Pants a bad guy or not?' It was fascinating, really."

"It’s really interesting making films and actually seeing the life that they have in the subsequent years and seeing which ones stand up over time and which ones sort of fade away. Things like L.A. Confidential and Memento and Priscilla obviously hold up, I think."

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Lockout hits theaters on April 13, 2012.