Word: bana
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...predictions of stardom are old news to Bana, 34. Back home, the working-class boy from Melbourne has been driving up the entry ramp to movie fame for more than a decade. In the early 1990s, he was a star on the TV sketch-comedy series "Full Frontal", in which he honed his gift for impersonation. Bana jokes that those who knew him when will say, "How dare you be internationally known as a dramatic actor, when here you were just into comedy?" Soon he pursued movie work, and locals figured he would be the next Mel Gibson. But that...
...Hulk character could be Chopper Read's mild-mannered cousin, a mess of rage and repression. Understand that Bana does not play the Hulk, that mean green machine. He is Bruce Banner, the sweet, troubled scientist who, when his anger starts to bubble, hands the heavy lifting, mauling and rock smashing to a computer-generated, volatile giant. (Think Shrek, off his meds.) Bana's Banner is a Clark Kent who never gets to be Superman - which means the actor had to Act. "He exists on his own as a confused, complicated character," says Bana. "Ang basically said, ?There's light...
...Hulk" was made in the shade. Tempers frayed as the budget soared to $150 million, and the director's painful attention to detail and insistence on retakes drove his cast nuts. (Not for nothing do actors call him Angst Lee.) "It wasn't a set full of conflict," Bana says carefully. "It was a set full of tension. I think Ang boiled over only once, and I boiled over only once." Looking back, he says, making the movie "was satisfying the way running a marathon is satisfying. At the end, the person feels pretty good...
...Bana gives every indication of being a genial fellow who loves his wife Rebecca and their two young children ("I have absolutely no interest in mindlessly pursuing my career at the expense of my marriage - life's too short"), his mates ("Eighty percent of my friends are guys I've known since preteens") and his 1970s-era muscle cars ("I was the boy who was crazy on cars. I'd had a car since I was 14 - an Aussie-made Ford coupe. People back home still ask, 'Have you still got that huge, white, thumping...
...Snarly heroes, sensitive ones and Eric Bana: a decent bloke who seems to have his values on straight. In Hollywood, that's a marvel...