‘Memento’ made Guy Pearce question his own memories

Actor Guy Pearce says working on Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough movie "Memento" had a profound effect on him as he had started questioning his own memories after working on the film.

In a video interview, the Australian actor called the movie "first of its kind" as it is revered by fans till this date. "It made me question my own memory. I would look at a photo and would be thinking about a memory around it and then go, ‘Well I don’t know if that memory is really true at all.’ It really made me question my own memories, so thank you, Chris Nolan," Pearce said.

The film, which released in 2000, followed Leonard Shelby (Pearce), a man with short-term memory loss who is trying to track down his wife''s murderer. The actor revealed that he found the film’s plot to be "gobbledegook" and it took him time to fully understand it."… What I really got and what was really clear was the emotional journey of the character. As the actor that’s the only thing I need to latch onto in order to do my job. The other stuff began to make sense the more as I worked with Chris Nolan and rehearsed with him.

"Once it all made sense to me, I then had to put it all away and let it all go and just treat every scene as its own little thing because I wasn’t supposed to remember what had happened before and obviously had no clue what was coming afterwards," Pearce added. The 52-year-old actor hailed Nolan, who has since delivered hits such as "Dark Knight" trilogy, "Inception", "Interstellar" and "Dunkirk", as a genius.

"His ability to write the story and make the film that was in his head as it is. It’s the only film I’ve ever done where the finished film is exactly as the script was," Pearce said.

The actor currently features in Vin Diesel-starrer "Bloodshot".