JASON CLARKE MAN OF MYSTERY

HOLLYWOOD'S QUIET POWER PLAYER LETS HIS WORK SPEAK FOR ITSELF

- Cameron Bayley

You could dub Jason Clarke “Mr Under The Radar”, because when it comes to successful Aussies in Hollywood - the ones who've worked consistently across television, blockbusters and serious fare - it’s the usual names, such as Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Chris Hemsworth, that get bandied about.

However, the 56-year-old from country Queensland has been racking up roles in the US for more than two decades, using his blue-eyed, steely presence to great effect.

After cutting his teeth on Aussie standards such as Home and Away, Blue Heelers and All Saints in the late ’90s, Clarke was cast as a lead in gritty US drama Brotherhood, playing hardworking politician Tommy, who's forced to square off against crime boss Michael (The White Lotus’ Jason Isaacs) - who just happens to be his brother.

From there, he became a go-to for high-profile directors who needed his particular brand of intensity in their cast - appearing in everything from Michael Mann’s Public Enemies (2009) and Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), to John Hillcoat’s Western Lawless (2012) and Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

But it was Clarke’s performance as CIA interrogator Dan Fuller in Kathryn Bigelow’s critically acclaimed Zero Dark Thirty (2012) that really moved the dial. His role in the gripping chronicle of the hunt for Osama bin Laden both garnered controversy and led to widespread debate, due to his character’s waterboarding of a terrorist suspect.

More than a decade later, talking to Esquire, he revealed how proud he was of what Bigelow put on the big screen. “A topic was taken and put in celluloid before even the writers and the journalists got hold of it and it came out,” he said.