Guy Pearce is "grateful" his 1980s pop career flopped

He told the Guardian newspaper: "After I finished Neighbours, there was a period where people would say: 'Didn't you used to be Mike from Neighbours?'

"Then one day, this 10- or 12-year-old kid came up to me in a shopping centre and said: 'Didn't you used to be Guy Pearce?' I thought: 'Wow, that's the most profound thing anyone's ever said', because, in a way, it was true."

He went on to add: "I always knew I wasn't just a soap opera actor. I was just stuck in that cycle. Prior to Neighbours, I'd done 10 years of theatre, which made playing the same character for four years frustrating.

"I wanted to delve into a wider variety of personalities and behaviours. But when I finished Neighbours in 1989, I was in the wilderness because no one wanted to employ the guy who was in Neighbours, and I struggled to find work."

Guy eventually put pop on the backburner to continue acting - joining rival Australian soap Home and Away for a short stint and going back to his theatre roots - and his perseverance eventually paid off as he landed his breakout Hollywood role in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in 1994.

Now Guy admits he doesn't regret missing out on being a 1980s pop sensation, telling the publication: "I went back and did some theatre, a little bit of Home and Away and then, in 1993, I got to do Priscilla. So, yes, I'm really grateful that my 80s pop career didn't take off!"

Guy did eventually return to music two decades later when he released his first album, Broken Bones, in 2014 and he followed it up by released his second record The Nomad in 2018.