You wouldn't know from his fillm career that Eric Bana was a hugely popular comedian in Australia. In Chopper he played an astonishingly violent and strangely likable lunatic. In Black Hawk Down he was the baddest ass in a badass Delta Force squadron. In Hulk he was a regular guy who got pissed off and ate missiles. Now he's Prince Hector, the Prince of Troy, leader of the Trojan armies and the second greatest warrior in the world.

Too bad for him the greatest warrior is on the other side. Warner Bros' massive epic Troy opens this Friday, and we'll be having huge coverage all this week. We already ran the interview with Diane Kruger, Helen herself, which you can find HERE. In the next few days you can look forward to reading about the likes of Wolfgang Peterson, Peter O'Toole and Brad Pitt. But let's start the week off with Bana, the tall and handsome Aussie who, if there is justice, will find that this movie turns him into a major star.

Bana came into the press room at the Essex House Hotel and was confronted with an array of microphones and tape recorders.

Bana: I feel like I'm in the White House. I'm under a little less pressure though.

Q: This is your second summer in a row with a big Hollywood movie. How does this compare to the Hulk for you?

Bana: I couldn't compare it at all. Other than they open in the summer I couldn't compare the two.

Q: Was doing an epic a lot harder than doing all the CGI stuff in the Hulk?

Bana: The weird thing about the Hulk is that it never felt to me like a big production, my scenes were very intimate. This felt more like Black Hawk Down in terms of scale and in how exciting it was to be on set. It took us a little longer to make, but it was a pretty awesome playground.

Q: The battle scenes seem like they would be tough.

Bana: Yeah but you get so much adrenaline, and everyone loved the story so much. It was a bit of a marathon. How should I put it? It was a bit of a tough job but it never felt like a chore. Every day you would wake up and tired as you were, sore as you were you never had a problem getting through the day. You get to work, there would be the stunt men and the swords and the horses and you just get up for it all every time.

Q: How long did you and Brad work on that big Hector/Achilles fight? And how much training did you do in general for the role?

Bana: I was cast in September, I started training straight away. In terms of specific training I started sword and horse training back home in Australia, before we got to the location. Then when we got to London, which was our first location, we started on day one basically choreographing that final scene, as well as all the other fight scenes we had to learn. While we knew that final fight scene would have to be the last one that we would shoot, but we started learning the moves for that on day one, which for me was March, and we shot it in December. I trained for that nonstop right up until the morning of.

Q: Did you get hurt at all?

Bana: Yeah, I got a few whacks. I got a Brad Pitt scar here, it's a tiny one.

Q: How did that happen?

Bana: It's called a Full Fledged Backhand Fist to the Face.

Q: Did he feel bad?

Bana: He felt terrible. But luckily for us it was probably eighty-five percent through that fight sequence, because it does dull your confidence. I mean, we connected many many times, but if you have a beat connection as our fight coordinator said, even if you're a professional stuntman it does affect you. But it was like all bets were off at the beginning of that fight. We decided we were ready and we took chances that we probably wouldn't have otherwise. We weren't precious about getting hurt or nicked so we just went for it.

Q: Did you actually go down?

Bana: Yeah, I went down. We had to stop for twenty minutes. This fight was the last thing we had to do. It was two months after principal photography had finished and we were still there, post-hurricane, post-injury, post second unit stuff. We were the last two men standing, and we finished it on the death knell of the 22nd of December. If we didn't finish it, the European crew wasn't going home for Christmas. So there was something in the air, we had to get this and if we hadn't had trained as hard as we did we wouldn't have gotten it done on time.

Q: How did this project come to you?

Bana: My agent mentioned to me a long time ago that they were in the process of doing the story of Troy, but I think that was when the script was in development still. Then aside from that it's a great Hollywood story. My agent lives next to Brad's manager and they got to talking one day and Brad's manager mentioned to John that he had seen a couple of films I was in and was a fan. John mentioned to his manager that I was also a fan of Brad's, so they arranged for us to get together and meet. Go on a date. We got together and kind of loosely talked about how cool it would be if we managed to do something together. We weren't frantically looking for something but we mentioned how fun it would be if something came up to do it together. And then this came up and it was so ridiculously perfect.

Q: That happened right away?

Bana: No, it was some months later. Then I met Wolfgang and he asked me what I liked about the script and what character I liked, and I said I loved the character of Hector. He said that was great because Brad wanted to play Achilles. That was how it happened.

Then for a second Wolfgang was off the project, when he was going to do Batman/Superman, then he came back to the project, and they said are you still interested in Hector and I said definitely.

Q: What was it like working with Peter O'Toole? Did you have expectations of him, and did he meet them?

Bana: That's an interesting one. He's a living legend to me and I didn't dare have any expectations. He was way beyond this universe. I mean, he was so fantastic not only as a person but also to work with. I think if you ask most of the actors what their favorite scene to do was, if they were lucky enough to have a scene with Peter I'm sure it would be the scene with Peter. That was the case for myself for sure.

He certainly kept all of us younger people on our toes because he probably had as much if not more energy than all of us at times. He's so incredibly committed and so incredibly in the moment at all times. Forget about his age, even if he was twenty [it would have been incredible]. It was awesome, it was something to see someone of that age performing, you realize there are plenty of years ahead.

Q: Were you starstruck at all?

Bana: No. I'll tell you, his presence in a character is so strong you're more in awe of what he's doing rather than who he is. He's got so much energy coming at you as King Priam, Peter O'Toole is long gone.

Q: You were attracted to the character of Hector from the beginning you said. What was it you liked about him?

Bana: I loved him because I thought he was a great bloke. What I liked from an acting standpoint is that while we're introduced to him as the prince of Troy and leader of the Trojan army and stuff, he doesn't arrive and say "I'm Prince Hector, how good am I?" He earns your respect through the movie, he earns the nobleness. As an actor you had to earn it and you had to work for it. It wasn't like, here's the President of the United States. It's like, yes he's Hector but he does so many things through the course of this movie that make you feel for him and make you be aware of his journey and the decisions he has to make. When you read the script you really warm to this guy and think his journey is incredible.

Q: How much has Chopper been a calling card for you in Hollywood?

Bana: It's been great, but I'm also aware of the fact that things really do help you get in the door, but that's it. Once you get in the room if you don't perform you'll be shown the door immediately. It was certainly something that helped me get a foot in the door here, but it's not a laurel I want to rest on. I think that's dangerous.

Q: This film shows so many sides of war. What do you think it has to say in these times?

Bana: I think one of the reasons this story has lasted so long is that it's obviously the characters and the way the story plays out you can lay it over any period of time. It's not just the fact that hey, this is relevant to us now. It's relevant to every single regime, every single dictatorship, every single egotistical leader, every single warrior. It's completely relevant to now but it's also been completely relevant to every war that's been fought. And I think that's the brilliance of Homer and the Iliad - these characters are so identifiable and so clear.

Q: There's been a lot of talk about Hulk 2. Any word?

Bana: No one has talked to me

Q: How about replacing Hugh Jackman in The Boy from Oz?

Bana: You know, it's funny - Hugh Jackman is one of my close friends and this is the third movie in a row that had come out where we were a week apart. Last year we were following each other around with X-Men 2 and the Hulk, and a few years ago the first X-Men came out in Australia at the same weekend as Chopper was released. Now Van Helsing is a week away from Troy. I think we need to sit down and get our calendar together for next year!

Q: You have a resume that's filled with badasses. Any plans for a lighter film, a comedy?

Bana: I don't know about a comedy. Who knows? I don't have any hard and fast rules. I gravitate towards characters that I find interesting and I do find dramatic characters more interesting than light characters just because there's a lot more work involved. I could totally end up doing a comedy one day.

Q: There has been a vogue for big historical movies lately. Do you think it's because audiences want a simpler time, or clearer heroes?

Bana: I don't know. I got asked this question last year about the comic book movies. It's a tough one to answer. There's got to be cyclical trends in Hollywood in terms of how much money studios are prepared to spend or are able to spend, and obviously this came at a time when Warner Brothers had the balls and the ability to spend what they did on a movie like this. I think it's fantastic because I think this movie will sit on someone's shelf twenty years from now and you'll want to pull it out and show your kids.