Guy Pearce has never opted for the easy life.

After becoming a teenage pin-up thanks to his role in Neighbours, by rights he should have gone on to have a moderately successful if short-lived pop career, before bagging a guest spot in a West End musical.

Not Pearce. After his spell on the Australian soap came to an end, the actor disappeared from view before reappearing in drag in Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Critical acclaim followed with LA Confidential and Factory Girl and much is expected from his portrayal of Harry Houdini in Death Defying Acts.

"It was tricky role on a couple of levels," says the English-born, Australian-raised actor. "The physical side was a challenge.

"Houdini's a really strong, muscular, solid guy who's also got a very great sense of himself and the power of himself. So there was real personality and physical traits that I wanted to honour.

"The first thing I needed to do, before I could even agree to do the role, was really to get back to the gym and actually start feeling physical again, like I could actually feel my body again, because I'd sort of made it disappear."

In Death Defying Acts, Houdini meets a beautiful but deceptive psychic (Catherine Zeta Jones) and her daughter (Saoirse Ronan) when he offers a huge monetary reward to anyone who can contact his mother from beyond the grave.

Playing the famous magician meant recreating some of his famous stunts, including the Chinese water torture cell.

"There was a lot of training for the breath-holding stuff that we did, and working with the chains and Chinese water torture torches," he says.

"I had to do a lot of preparation, learning to hold my breath for a really long time, to hang upside-down for a long while. So there were a variety of lessons I had to go and do, a few magic tricks. Not a lot of magic stuff, but a bit – coin disappearing, cards disappearing and reappearing, that kind of stuff. It was astounding the stuff that I learnt as far as what we can actually do to ourselves to transform. I had quite a physical routine."

It's been a long road to stardom for 40-year-old Guy, who found fame playing Mike Young in Neighbours in the late 1980s. Then his movie career took off.

"That's the interesting thing about being an actor," he says.

"You get to delve into people's worlds for a little minute, get a taste of what things might be like, and constantly saying to yourself, it's a lot harder than it looks."

He admits he's hardworking and ambitious, yet Guy insists his Hollywood success happened by accident.

"I had no intention of going to LA," he says.

"I wasn't hugely secure in what I was really able to do at home and I thought 'why go to LA and be out of work when I can be out of work at home?' I really just went there initially to do publicity on the back of Priscilla.

"Don't get me wrong, I was ambitious and there was stuff I really wanted to do, but I wasn't overtly ambitious. I just saw opportunities, I really made an effort to audition for loads of stuff and got lucky – I got LA Confidential. There are plenty of actors who could have played that role, so I just think I was fortunate."

He often seeks advice from his psychologist wife Kate about taking on new parts. The childhood sweethearts have been married for 11 years.

"I'll get Kate to read stuff and we'll talk about it. I'll say, am I missing something here? Is this cleverer than I think or not? So it's not an easy thing sometimes. Sometimes it really is. Like when I read Memento, I could have shot that the next day. So it varies."

He admits that he had doubts about playing Houdini – to the point that director Gill Armstrong had to convince him that he was right for the role.

"I had just played Andy Warhol in a film where it was important to stay factually correct," Guy explains.

"I said to Gill initially 'I don't think I'm right for this."

Guy eventually accepted, but was determined to approach the character differently than he had for the iconic pop artist.

"Although I am playing a real person again, this was more of a 'what if' story, so I was able to let go of being so rigid with the research material and work within the world of the script," he says.

Despite being a bona fide star with an enviable track record, Guy remains modest about his success to date.

"Some people are talented and it doesn't matter what they do, they're just going to succeed at it. Some people are just lucky and in the right place at the right time. It's about persistence."