When he was just 18 and still at school, Pearce was pestering the producers of Neighbours for an audition. He joined the show in 1986, two days after his final exams, and stayed for three years. His character, Mike Young, was conceived as wholesome and responsible, despite a dark past with an abusive father.

In this clip, from 1989, we find Mike just home from touring with a jazz band (a storyline engineered to cover Pearce’s absence while he was shooting the film Heaven Tonight). On his travels he’d met a girl called Jenny Owens (Danielle Carter); she’d fallen from his motorbike and lost the use of her legs. Mike, consumed with guilt, had been helping her convalesce. This was their farewell.

Mike and Jenny’s physical closeness as he helps her into the taxi and crouches down beside her makes an intimate bubble that has us wondering what might come of this charged moment – but his goodbye kiss is platonic, despite her wistful look.

Pearce has been a quiet achiever on the world stage – his 2025 nomination for an Academy Award was his first – but the scope of his achievements has always won respect. He’s played a force-of-nature drag queen in 🚨 Invalid link 🚨 The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994); a buttoned-up cop in LA Confidential (1997); a haunted amnesiac in Memento (2000); a bushranger in The Proposition (2005). He’s embodied Andy Warhol and Harry Houdini and Errol Flynn.

Despite his success, Pearce had enough feeling for Neighbours to return for its (supposed) finale in 2022 – as did Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Margot Robbie.

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