“I’m from a relatively small town and a rural place, and I think you see that in my hands and my face,” says Australian actor Joel Edgerton, a Golden Globe nominee as Best Actor for his part in the interracial drama Loving. It’s this earthbound quality that appealed to Loving’s director Jeff Nichols, who also cast Edgerton in another 2016 movie, Midnight Special. “I loved (…) Joel’s rough stoicism, his quiet openness to the world,” the director said.Loving tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving (played by Edgerton and Ruth Negga – also nominated for a Golden Globe), the real-life interracial couple whose marriage in 1958 was opposed by the state of Virginia, prompting them to take their civil rights case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 2017 will mark the 50th anniversary of their victorious case, Loving vs. Virginia.”In Hollywood, we often tell a true story, but we don’t tell it truthfully,” Edgerton says. “I love the graceful way the relationship between Richard and Mildred is narrated in the film. In 1958 they’re already a couple, with no origin story necessary to explain how these two people improbably came together.”  When Mildred learns that she’s pregnant, she and Richard drive to Washington, D.C. to be legally married. But that marriage holds no standing when local sheriffs break in on them in the middle of the night at their Virginia home, beginning a nearly nine-year legal battle during which they’re required to remain outside of Virginia for 25 years in order to avoid prison.Joel Edgerton, born on June 23, 1974, in Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia, started acting in middle school. After high-school graduation, he attended Nepean Drama School in 1994. Edgerton has done many projects on stage and off, but most people will recognize him from his work on the Australian television series The Secret Life of Us (2001), which gave him his first big breakthrough in the television industry. He also appeared in other television projects such as The Three Stooges (2000) and Dossa and Joe (2002). Edgerton has done a lot of work on the theater stage: he played King Henry in Henry V, Prince Hal in Henry III, and others, including Road, Third World Blues and Dead White Males. His first international break came when he played Uncle Owen Lars in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002). Since then, he has also starred in Ned (2003), King Arthur (2004), Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) and Kinky Boots (2005). He won awards in his native Australia as Best Actor in Wish You Were Here (2013). He was also praised for his supporting roles in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.Edgerton is very serious about Loving‘s subject matter: “Equality is something that doesn’t one day just get solved and then we move on,” he says. “It’s like there was a problem we had, we fixed it now, let’s all just love each other. It’s a discussion constantly going on around the world, in the U.S., in Europe, in Australia. We can all improve.”The actor has recently wrapped both his brother’s, filmmaker Nash Edgerton, yet untitled new movie and the horror mystery It Comes at Night. He is currently also busy shooting the fantasy-futuristic Bright alongside Will Smith. “It seems I can’t stop working,” he quips; “and yet I’m so looking forward to the Golden Globe night on January 8th, take a break, and have a nice time.”