When Game of Thrones star Carice van Houten announced her pregnancy with actor Guy Pearce on Instagram – “Yes, it’s true. Let the shadow baby jokes begin” – many of the Memento star’s fans were surprised.

Over the years, Pearce had given multiple interviews saying fatherhood wasn’t in his future.

“I believe you need to have a level of emotional consistency when you raise a child and I don’t know that I have that,” he told The Independent in 2011.

So the news of his son Monte’s conception changed everything, he told The New Daily on a phone call during post-production on upcoming British supernatural series The Innocents.

Pearce and Dutch actor van Houten, 41, who plays priestess Melisandre on GoT, had not long fallen for each other on the set of western movie Brimstone in late 2015.

Carice van Houten (at the 2014 SAG awards) calls herself an actor, singer and “mama” on Instagram. Photo: Getty 

“On some level, I was still in shock,” Pearce, 50, told The New Daily.

“I couldn’t quite take on what was happening with this woman who is now pregnant with this child that we have made.”

Since his birth in August 2016, Monte has taught Pearce patience.

“It’s easy in my line of work to be juggling many things at once and, like in meditation, getting to concentrate on one thing at a time is a beautiful relief,” he said.

“When it’s your own child it’s even more beautiful. Having Monte also makes me realise what’s important and what’s not.”

The past three years have seen a lot of changes for the star of Mildred Pierce and Jack Irish (returning to the ABC in early July.)

After separating from psychologist Kate Mestitz, 51, after 18 years of marriage at the start of 2015, he was left “raw and emotional”.

An accomplished guitarist and pianist, Pearce poured his pain into the songs that form the basis of his second studio album, The Nomad.

Oooh, it's here…..That's exciting……. pic.twitter.com/egDrcli8ML

— Guy Pearce (@TheGuyPearce) June 19, 2018

Lovingly referenced on the album’s final track, Monte’s arrival was a whirlwind for Pearce, who will direct (and star) in his first feature, Poor Boy, in Australia later this year.

“I was working on When We Rise in Canada in April and May and as soon as I finished that, I flew back to Australia and did a day on Ridley Scott’s film Alien: Covenant.

“Then I flew straight back to LA and recorded the album, then to Amsterdam and a few weeks later we had the baby.”

Laughing, he adds, “I was in four different countries doing a TV show, making a movie and an album, and having a baby. I was like, ‘What is going on?’.”

He recruited van Houten to sing backing vocals on two of the album’s tracks, one of which addresses the ongoing trauma he feels at losing his test pilot father Stuart Pearce in a plane crash.

Guy was eight at the time of his father’s death, which made his schoolteacher mother Margaret Pearce a single mother to her son and eldest child Tracy.

“I wanted her on the album because she has a beautiful voice anyway, but at the same time I thought, ‘Well look, we are swimming around in this thing together’,” he said.

The pair also collaborated on re-enacting a scene from classic Italian film La Notte in Prague for a possible video for The Nomad, but Pearce isn’t sure if it will see the light of day.

“It’s incredibly meaningful and at the same time it’s also quite experimental,” he said. “We’re sort of taking opportunities and seeing what might fit together.”

Pearce also reconnected with former Neighbours co-star Kylie Minogue at the Cannes Film Festival a couple of years back after 17 years of near misses.

At the time, both were being courted by Pearce’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert director Stephan Elliott for his latest film Swinging Safari.

They encouraged each other to dive into the 1970s-set racy Aussie beach comedy.

“Now we are in contact with each other all the time and I was at her 50th just a couple of weeks ago,” he said of Minogue.

Yep, it did……..Saw it with my own eyes……Brilliant ! https://t.co/MappB2DlTq

— Guy Pearce (@TheGuyPearce) May 31, 2018

“There’s just something about us that makes each other laugh whenever we look at each other. It’s a really lovely friendship to get back to again.”

Pearce reveals their giggling ground the shoot to a halt multiple times.

“It was such a silly film in the best kind of way. Kylie and I were playing a pair of d—heads. Well, me more so. There were so many takes we just couldn’t do because we’d make each other laugh.”

Guy Pearce’s The Nomad is released on July 6. He will play Arts Centre Melbourne on July 8.