Eric Bana has been promoting his supporting role in Funny People, and doing some early promotion for his lead role in The Time Traveler’s Wife, which will be out in November. He only did a couple of interviews before Funny People release, but many critics and reviewers singled Bana out as the best, funniest part of the film. Funny People’s director, Judd Apatow always claimed he hired Bana for the role because he was such a fan of Bana’s work in Munich (which really is an amazing film, one of Steven Spielberg’s best), and Apatow also claims it came as a complete surprise that Bana was so good at comedy. Bana actually got his start in comedy and stand-up, back in his home country, Australia.

Anyway, Bana went on The View to promote his two films, and it turns out Barbara Walters had gotten her hands on an early screening of The Time Traveler’s Wife. Barbara was beside herself at being so close to her latest girl-crush, and she even asked Bana to strip down live on the show:

American news queen Barbara Walters asked Eric Bana to strip naked on live US television - but he declined. The Australian actor was a guest on Walters’ talk show The View to promote his new romance-drama based on the bestselling novel The Time Traveller’s Wife.

In the film, Bana’s character involuntarily time travels and when he lands in a new time he is completely naked. Walters, 79, watched the movie before today’s interview and was obviously impressed with 40-year-old Bana’s buff body.

“We see more of your backside,” an excited Walters told Bana, stopping mid-sentence to compose herself.

When she regained her breath she simply said: “I had a wonderful time.”

The studio audience burst out in laughter. Then Walters came up with her naked proposal.

“So, I thought maybe you would like to show us now how it is done,” she propositioned Bana. The Melbourne-born and bred actor kept his clothes on.

He went on to admit he was surprised he was naked so often in The Time Traveller’s Wife, which co-stars actress Rachel McAdams and opens in Australian cinemas in November.

“I read all of those scenes and I read the book and I’m like ‘Yeah, he’s butt naked quite a bit but it is PG13 so I’ll never have to take my clothes off’,” Bana said. “Well, I was wrong. Every third or fourth day it was ‘Eric, drop your pants’.”

While Walters was purring on the right side of The View couch about Bana’s naked body, on the left co-host Joy Behar was purring about another of Bana’s traits.

“I love your accent,” Behar told Bana.

“Don’t you love it? It’s Australian.”

For Bana the biggest plus about appearing on the talk show was the knowledge that his mother, Eleanor, could watch back in Melbourne.

“I got big brownie points today because this is her favourite show and she watches it every day,” he said.

[From ABC]

Aw, Eric Bana is so cute when he talks about his mom. Alas, ladies (and a few gentlemen), Bana is taken. He’s been happily married to wife Rebecca Gleeson since 1997. They have two children together: son Klaus (10 years old) and daughter Sophia (7 years old).

In one other piece of Bana news, I mentioned yesterday that the screenwriter of Time Traveler’s adaptation to the screen recently gave an interview that I thought was slightly disrespectful to Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams (who plays “the wife”). Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin claimed that he wanted Brad Pitt (who is one of the producers of the film) to star with Jennifer Aniston as the wife originally. Regardless of the Bermuda Triangle stuff, I found this extremely insulting to Bana and McAdams - they are both gifted actors who should not be anyone’s second choice. My guess is that Brad Pitt bought the rights to the book with an idea that he might star, but ended up giving the part to his Troy buddy Eric, because Brad genuinely thought Eric would do a better job with the material.

Eric Bana is shown shirtless in Troy, thanks to Squarehippies.com, and at events on 4/29, 4/30, 7/20, and 7/22/09. Credit: WENN.com