this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines at the top of the hour, as newsday continues straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. acting is both an art and a craft. the words are written elsewhere, the action is directed by another but, ultimately, the power of the performance rests on the actor's ability to inhabit the role. so, what does it take to succeed in this precarious profession? well, my guest today, eddie marsan, is one of the uk's most recognisable and popular actors across stage and screen. his roots are genuinely working

class and that is something of a rarity in the performing arts. why? eddie marsan, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. nice to be here. you do seem to be that rare breed as an actor, a guy who is constantly, permanently busy. how do you manage it? i just... i think when i first started in drama school, i was always the guy who played the old man in the chekhov piece. if there was a young, attractive young man played the guy who shot himself at the end,

i was always the old guy with gout. they used to call me captain velcro in drama school because i played all the small parts. so, i realised very early on that nobody would want me to be me because, in reality, i don't think men want to be me and women want to sleep with me — so, i always had to be someone else. oh, my goodness. you've started with such a sort of powerful and profound sort of statement of who you are and the acting profession. is that something that you've found... you've had to come to terms with, or was it always an easy thing to accept? no, ifound it very liberating to become somebody else, to become kind of... to...not to lose myself, but to explore other personalities and other characters. but what you've also said is that you were, from the beginning, never really the lead, never the sort of the glamour, more the... and the phrase would be

the "character actor". yes. and i was very comfortable with that. i've always been very comfortable with that. a lot of my acting heroes when i was younger... like, for instance, when i was at drama school, and everyone was watching on the waterfront and everyone wanted to be marlon brando, i wanted to be rod steiger, you know, because i knew that that was what i was going to be. or i wanted to be karl malden. i want to be that kind of actor because the great craftsmen and the great artists and... there's less pressure as well. and the work is more diverse. and i've never been fashionable. nobody�*s ever made me into the next big thing. so, therefore, my careerjust carries on and on and on. and what's extraordinary about you, and i talk about the busy—ness because you have so many different roles, it seems, and juggling different parts at the same time, it's the diversity. for example, right now, you've got two big projects coming out — one, a film, a sort of biopic about the singer amy winehouse who died tragically young,

and you're playing the role of mitch winehouse, her father. and, at the very same time, across the pond in the us, you've made a mini—series for apple tv where you play the american revolutionary politicianjohn adams. yes. how do you get your head around such different parts at the same time? well, it was a necessity for me. because of my background and the fact that i was very working class and very... i was always being cast early on in my career as drug dealers or bank robbers or thugs in one way or the other. and i wanted to be an actor. i didn't want to be a professional caricature of a working—class character. so, i decided very early on that i wanted to be diverse. i wanted to play many different characters because i hated the idea of anyone defining me. because, usually, when they define me, it's usually — for want of a better word — it's some posh bloke defining what he thinks i am,

and i have to wait around for him to give me a job to be what he thinks i should be. and i wanted to empower myself as an actor to be able to play all different parts. it's very interesting the way you phrased that. you've been quite honest, saying, in your early career, you did have a sizeable chip on your shoulder... idid, yes. ..about being working class... idid, yes. ..in a trade, a profession, whatever we call acting, which, frankly, has been dominated for a long time by the middle classes. it has, yes, yes. and has that chip on the shoulder gone or is it still visible? it has. and one of the reasons it went was because of the kindness of people from a more privileged background than me. i think, when i first started acting, i tried to kind of tough it out, really. iwas... i tried to be like a working class hero. so, in a way, you tried to adhere to that caricature... yes, idid.

..that others wanted to impose upon you. and, quite often, people from underprivileged backgrounds, they revert back to the caricature, and defiant... kind of in a form of embracing it, they embrace it and with a form of defiance. and i tried. but, because i had no academic points of reference, i was struggling. i didn't know... i didn't know what to do. with, for instance, exploring a play about existentialism, i didn't know what existentialism was. and then, one day, ijust realised i had tojust have the humility to ask questions, to ask people who are more educated than me to explain things. and the thing is, actors are very, very generous. are they? 0h, lovely. and, yeah, they would sit down with me and explain things. and it was... so you had to lose your embarrassment that, for example, unlike many actors, i think you'd left school at 15. .. i left school at 15. ..and you tried to learn a trade. i was a printer. yeah, i was an apprentice. i mean, not many actors can say they've been through that life experience. yes. yeah, i tried to. and then, i got into acting because i was... a friend of mine, me

and a friend, we used to dance, and we were in a club, and some guy came up and asked us to be extras in a movie. and i spent a day on a film set, and then, i suddenly realised that i wanted to be an actor. it hadn't kind of occurred to me before. did you, to a certain extent, have to defy your own back... i mean, particularly your own family. your dad, i know, was quite a difficult man. yes, yes. and i think, at one point, you said, when you brought a book home which you obviously wanted to read, he just picked it up and chucked it away and said, "none of that, boy." yeah, yeah. and i couldn't stay on and do a—levels and things like that. so, when you said to him — i don't know quite what role your mum played — but when your dad learned that you actually wanted to give up being a printer and try your hand at full—time acting... well, he wasn't really involved in my life much then. by the age of 16, i started working for an east end bookmaker who ran a menswear store, called mr bennett, he was an incredible man. and while i was working for him, he knew i was studying to be an apprentice printer but he knew i wasn't happy.

and he saw that i loved being on a film set. and he said to me, "what do you want to do?" and i said, "i want to be an actor." and he said, "well, if you get into drama school, i'll pay." and i tried for years to get into drama school, couldn't get into any of them. and i finally got into one and he paid for the first year. the second year i had to win a scholarship. but he was brilliant. he was an incredible benefactor. it's almost like a dickensian story. it's a really interesting story. and what fascinates me, just thinking about one of your current projects, the amy winehouse film... yes. ..is that that hinges on the relationship between a parent and a daughter. i mean, you play amy's dad. amy, for those who haven't seen the film and aren't so aware of all of amy's sort of problems, she was the most gifted singer. she was a sensation. but she also had grave addiction problems. she did, yes. and her dad, who was so keen to help her build this

showbusiness career, has been criticised by many for failing to intervene substantially with his daughter and get her into rehab orforce her to change her lifestyle. you've obviously had time to reflect on that and, given your own background and everything you've said about what you learned through sort of the hardships of your life... yes. ..do you have sympathy with this man you've just played? yes, i have lots of sympathy. when... i knew after... a year before they made the film, i knew that they were going to approach me to play the film. and i've a friend of mine who worked with amy and mitch and had first—hand experience of their relationship. and i knew that there was a prevailing narrative that mitch was to blame for amy's death, basically. and i asked my friend what he thought, and he said, "i always liked the man, eddie." he said, "i thought he was a loving father, but he was in a very "difficult situation. "his daughter was the most famous woman in the world. "she was an addict.

"she had unlimited resources of money. "the paparazzi were hounding her. "and every drug dealer in london, every drug dealer in london "was trying to give her money... "was trying to give her drugs," he said. and it was a perfect storm. and mitch didn't know whether to keep her busy or to put her into rehab. and there's one song that says, "my dad said i didn't have to go into rehab." and people think that's it. the family tried nine times to get her to... they tried nine interventions. i spent the evening last night with the family to celebrate, to see the film, and to celebrate her life.. did you? ..in a personal way, just to pay my respects to them. and she comes from a very loving family. i don't... i never bought the narrative of villains and victims. i never trusted that narrative in any way, politically, culturally, because i always think whenever somebody is telling you that there's a villain and a victim, they're doing two things. they're infantilising the victim. and you've got to ask, who are you...? in this scenario, if there's

a villain and a victim, you can name the villain and name the victim. who are you? and as an actor, i knew, as a working class actor, there were lots of very well—meaning progressive film—makers, middle—class film—makers who would tell me about the world being villains and victims but, actually, what they weren't aware of was their own narcissism, that they were the heroes of the story, not the victims. because, as a victim, if you try to change their definition of you, if you try to step outside of their definition of you, you destroy their own narcissistic narrative. and so, and so, i... when i approached mitch to play mitch... and you talked to him quite a lot. i met up with him about three orfour times and i asked him for... he was my main source of research. i asked for photographs. i asked him to record a song for me. i asked for a playlist of his favourite music. i asked what aftershave he wore. really? yeah. because, at the beginning of this

interview, i talked about the way actors inhabit roles. yes. and ijust wonder how far you go. are you that kind of immersive method actor, as some call it? well, there are certain plates that you keep spinning. acting is basically spinning plates on poles and make sure that no plate falls down. and some plates, because of your own psychological make—up, they spin of their own accord, and some you have to keep spinning yourself. for me, i always keep the plates spinning, but i'm able to talk to people about, you know, everyday life, and be polite. but when we did ray donovan, i was always shaking. i was always exploring the idea of the physicality. i would be like this all day long because when the camera rolled, then, i wanted to... because the character has... the character has parkinson's. so, i didn't want to be thinking about it when i'm acting, because of the context that the character's in. it can sometimes seem very extreme, though. i mean, how far do you take it? at the end of the day,

you do say, and you've said perhaps this is, again, a product of your past, your working—class roots, that acting is a job, it's a trade. it is a job. yes. it's like many otherjobs. and, ultimately, don't you have to... snaps fingers ..kind of switch off at the end of the day? you do. yeah, i mean, i can switch off. but i give 100% on the day. but i can switch off. yeah. now, thinking about your background and some of the great roles you've played, and award—winning roles like playing in happy—go—lucky, mike leigh's film, where your character was socially awkward, was a loner, wasn't particularly nice. yes. and then, i think, around the same time, maybe a couple of years separate, you played another very striking role in a film called tyrannosaur... yes. ..where you were, again, a loner, but you were actually a pretty malign character. you were nasty and abusive. how easy is it for you to find ways to play these difficult, troubled, sometimes deeply nasty people? because i don't play them as particularly nasty people. i...think there's just unhappy people in search of happiness

and scott in happy—go—lucky, and the husband, the abusive husband in tyrannosaur — both had similar purposes. they both wanted to be loved. scott was basically what we would call now an incel. you know, these people exist on social media now. social media didn't exist then. and when we were doing tyrannosaur, olivia and i were given case studies of men who were abusive to their wives. and one of the striking features of these reports was that all these men wanted to be loved. they just. .. and that's a more frightening aspect. when you play that, when you play someone who wants to be loved and show the vulnerability at the same time as doing evil things, that's really challenging for the audience. yeah. you can't play ev... you can't play two—dimensional evil characters, it doesn't work. you can. i mean, there are a lot

of hollywood movies which are deeply two—dimensional. yeah. are you saying you're now quite picky and you want to go down routes which challenge you and challenge the audience? yes. yeah, yeah. because i'm not... i don't have the confidence to make a bad script good. some actors do, and i can't. i'm just like a musician. i play the notes that are on the page. what about the money? if hollywood comes to you with a frankly silly script in a silly movie, but they're offering you shed loads of money? i'd do it. 0h, i'd do it, 100%. i'd do it. and then, i mean... in acting, you call it f—off money. you put money in the bank and then you can tell everybody for scripts, "i don't want to do that." it's called f—off money. is that right? yeah. and then... so, you've taken a bit of f—off money? oh, yeah, ioo%, yeah. is one reason — and correct me if i'm wrong — but the arc of your career, it strikes me you did an awful lot

of theatre in the �*90s. idid, yes. national theatre, all sorts of theatre. yes. very well reviewed, a lot of it. and then, you seemed to decide to go to tv and to movies and to spend much less time in the theatre. well, what happened was i... we had children, and i've got... my children are very close in age. so, we had four very young children. and, at the same time, i was offered ray donovan in america. so, i was commuting back and forth. we used to do ray donovan for six months every year. so, when i came back, the idea of going to do a play and not read my kids a goodnight story or something, and daddy's going to go off and do a play somewhere — itjust didn't seem logicalfor me, really. and also, the other thing is i never used to get great parts in the theatre. theatre had a very... not only theatre, but the uk had a very fixed idea of me and i had to go over and work in america, for the americans to get a more... to be more open—minded about me, about what i could play. that's very interesting. and they gave me great opportunities. that reminds me of something that the black british actor david harewood has said.

yes. that he found that when he went to america, opportunities, parts opened up to him that were never offered to him in the uk because uk casting directors, producers saw him in a particular way and that he was freed from that in america. yes. is that... are you're saying the same sort of thing? 100%. not about race but about class? class, ioo%. i went over to... when i went over to america, i was doing... i was doing ray donovan. and then, they asked me to play... they've just asked me to play john adams, for instance. and that's something that the british would never do. when i was first doing a job in... when i was first in ray donovan, my agent called me. she said, "they're doing richard iii, the bbc, "and they're going to offer you a part." now, i played richard iii onstage,

i toured and played richard iii. so, ithought, ok, i won't play richard, but i'll probably play a good part. and the offer came through from the bbc and it was a thief with two lines. stephen snorts. and i'm working every day with, you know, on a big hollywood show. and i thought, why do they have this very fixed idea of me? and i didn't go back and work for a little while. and david... sorry to interrupt. that's all right. but you're saying it really, foryou, in britain, comes back to class. yeah. and i think class is something that's very immersed in all our psyches, even people who want to transcend it, it's still something that we still see. we still see the country in those parameters, in those definitions. you've actually opened up for me a whole area that i think is very interesting for an actor these days. and it's a debate about what they call authenticity, the degree to which actors should and can embrace parts that are far from their own personal experience. right. and it literally has led to huge arguments about whether a non—trans actor should play a trans role, whether a jewish, a non—jewish actor should play a jewish role. ijust wonder, you know, given your view of acting as a craft, as something that you can work at and get better at,

and whether that leads you to feel, "you know what? i can play virtually anybody. "nobody should be told they can't have a role "because they're not, in essence, "of the right in essence, of the right "sort of background." well, two things. the first thing, i think, the great adage of acting is nothing human is alien to me. it's an exercise of artistic empathy. and that means to understand people different from you. i think, secondly, if you come from an underprivileged background, be it due to your sexuality, be it due to the colour of your skin, your race, your class, your religion, whatever, you have to be exceptional to have a career in this profession. if you come from a privileged background, you can be mediocre and you'll get a career. so, how can somebody, how can a young kid, for instance, from streatham, who...maybe their parents or grandparents are nigerian and they want to be an actor, how can they be exceptional if they can only play a young kid of nigerian descent from streatham?

i want young black actors to have the career of adrian lester or david harewood. i want young gay actors to be like andrew scott or sir ian mckellen, you know. i wantjewish actors to be like jason isaacs or like, like henry goodman or like anthony sher. i think there's a need to categorise people in order to tackle lack of opportunity and inequality. and representation. and rep... but the flip side of this argument is that a gay director—writer like russell t davies has said that he doesn't want non—gay actors playing gay roles because he wants that actor when he's cast the actor to be the best criminal or lover or whatever he can be, not to be a performative gay person if he's not actually gay. i mean, that's something that he... yeah, but i think the best thing you can do, for instance,

when russell did it's a sin... i disagreed with that. i think the best thing he can do for that young cast of, the young actor playing who was gay, playing the gay part, the best thing that you can do for him is cast him in a straight role, in a romantic lead in a straight role, and say, "watch how brilliant he is." because what you're doing then is you're enabling that actor to go on and have a diverse career. and what you're doing is you're challenging the preconceived, the subconscious prejudice of the audience. what you don't do is say he's a gay actor, therefore, he can only play gay roles. that's what will happen. and what's the percentage of gay people in the country? what is it, 10%, 15%? so, what? they're going to be eligible for 10% or 15% of the roles? you would never have had

ian mckellen, you would never have had anthony sher, you would never have had these actors if you said, "well, they're gay, therefore they can only do that." a final thought for you, which is actually about something else you've taken upon yourself in recent years, and that is to have a very powerful political voice. yes. mostly thanks to social media. yes. and you've been very open about your politics. you've been a labour party supporter for a long time. yes. but then, in 2019, whenjeremy corbyn was leading the labour party, you had a massive fallout with the party. you said, and i'm looking at a quote here, jeremy corbyn should be quote, "disqualified from being prime minister "because of his prime minister because of his "attitude to the internal party debate over anti—semitism "and the way it was handled." yes. do you think there is a potential problem there, that audiences now see you as eddie marsan, notjust the actor, but as the sort of political activist? and it's hard sometimes to separate the two when they might need to be separated. perhaps. but... but i very rarely play heroic parts, i always play villainous parts. so, even if you've got a bad opinion of me, it's quite nice to watch it! they chuckle i get that point.

they chuckle. i get that point. but equally... even within the cast, you know, you might have views that other members of the same cast and, after all, you are a team working together, might really seriously disagree with. i mean, are you ever finding that these days? oh, i mean... as actors become more political... i worked withjon voight on ray donovan for seven seasons, and i disagreed with him vehemently about trump and about the american elections. but also, i loved talking to him about the acting profession and his experience as a young actor in the �*60s and �*70s, with dustin hoffman and with just gene hackman growing up. also...i think, i think on social media people are defined by their opinions. but when you work with people, people can have different opinions, but you still like them. i've spent... iquite like... there's a lot of people i disagree

with politically and i like them. and there's lots of people i agree with politically and i can't stand them. stephen laughs. that's a very good point. i think it's probably a good way to end. yeah. eddie marsan, it's been a pleasure. thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you very much. hello there. tuesday was another chilly day for most of us, but there was plenty of glorious sunshine across more northern and western parts of the country through the day. behind me, the scene of central glasgow with the blue skies overhead, temperatures reaching, again, the mid—teens celsius here, but quite a contrast further east where we had more cloud pushing in off the north sea.

it was pretty chilly here in cambridge with those grey leaden skies, even the odd spit and spot of drizzle. the next few days it stays similar with chilly weather for all of us, but staying really chilly across eastern areas where we hold on to the cloud, best the sunshine further west closer to this area of high pressure. but for wednesday, we're still in a run of northerly winds, particularly brisk close to north sea coasts. and much of the north—west of europe remains locked with this arctic air mass in place. so it does remain on the chilly side both by day and by night. however, again, wednesday eastern areas will see most of the cloud, the strongest of the breeze, maybe a few showers. best of the sunshine will be northern and western areas. i think we could see more sunshine around on wednesday than we've had the last few days, but slightly chillier air mass, i think — highs of 13—14 degrees in the warmest spots, single digits along north sea coasts. so as we head through wednesday night, we could see an area of more organised showers, long spells of rain pushing

into northern scotland. there will be some snow on the hills — the air is cold enough for that. elsewhere, it's a dry and a chilly night, a touch of frost where skies will be clear. thursday, then, it's a similar story. another chilly day starts off with some sunshine, could see the cloud building up, so we ought to see some scattered showers developing across northern and eastern england and scotland. again, wintry on the hills of both northern england and scotland, but some sunny spells in between. best of the temperatures down towards the south west, 12—13 degrees — chilly for most. subtle changes as we head into friday, we start to see low pressure beginning to develop and push northward. so i think it'll turn cloudier through the day on friday across southern britain and northern ireland, outbreaks of rain here. still quite chilly, though, across the northern half of the uk — certainly, showers will be of sleet and snow certainly over the hills. quite a messy picture to come. again, question marks on this. you'll have to stay tuned to the forecast for the details. but it looks like friday will be another chilly day, temperatures of 8—12 celsius from north to south. as you move out of friday

into the start of this coming weekend, it looks like low pressure will take over across the south. the country will be turning windier with a strong easterly wind. outbreaks of rain, longer spells of rain, in fact, maybe some wintriness over the high ground. for the northern half of the country — scotland, northern ireland — doing pretty well on saturday with some sunshine, but chilly, a few wintry showers certainly on the hills. temperatures beginning to creep up, though, in the south as we start to draw some warmer air off the near continent. and that's the theme to come. as we look further ahead then, into the weekend and into the following week, it does look like low pressure will be sticking close by, pretty much dominating the scene, in fact, bringing showers or longer spells of rain. there will be some sunshine, i think, around, but generally staying unsettled. one thing we will notice is we will lose this arctic air mass which has been sitting across the country for over a week and replace it with some warmer air from the near continent. so that will be noticeable as we move through the weekend, into the following week, into the early part of may. temperatures will be creeping up closer to the seasonal norm. however, with low pressure always nearby, i think it will generally

stay on the unsettled side. but details will change so stay tuned.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm mariko oi. the headlines.. a key witness at the hush—money trial of donald trump says he suppressed negative stories about the former president. five people, including a 7—year—old girl, have died attempting to cross the channel from france to britain. an iraqi father starts legal action against energy giant bp , over the death of his son. and.. after months of spouting gibberish — nasa says its voyager one probe is once again sending usable information back to earth.