Christopher Eccleston

The star of Jude has cornered the market in northern psychopaths, yet he yearns to be a heart-throb and claims to understand what women find attractive

FEATURE ANDREW MALE PHOTOGRAPHS QUINTIN WRIGHT


  Standing in the orange glow of a fruit machine in the corner of a charmingly ragged London bar, Christopher Eccleston drops a pound into the slot and 
presses randomly at the flashing buttons in front of him, evidently unsure of what he's doing.
Suddenly there is an electronic honk followed by a loud metallic clatter. He's just won £25.
  "Look at that," he says, holding out a handful of coins. ''I'm going to put it straight in the TSB. I'm the least dangerous actor in Britain." 
  In previous interviews he has been described as "private" and "difficult", but today the 35-year-old is the epitome of self-deprecating charm, pulling 
you in with piercing eyes and a soft Mancunian accent.
  Eccleston says the emotional potency of many of his roles affects him. "I do sometimes get massively adrenalised between takes," he says. "I can see 
people going, 'Jesus Christ, are you all right, mate?', but it's difficult to do a take where you're screaming at your 'wife' and then just [clicks his 
fingers] turn off." 
  But his next role, in Jimmy McGovern's psychological thriller Heart, may be his bleakest yet. He plays a man so consumed by sexual jealousy that he 
gives himself a heart attack. The film - costarring Saskia Reeves and Kate Hardie - features violent obsession, open-heart surgery, wild sex, bloody 
retribution and black, black comedy. Ecceleston, who has previously worked with McGovern on Cracker, Hearts And Minds and Hillsborough, loves it.
  "Jimmy calls it Greek," he says, "a Greek tragedy rooted in a world we all recognise. Some of the highbrow critics are going to turn their noses up, 
but you don't make films for thcm. English critics seem to like repressed butlers. They don't particularly like psychopathically violent northerners." 
  Eccleston evidently enjoys eriticbaiting and excels at talk like this, singling himself out as a gruff, northern outsider (he acknowledges, however, 
that "you can take that 'northern roots' thing too far and become a prick... although northern becr is better").
  When Jimmy MeGovern wants him for a role "he just starts writing this character with big ears" something of a recurrent theme. "I haven't got 
traditional film actor's features, thank God," he says. 'Ive got twin brothers eight years older than me with the same features, and if anybody taught me 
not to take myself seriously it was them. At school I knew all the insults." But while Eccleston revels in the unique "shape of his bones", he describes 
himself as a "permanent bridesmaid", bagging intense roles but never thc romantic lead and always being cast as a northerner. In Elizabeth, he broke the 
mould to play the Duke of Norfolk. "I think people wcre surprised I pulled that off, even though my dad said it sounded like thc Duke of Salford." 
  A Hollywood director currently wants him to play the love interest as a turn-of-the-century aristocrat in his film. "But," he spits, "some male 
financier is against it. Men! Trying to predict what women find attractive. I think their parameters about attractiveness are much broader than a lot of 
men's." 
  Eccleston's one of the few actors you could imagine getting drunk with. No wonder thc pub is where he and McGovern have done some of their best work. 
"When you go for a drink with Jimmy, he provokes you. Then details of your personal life appear in the script. You've got to acccpt it. Actors who take 
themselves too seriously - thespians who think they're the dog's bollocks, won't work with him." 
  Eccleston may reveal his private life to Jimmy, but in interviews he's renowned for being tight-lipped. Today, although he won't talk about whether he's 
in a relationship (enquiries elsewhere reveal he's single), he's willing to discuss his childhood and working-class roots.
  His earliest memories are defiantly laddish, centering on bikes and football: "I had a yellow bike with fat wheels and no stabilisers. I was never off 
it. If the sun broke through the clouds briefly in March, my mum said she'd find my T-shirt on the hedge and I'd return hours later, blue." 
  He describes his obsession with football as his" earliest form of self-expression". "I was absolutely shite at football, so I made a conscious decision 
to teach myself to play. I eventually ended up playing for Salford Boys. I had a fantastically happy childhood." 
  Eccleston describes his one true hero as Man United's Paul Scholes, and says he has a recurring anxiety dream of playing for United. 'I'm playing at 
Old Trafford in front of 55,000 people and [Ryan] Giggs tuts every time I get the ball." 
  As a child, he did spend some of his time indoors, watching TV with his parents, and being pointed towards work by socialist writers and directors. "If 
it wasn't for writers like Ken Loach and Alan Bleasdale, I wouldn't be where I am," he says."Good TV drama changed my life. I saw aspects of my own life 
in it." 
  He has approached Ken Loach about work. "Loach is wary of people who already have some sort of profile," he says. "He replied to my letter, saying how 
much he liked Hillsborough and that he would keep me in mind. The bottom line is that I'd do anything in a Loach film." 
  Some 16 years ago, aged 19, Eccleston enrolled in London's Central School of Speech and Drama in search of adventure. After he graduated, he went 
through two or three years of "profound rejection" which, he says, toughened him up. "It was a valuable time, but I wouldn't like a kid of mine to go 
through it." 
  He earned money working on building sites, in supermarkets and even as an artist's model. "I sat about stark bollock naked, holding my stomach in for 
eight quid a day. My folks were really worried about me and I was angry all the time." Despite his years of "resting", however, he now looks back on his 
big break in 1991, as the ill-fated Derek Bentley in Let Him Have It - about the infamous miscarriage of justice in the 50s as the lowest point in his 
career. 
  "I got the job because they could get me cheap. I thought the film was simplistic and a little insulting. I knew I could just go out and enjoy being a 
film star, but something, probably my upbringing, took over and said, 'A glamorous life means nothing if you don't do justice to this lad's life.' It 
politicised me." 
  Yet while Eccleston has held out for challenging roles, he's also seen fellow British actors such as Kate Winslet and Ewan McGregor run off to do 
big-money Hollywood blockbusters. Does he crave this success? "It depends what you do once you've done your Titanic or Trainspotting. But I'd love to do 
one. I was offered an audition for Saving Private Ryan and didn't like it - I thought it was American pie. But then I read the script for The Thin Red 
Line, went for that and fell on my arse." He also auditioned for the new Bond movie, but lost out to Robert Carlyle.
  After Heart, Eccleston's next film is a comedy - his first. In Michael Winterbottom's Old, New, Borrowed, Blue, which co-stars Dervla Kirwin of 
Ballykissangel fame, Eccleston plays an harassed ex-RUC officer from Belfast who's losing his mind. A massive comedy fan, from Fawlty Towers and The 
Likely Lads to Withnail And I and Vic and Bob, Eccleston describes the first few days of shooting as "humiliating" as he was "trying to be funny" and 
Winterbottom told him just to "be real".
  Eccleston maintains that he doesn't actually get offered that many roles. "You've got to be in a film that makes a lot of money. Or you've got to do 
telly that you don't believe in." 
  Eccleston doesn't do telly he doesn't believe in. He doesn't watch a lot of it either: "It's all vets, goats and doctors." Instead, he spends his spare 
time running marathons for Leukaemia Research, riding his bike and watching sport.
  His seriousness spills over into his career. "I think the main reason I'm an actor is because of what went on in my family: all of it good, but all 
about my mum and dad's values. That's why I did Hearts And Minds, Our Friends In The North and Jude, which are all about the exclusion of certain 
people;' he says. "I feel like I understand what my parents believed in - socialism." He pauses. "I just think it's much more interesting to have someone 
who stands up and says, 'I believe this.'" 
  "Yeah, socialist beliefs," says the guy from his latest film company, who witnessed Eccleston's luck on the fruit machine. "Hang on! You pocketed that 
£25 for yourself."