He's a familiar face on TV but Christopher Eccleston wants to keep his private life private. Simon Rogers speaks to one of Britain's brightest 
young actors.

  He comes to the interview with conditions. No personal questions, no separate photo shoot. We both place tape recorders on the table between 
us. Mention that Tony Benn MP also records his interviews and he beams at the association. "Tony Benn? Really? I once made a phone call next to 
him at Paddington Station." This is no politician or pop star; and we're not talking official secrets. This iS a young actor called 
Christopher Eccleston. 
  He was the psychotic accountant in the film Shallow Grave, the murdered policeman in TV's Cracker and the idealistic teacher in Hearts & Minds' 
harsh examination of Britain's education system. Now he plays another idealist in BBC2's flagship Our Friends in the North (OFITN). Eccleston is 
part of a new generation of young British actors, like Land and Freedom star Jan Hart, who are single­mindedly opting for good parts in serious, 
hard-hitting dramas and hate everything that goes with being an actor. 
  The Manchester-born actor looks like a cross between Gary Lineker and Ringo Starr, of whom he does a fine impression. He wears a leather jacket 
and just enough stubble to make him look casual, but trimmed to avoid scruffiness. Arriving at his PR agent's office, Eccleston could be anyone, 
and that's how he wants to stay: anonymous. Fame? He doesn't want it. "It gets in the way of what the writers are trying to do. It gets in the way 
of the work." 
  Eccleston, 31, wants to discuss nothing but 'the work' and believes that, despite his increasing fame, he can keep his private life to himself. 
(He's never been photographed out of character until today and doesn't want the press digging into relationships or family. "Live by 'em, die by 
'em," he says of the media.) 
  A lot is riding on his latest work, the eight-part series Our Friends in the North, the first episode of which was screened last week. Written by 
Tynesider Peter Flannery, OFITN tells the stories of four Newcastle friends from 1964 to 1995. The script was passed around the Beeb for years, and 
passed up twice before being finally commissioned by controller Michael Jackson. Costing around £7 million - half the channel's annual drama budget 
- it's filmed in over 100 locations with 160 speaking parts, 3,000 extras and 4,000 costumes. 
  Eccleston plays Nicky, an idealistic young Labour supporter who turns into a successful campaigning photo-journalist, via a circuitous route as 
activist and anarchist revolutionary. 
  Love, homelessness, youth crime, strikes, police corruption, bribed councils and the rise of the Soho sex industry all feature large in what is 
described as a 'Dickensian Tale'. It's also about betrayal - political and personal. "If you look at those years, at '64, '67, '70, you can see the 
seeds of 1995," says Eccleston. "That's what the series does." 
  His character is single-minded to the point of selfishness. Eccleston's proud of that. "I prefer an audience to dislike rather than like a 
character," he says. "I've worked with actors who are paranoid that their character's going to be disliked. It makes me want to take them by the 
throat and say 'why are you asking for pity all the time? What's so wrong with your personal life? You're doing the writer a disservice and, more 
importantly, you're doing the audience a disservice'." 
  He sits back. Eccleston doesn't open up often because that's not what he wants to talk about. It seems that the single-mindedness of his characters 
extends to the actor himself. Peter Flannery puts this partly down to his working­class roots. "He's a little bit unforgiving about what he does for 
a living," he says. "He's at the top of the business but there's something about him that doesn't want to admit he's an actor. It's potentially the 
kind of job that takes you away from your roots and he's very aware of that." 
  Above all, he wants to be in control. Flannery comments: "Originally we were talking to him about playing other characters, but the only part he 
wanted to play was Nicky. He brings that commitment and obstinacy and determination to whatever he does." 
  So, rather than continue making big bucks in the mass-audience Cracker, Ecc1eston shocked Granada executives by asking writer Jimmy McGovern to 
script him (dramatically) out of the series in the belief that he could get other, meatier roles. "If I haven't got enough faith in myself to play 
anything other than a TV copper," he says, "I shouldn't be doing this." 
  He's not a big fan of actors, especially those in the mainstream. "It must be hard to get out of bed each day if you know you're going to spend 
13 hours making shite," he remarks. Are there any actors he particularly admires? "No," he shakes his head more vigorously, and smiles, "I admire 
writers." He speaks highly of the writers of TV social dramas of the Seventies and early Eighties such as Boys From the Blackstuff. 
  He reserves particular bile for his own performance in the film Let Him Have It, his big break in 1991: "It was sentimental, it was woolly liberal 
armchair bollocks, and I was crap in it." 
  It's a serious film, one obviously intended as a great anti­capital punishment campaigning piece, but which fails to create more than a fleeting 
impression. Eccleston says he wasn't allowed to play on Derek Bentley's dark side and the result is a mess. "I went into Let Him Have It idealistic 
and I was given a good lesson about how this game works." 
  Of OFITN he is optimistic: "I hope we get decent viewing figures," he says. "I hope to Christ we do, and then executives across the four channels 
will think 'oh, you can make quality dramas and you can get an audience' . You don't have to produce shite." 
  Even within the constraints of mainstream TV, Eccleston thinks it is possible to make serious drama. "I mean," he says, warming to his theme, "if 
your budget shrinks, that's an enabler. You've got a smaller budget so you rely on imagination and invention." 
  If the series does get the reaction he craves, he will find it harder than ever to keep his personal life away from the prying media. Eccleston 
wants people to admire him on screen, but not to care who he's dating or where he comes from. 
  Maybe he can pull it off and keep his life to himself. Or maybe, one day, he will have to accept the inevitable truth: TV is a populist medium and 
the gap between his roles and his life narrows with every hit series he makes .•