There are plenty of actors around who behave like they're the second incarnation of Christ but very few you'd ever consider nailing to a cross. At least, 
not in a good way. 
Now, Christopher Eccleston, you can see him up there: Naked; tortured; bleeding; "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do"; crown of thorns; 
the lot. 
  Russell T Davies could see him up there too, casting the Salford-born actor as the reborn Christ in his new two-part drama for ITV1, The Second Coming. 
  Eccleston plays Steve Baxter, an unremarkable bloke from Manchester who shares a drunken kiss with his best mate Judith (Lesley Sharp) outside a club 
one night. As she staggers away, she says, "Don't go thinking that meant anything." But it does. Steve has a revelation: He is the Son of God made 
flesh. The genuine article. One-hundred per cent. And he's got a world to save. 
  So how did Eccleston prepare for such a role? Hunkered down in the lounge of a posh Manchester hotel, I intend this as a semi-serious opening question. 
He considers his answer carefully. 
  He made a lot of decisions about how to play Steve the very first time he read Davies' script, he says quietly as he examines his heavy work boots. 
  "You have a gut reaction. He's an ordinary fella - whatever that means - in extraordinary circumstances." 
"You read it and you have a gut reaction. 
He's an ordinary fella - whatever that means. - in extraordinary circumstances. So you've got to think, well, that's why he was chosen, because he 
was ordinary. So what's extraordinary about him is his ordinariness. How would your mate deal with the idea that he as the second incarnation of 
Jesus Christ?" 	
  Good question. Eccleston seems unusually serious today - though nowhere near as difficult an interviewee as some suggest. In the flesh, he shares 
that brooding, slow-burn knit-brow intensity of many of his screen creations. Utterly serious about his work, he has a ready wit and an occasionally 
over-the-top air of modest self-effacement. 
  The Second Coming, he announces, "was so brilliantly written that a monkey could have played the role - which is why they cast me. 
  "Anyone of my experience could've played that role," he continues, matter-of-fact. "If you've got a modicum of intelligence and have been acting for 
a few years, you should be able to deliver dialogue like that without walking into the furniture." 
  Eccleston's is a very ordinary Messiah. "I love pork pies," he says at one point. He revels in the sensual pleasures of the flesh - beer, fags, 
curries, rain, car alarms - and when a taxi appears out of nowhere at exactly the right time, he points and grins at Lesley Sharp. "Now that's a 
miracle!" 
  In it's own small way, the fact that The Second Coming has made it to the screen is something of a miracle itself. 
  Television doesn't ask us enough questions these days. It often tells us what we already know - that many people see fame as an end in itself, that 
they'll do practically anything to become famous and, once famous, they'll do absolutely anything to remain that way, for instance. But it seldom asks 
us to examine why we think the way we do. 
  Queer as Folk and Bob & Rose proved Davies isn't afraid of asking his audience difficult questions. It was this intellectual rigor and 
integrity which attracted Eccleston. He sees The Second Coming as a direct continuation of the work he's done for television in the past, like 
Hillsborough, Our Friends in the North and last year's Flesh and Blood. 
  "It's a debate on faith and the power of religion to oppress, how religion can be used and abused. It makes a huge political point. It talks about 
the end of God. But it could be about plastic mouldings - I'd do a drama called Plastic Mouldings if it was written truthfully and with heart." 
  If the highlights of Eccleston's TV work - and the powerfully effective The Second Coming is most defInitely a career highlight - have a common 
thread running through them, it is that they all have a good script and they all actually mean something. Or, as Eccleston puts it: "You sit in front 
of them, as a viewer, and you don't feel patronised, because of the strength of the writing." 
  Few of Eccleston's past projects, however, have had the potential to cause quite as much fuss as The Second Coming. 
  You're on dangerous ground here, I tell him. You're asking questions about people's faith and perhaps trampling all over their world-view in the 
process, all on peak-time ITV. 
  "No," he says quickly and fIrmly. "Russell's not in the trampling game. This is something that will excite debate. That's the whole reason we're 
here, to debate - and that's certainly what television is supposed to do, to ask difficult questions. And faith needs to be questioned. 
  "It's like someone said about The Life of Brian - if a person's faith is strong enough, it will stand up to a two-hour film drama about it." 
  Even so, being involved in a project like this is quite a brave thing to do. 
  "It's not brave," he says dismissively. "Brave is going into battle. This is just a television drama. 
  "Brought up in a church-going family in Little Hulton, the area of Salford where the Happy Mondays grew up and Simon Armitage was a probation 
officer, Eccleston got the standard notion of Church of England God - "some old fella with a white beard sitting on a chair in heaven " - as a child. 
These days, he thinks, he is broadly in line with what Davies appears to be saying in The Second Coming -that we all have the capacity for good and 
evil within us and that humanity can only ever really find a solution to it's problems here on earth, "although you can never tell what a writer is 
really up to. Especially when it's one as good as him. 
  "But what is Eccleston up to in The Second Coming? What does he want to get out of it? 
  "Well, I want a BAFTA," he shoots back with a chuckle, semi-serious. "I've always felt if someone goes to watch you in the theatre, goes to watch 
you in a fIlm or sits down in front of the telly, regardless of the money, they're investing their time. They're giving you two hours of their short 
life and what you want to give them is respect. You need to entertain them, to stimulate them - that's all I want to do. 
  "I want people to recognise themselves in the drama, to recognise their dilemmas, to think about their faith." 
  Famously inspired to become an actor by Boys from the Blackstuff and Kes - and one who has always made himself available for British TV in 
between more lucrative movies to boot - Eccleston has little time for the view that television is somehow less important than fIlm. 
  "I'm delighted that the Jude Laws and Ewan McGregors of this world don't want to do British telly, delighted, because it means that we can. If they 
decided to do it, they'd get everything and cock it up for all of us. 
  "We're talking about people who give parts to Eric Cantona and Vinnie Jones here. They're all star-fuckers now, aren't they? It used to be that it 
was the writer who was the star, now it's the actor. It's all bullshit." 
  Eccleston says he has "nowt" coming up - apart from the little matter of Macbeth at the West Yorkshire Playhouse next month. He has just finished a 
stage run of Hamlet in the West End and was revitalised by the experience. 
  "Theatre acting is my 'edit'. In film and television, you act in 30 second bursts. In Hamlet I was onstage for three hours, shaping a 
performance and changing it around over five weeks. It's what I became an actor to do." 
  One last thing: I have to ask, as a dyed-in-the-wool Red, how did he feel about Manchester City's Maine Road ground being the location for 
Steven Baxter's firSt miracle in The Second Coming? 
  "You know, United were approached but they turned it down," he says a little sadly. "But that's typical of that PLC. I think it was better that it 
at Maine Road anyway." 
  "But it's fair enough, isn't it? I say, twisting the knife. If the Son of God was reborn in Manchester, there'd be more chance of him being a City 
fan than ... 
   "No comment," Eccleston replies with a tight smile. "You never know. Maybe he'd like prawn sandwiches ..."