Dougie’s inner grit

Published on Thursday 13 June 2002 01:00

Douglas Henshall hates doing interviews - at least that’s the impression I was left with after reading about the lean Glaswegian. To him, apparently, the press is something one suffers, not courts. Which all goes to make him sound rather difficult. With this in mind, I approach our encounter at London’s trendy Soho House with more than the usual amount of trepidation. Luckily, he’s in an upbeat mood.

We’ve met to talk about his latest film, Lawless Heart, in which the unexpected death of a young man, in a small village on the Essex coast, has serious repercussions for his friends (including Henshall’s free-spirit Tim) and family. The last time Henshall - Dougie to his mates - appeared in a film with a death at its centre, Peter Mullan’s Orphans, the actor became "a basket case". His mother died seven weeks before shooting started so the film was "particularly on the money". It got to a stage, he says, "where it was very difficult to separate what was real and what wasn’t".

Lawless Heart created its own kind of disorientation, although nothing so gruelling as Orphans. This time it was the film’s clever, multi-perspective structure (we see the same events through three different characters’ eyes) that made the 34-year-old’s head spin. "It’s complicated enough when you make a film because you’re always getting arsed about," he says. "But trying to get your head around where you are at any one time when there’s three different points of view is really difficult." In the end he gave up trying and trusted the directors, Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger, to sort things out.

Henshall was relieved when he saw the film. "As we were making it, I thought, ‘F***ing hell, this could be the biggest piece of nonsense I’ve ever seen.’ But I was pleasantly surprised. I think it’s beautifully shot, it’s really soulful and I think they’ve done a great job telling that story."

The storytelling (think Pulp Fiction or Doug Liman’s Go) is indeed strong, and, for a British film at least, different. Why don’t we make more films that take these kinds of chances? Henshall isn’t sure whether it is a lack of ambition or that not enough money is being spent on scriptwriting. It could be something to do with imagination, he offers. "You just think, ‘Can we get away from romantic comedies for five f***ing seconds, please, and think a bit more about what the possibilities are?’"

Suggesting that perhaps there is not the will here to back potentially risky projects strikes a nerve in Henshall. "The problem in this country is that all the cinemas are owned by American studios, who will say to you, ‘You have to keep this film running otherwise we won’t give you Star Wars.’ The only way you change that is at government level and Tony Blair’s never going to get involved because he doesn’t give a f*** about the arts," he says.

Opinions and self-confidence are not things Henshall are short of. The latter helped him over a rocky patch early in his career, when the film roles remained tantalisingly out of reach. "I could get down to the last two," he says, "but they would always go with the other guy. But I think that was something to do with me. Sometimes the worst smell in the world is desperation, and I could never disguise how much I wanted it." He knew he could act, though; he just had to convince everyone else.

The desperate days are definitely over. Today, Henshall is regarded as one of the best actors of his generation. He has become a familiar face on TV, in such critically acclaimed programmes as Psychos and Kid in the Corner, and has a string of film credits to his name. Ewan McGregor-like stardom might have eluded him, but Henshall, ever the realist, is not bitter.

"I’m not conventional leading man material," he says. "I don’t have the old square jaw and perfect teeth, so I suppose a lot of people find it difficult to cast me that way because I’m not the kind of actor that is going to be on every 16-year-old’s wall. I’m kind of over myself that way. Anybody who thinks talent is the only thing that matters in this business is going to have a very, very sorry life, because it’s not. But I’m doing all right."

Indeed, he is. Soon we will see him acting opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes in It’s All About Love, Thomas Vinterberg’s much anticipated follow up to Festen (a sort of counter-Dogme movie, it’s "35-millimetre, English-language and lush"), while August will see him return to the National Theatre in Tom Stoppard’s new trilogy, The Coast of Utopia.

It’s five years since Henshall last trod the boards and he has been itching to get back on the stage. "I’m shitting myself," he says, "but really excited at the same time."

Meanwhile, Henshall also has plans to produce a film of the Christopher Brookmyre novel, One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night, ideally with Ewan McGregor and Billy Connolly in the cast. "I get paid for doing what I love. I’m very fortunate that way," he says of the acting. "But now I just want to do other stuff as well. Producing is just a kind of natural progression."

So, is Douglas Henshall scary? Not really. Realistic, passionate, fiery, happy, earthy, outspoken, private, enthusiastic, maybe; but definitely not scary.

♦ Lawless Heart is released on 28 June.