Room at the top

Published on Sunday 1 June 2008 20:12

RALF LITTLE is a very nice chap, a very nice chap indeed. After just a few minutes of talking to the actor it is as if I'd known him for years – the banter is flying and the craic is on. It's like talking to an old pal.

Which is pretty much exactly how you feel watching his latest film, The Waiting Room, in which he plays Stephen, a rather geeky but enormously likeable fellow who works as a carer in an old people's home, looking after his charges with rare and tender compassion.

In fact, the whole film revolves around Little's performance because if you didn't care for Stephen you wouldn't sit there biting your knuckles hoping that it all works out and that … well, I'll stop there because I really wouldn't want to give the game away and hamper your enjoyment of this really quite special British film.

Directed and written by Roger Goldby, the film deals with love, infidelity, commitments and relationships – issues that we all face at one time or another and make us who we are. It stars Anne Marie Duff, of Shameless fame, alongside Little as single mother Anna, who, having separated from her husband, is having it away with her rather loathsome and eminently lascivious next-door neighbour, George (brilliantly rendered by Rupert Graves).

George also happens to be the significant other of her good friend Jem (Zoe Telford) and the father of their young child. Not an ideal situation by any means, but Goldby's direction and script are so adept that even after the first few minutes, we, the audience, realise that it's all wrong – so that when Duff's character starts to see sense after her "brief encounter" with Little in a railway station waiting room, our hopes are with her.

"It's about real people and real situations," explains an enthusiastic Little, sitting in the film's production offices in London. "Nothing much happens, it's not astonishing, it's not shocking, no-one gets killed and there are no special effects, car chases or big production numbers; but what does happen happens to us all at one time or another, so it's easy for us to empathise with. I think that's the best basis for good drama. I really enjoyed doing it because most British films are quite high-concept, gangster-heavy, football hooligan films or horror, and this wasn't just like that. It was character-led and has this great script that when I read it I really liked straight away."

You could certainly describe the picture as a kitchen-sink drama – though one in which the appliance is procured from Habitat as, with the exception of Little, it tells of a largely middle-class experience: cringeworthy dinner parties where the married hosts get a little too drunk and proceed to tear each other to bits as their guests look on; clumsy matchmaking; and househusbands who live in rather large houses. But that does not take anything away from the film because there is something in there that all can understand. At one point in the film, Little is in bed with his girlfriend, who asks him a question – you know the one – and I could feel a collective groan emanating from my fellow viewers, men and women alike.

"When my character is in bed with his girlfriend and she tells him she wants his child his reaction is something a lot of people can understand," explains the garrulous Little. "Sometimes it takes that question about kids to realise that things aren't 100 per cent. My relationship in the film fails for no real reason – it just fails because the little things aren't right; it's just not working. But that is very difficult to dramatise. I have been there in that relationship where I should have split up six months earlier but didn't know what the problem was and so just plodded along. A lot of us have."

Not that he's looking to settle down and start a family just yet.

"I'm 28 and, because I've had this whirlwind career, I haven't really noticed growing up and it's never occurred to me to grow up and have a family. Now that I'm knocking on 30, I sometimes think it might be time to grow up, but then I pull myself together, sort myself and tell myself, 'No – don't be silly!' But I really got this film, I really understood it. I even got Rupert's character– which was so unlikeable, but has his redemption at the end when he realises what the score is."

It is this underplayed drama which makes the film so special, says Little.

"It's much easier to dramatise a relationship where the wife is beaten and abused," he continues after a pause. "Roger's trick was to illustrate the minor details that many of us have experienced, and take subject matter that is not particularly dramatic but make a really uplifting film. Usually such events are seen in such a bleak way in British drama but I'm glad to say that most people who see this walk away with a smile."

And it's fair to say that Little has always made folk smile. He first came to the attention of the public as Anthony Royle in the thoroughly splendid TV series, The Royle Family. "Working with Craig (Cash] and Caroline (Aherne] was just brilliant," he recalls. "Imagine being 17 and you're on a set and you've got Ricky Tomlinson, who is just hilarious all the time, and the rest of the cast are the funniest people in the country. I used to turn up for work and just laugh for nine hours and then go home.

"The hardest job was to stop laughing. If you look carefully at some scenes, you'll see Craig and I in the background biting our hands trying to stop laughing. Ricky used to go off on his own tangent and make stuff up and we were all of us in stitches. But I'm really proud of the show because as time went on it became clear that it was just about a family – any family – and that resonated right across the board. An Indian taxi driver today recognised me and said it was his favourite show. It really crossed all classes and wasn't about posh or poor."

Raised in Bury, Lancashire, the teenage Little found himself having to make a career choice most teenagers could barely dream of – whether to become a professional actor or a professional football player. Although acting won out, he still plays part-time, for Chertsey Town.

"I was really lucky," he explains. "My parents gave us kids every opportunity in life. I played every sport you can think of, but my parents also took me to this local drama group on a Saturday and I was always rather precocious, the type of kid who'd get up and do a turn for me Gran. When I was 13 I got a job on a TV series, did a job a year and never thought I'd make a career of it. And then I heard about this show The Royle Family, went for the audition, read for five minutes and got the part."

I ask him if being a child actor while still attending a tough comprehensive school in Greater Manchester was hard going. "It was when I got the job on the TV series (Sloggers]," he replies. "As you'd expect, I had a tough time for a while from the other kids. But there was this one kid called Prabhu Sekara who, when I was 16, turned round to me and said, 'I think you'll be the next Richard E Grant', and I've never forgotten it. In fact, I think of it all the time because at the time it wasn't easy, and those few words meant a lot."

After The Royle Family, Little excelled as Jonny Keogh in the TV comedy Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps ("We just had a laugh," he says, his broad Manc accent totally undiminished) and then played local hero Peter Hook, the Joy Division/New Order bassist, in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People.

"It's one thing playing a legend, but playing one who is still alive and who might give you a smack if you get him wrong is a different thing," chuckles Little. "But doing that film was a great laugh. It was chaotic, ramshackle and peculiar and mad and nerve-wracking and brilliant."

He's a man with a big future. His next film part is as Chas Hodges in Telstar. Due out next March, written and directed by Nick Lock, Stock… Moran, it is the story of the 1960s homosexual pill-popping record producer Joe Meek, based on the play by Moran and James Hicks. And if all this acting and football playing doesn't keep him busy enough he has also just written an online novel, The Golden Generation.

"I wrote it with my football mate, Stephen Morris. We just set about writing it and before we knew it we had a book. So we thought, let's give the proceeds away. I do a lot of work for charities like Oxfam and such, but this time we went for Shelter because it just seemed right. You can't really miss homeless people on the street. They're right in front of your eyes and you can't ignore them."

Ralf Little really is a very nice chap. A very nice chap indeed.

&#149 The Waiting Room will be released at the end of this month.