John Simm: show me the script

John Simm: show me the script

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 01/11/2008

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John Simm's latest television role is as a Civil War mercenary in The Devil's Whore. When it comes to pursuing his own career, money is the last thing on his mind. By Chloe Fox. Photograph by Deirdre O Callaghan There is something engagingly paradoxical about John Simm. An everyman with a rare talent, he has starred in arguably the best British television dramas of the past decade: Jimmy McGovern's The Lakes, Paul Abbott's State of Play, and more recently Life on Mars. In each one, he makes us feel simultaneously that we know him and yet somehow never will. In many ways Simm, 38, is impossible to define: he is classically trained but with a modern touch; a diehard Manchester United fan with a passion for classical ballet; one of the very finest actors of his generation who has yet to win a single award.

'I don't like awards ceremonies and I don't agree with them,' he announces, finger banging defiantly on the table of the club in Soho, London, where we have met for lunch. 'But put me in a position when I'm up against other actors and I want to win it. Because the thing with me is I want the best. And why not? I'm obsessed with the Beatles because they are the best. If I'm working, and have to be away from my family, which breaks my heart into a million pieces, then I want to be doing the best possible show, written by the best possible writer, and giving the best performance that I possibly can.' Then, mid-rant, Simm - whose surprisingly gentle voice carries more than a hint of his Northern roots - stops himself, pauses for thought and smiles. 'Oh no, I've gone off on one, haven't I?'

As an interviewee, Simm is the best possible company: candid, funny, naughty, polite, arrogant, self-deprecating, kind, interested, interesting. Watching him talk is no different to watching him act. Simultaneously still and brimming with nervous energy, he draws you in, makes you think, and leaves you wondering what it is that makes him tick.

'There is something behind John's eyes that is irresistible,' says the director Marc Munden, who has worked with Simm twice: on Miranda (with Christina Ricci), his only - and best forgotten - foray into big-budget romantic comedy; and on the forthcoming Channel 4 drama The Devil's Whore. 'He is like a virtuoso pianist - he has that ability not just to feel things very deeply, but to translate those feelings into something very readable.'

The Devil's Whore, written by Peter Flannery (Our Friends in the North), is a four-parter set in the English Civil War. The story centres on the life and loves of the fictitious aristocrat Angelica Fanshawe (played by Andrea Riseborough), but is woven in with fact, and brings to life the intellectual and military battle that took place between Cromwell's puritanical New Model Army and the Royalists, which culminated in the execution of Charles I in 1649. It is an epic blend of large-scale battles, intimate love scenes and intriguing characters. Simm's Edward Sexby is the most fascinating. A hard-hearted mercenary who kills for pleasure, he is ultimately redeemed by his (largely) unrequited love for Angelica. As ever, Simm manages to convey the morality behind the menace.

Munden's first instinct had been to offer Simm the part of John Lilburne, a freedom-fighting Leveller. But Simm had other ideas. 'He rang me up and said, "I want to play Sexby." Sexby is basically a very dark, very damaged soul. There's something in John that can find all that sort of stuff if he needs to; he's naturally drawn to the dark side.'

'Oh, he's a horrible, nasty piece of work - a really feral, stubborn bastard,' Simm says of Sexby. 'The minute I read the script, I was bowled over by it and by him. It's a hell of a part and I'm really, really honoured that they gave it to me. I had to fight for it though. I had to audition - which was something I hadn't done for ages - and I won it, which was really great.'

The Devil's Whore couldn't have come along at a better time for Simm. 'I was starting to feel jaded,' he confesses. The problems began during the filming of Life on Mars, a sort of Sweeney-meets-Back-to-the-Future in which a car crash leaves his modern-day character trapped in 1973. Six months spent in Manchester away from his wife, the actress Kate Magowan, and their son, Ryan, then five, began to take its toll. Acting wasn't even really feeling like acting any more. 'It was becoming a job, like working in a shop,' Simm says. 'It didn't feel like a challenge and I thrive off challenge.'

Then came the unprecedented success of the show - it had an estimated audience of seven million. The fan mail started piling up, some of it pretty weird. 'Sci-fi fans are like a whole new level of fan,' Simm says. When he starred as the Master in four episodes of Doctor Who at the beginning of last year, their attention increased.



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