acting is both an art and a craft. the words are written elsewhere, the action is directed by another but, ultimately, the power of the performance rests on the actor's ability to inhabit the role. so, what does it take to succeed in this precarious profession? well, my guest today, eddie marsan, is one of the uk's most recognisable and popular actors across stage and screen. his roots are genuinely working class and that is something of a rarity in the performing arts. why?

eddie marsan, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. nice to be here. you do seem to be that rare breed as an actor, a guy who is constantly, permanently busy. how do you manage it? i just... i think when i first started in drama school, i was always the guy who played the old man in the chekhov piece. if there was a young, attractive young man played the guy who shot himself at the end, i was always the old guy with gout. they used to call me captain velcro in drama school because i played all the small parts. so, i realised very early on that nobody would want me to be me because, in reality, i don't think men want to be me and women want to sleep with me — so, i always had to be someone else. oh, my goodness. you've started with such a sort of powerful and profound sort of statement of who you are and the acting profession. is that something that you've found... you've had to come to terms

with, or was it always an easy thing to accept? no, ifound it very liberating to become somebody else, to become kind of... to...not to lose myself, but to explore other personalities and other characters. but what you've also said is that you were, from the beginning, never really the lead, never the sort of the glamour, more the... and the phrase would be the "character actor". yes. and i was very comfortable with that. i've always been very comfortable with that. a lot of my acting heroes when i was younger... like, for instance, when i was at drama school, and everyone was watching on the waterfront and everyone wanted to be marlon brando, i wanted to be rod steiger, you know, because i knew that that was what i was going to be. or i wanted to be karl malden. i want to be that kind of actor because the great craftsmen and the great artists and... there's less pressure as well. and the work is more diverse. and i've never been

fashionable. nobody�*s ever made me into the next big thing. so, therefore, my careerjust carries on and on and on. and what's extraordinary about you, and i talk about the busy—ness because you have so many different roles, it seems, and juggling different parts at the same time, it's the diversity. for example, right now, you've got two big projects coming out — one, a film, a sort of biopic about the singer amy winehouse who died tragically young, and you're playing the role of mitch winehouse, her father. and, at the very same time, across the pond in the us, you've made a mini—series for apple tv where you play the american revolutionary politician john adams. yes. how do you get your head around such different parts at the same time? well, it was a necessity for me. because of my background and the fact that i was very working class and very... i was always being cast early on in my career as drug dealers or bank robbers or thugs in one way or the other.

and i wanted to be an actor. i didn't want to be a professional caricature of a working—class character. so, i decided very early on that i wanted to be diverse. i wanted to play many different characters because i hated the idea of anyone defining me. because, usually, when they define me, it's usually — for want of a better word — it's some posh bloke defining what he thinks i am, and i have to wait around for him to give me a job to be what he thinks i should be. and i wanted to empower myself as an actor to be able to play all different parts. it's very interesting the way you phrased that. you've been quite honest, saying, in your early career, you did have a sizeable chip on your shoulder... idid, yes. ..about being working class... idid, yes. ..in a trade, a profession, whatever we call acting, which, frankly, has been dominated for a long time by the middle classes.

it has, yes, yes. and has that chip on the shoulder gone or is it still visible? it has. and one of the reasons it went was because of the kindness of people from a more privileged background than me. i think, when i first started acting, i tried to kind of tough it out, really. iwas... i tried to be like a working class hero. so, in a way, you tried to adhere to that caricature... yes, idid. ..that others wanted to impose upon you. and, quite often, people from underprivileged backgrounds, they revert back to the caricature, and defiant... kind of in a form of embracing it, they embrace it and with a form of defiance. and i tried. but, because i had no academic points of reference, i was struggling. i didn't know... i didn't know what to do. with, for instance, exploring a play about existentialism, i didn't know what existentialism was. and then, one day, ijust realised i had tojust have the humility to ask questions, to ask people who are more educated than me to explain things. and the thing is, actors are very, very generous.

are they? 0h, lovely. and, yeah, they would sit down with me and explain things. and it was... so you had to lose your embarrassment that, for example, unlike many actors, i think you'd left school at 15. .. i left school at 15. ..and you tried to learn a trade. i was a printer. yeah, i was an apprentice. i mean, not many actors can say they've been through that life experience. yes. yeah, i tried to. and then, i got into acting because i was... a friend of mine, me and a friend, we used to dance, and we were in a club, and some guy came up and asked us to be extras in a movie. and i spent a day on a film set, and then, i suddenly realised that i wanted to be an actor. it hadn't kind of occurred to me before. did you, to a certain extent, have to defy your own back... i mean, particularly your own family. your dad, i know, was quite a difficult man. yes, yes. and i think, at one point, you said, when you brought a book home which you obviously wanted to read, he just picked it up and chucked it away and said, "none of that, boy." yeah, yeah. and i couldn't stay on and do a—levels and things like that.

so, when you said to him — i don't know quite what role your mum played — but when your dad learned that you actually wanted to give up being a printer and try your hand at full—time acting... well, he wasn't really involved in my life much then. by the age of 16, i started working for an east end bookmaker who ran a menswear store, called mr bennett, he was an incredible man. and while i was working for him, he knew i was studying to be an apprentice printer but he knew i wasn't happy. and he saw that i loved being on a film set. and he said to me, "what do you want to do?" and i said, "i want to be an actor." and he said, "well, if you get into drama school, i'll pay." and i tried for years to get into drama school, couldn't get into any of them. and i finally got into one and he paid for the first year. the second year i had to win a scholarship. but he was brilliant. he was an incredible benefactor. it's almost like a dickensian story. it's a really interesting story. and what fascinates me, just thinking about one of your current projects, the amy winehouse film... yes.

..is that that hinges on the relationship between a parent and a daughter. i mean, you play amy's dad. amy, for those who haven't seen the film and aren't so aware of all of amy's sort of problems, she was the most gifted singer. she was a sensation. but she also had grave addiction problems. she did, yes. and her dad, who was so keen to help her build this showbusiness career, has been criticised by many for failing to intervene substantially with his daughter and get her into rehab orforce her to change her lifestyle. you've obviously had time to reflect on that and, given your own background and everything you've said about what you learned through sort of the hardships of your life... yes. ..do you have sympathy with this man you've just played? yes, i have lots of sympathy. when... i knew after... a year before they made the film, i knew that they were going to approach me

to play the film. and i've a friend of mine who worked with amy and mitch and had first—hand experience of their relationship. and i knew that there was a prevailing narrative that mitch was to blame for amy's death, basically. and i asked my friend what he thought, and he said, "i always liked the man, eddie." he said, "i thought he was a loving father, "but he was in a very difficult situation. "his daughter was the most famous woman in the world. "she was an addict. she had unlimited resources of money. "the paparazzi were hounding her. "and every drug dealer in london, "every drug dealer in london was trying to give her money... "was trying to give her drugs," he said. and it was a perfect storm. and mitch didn't know whether to keep her busy or to put her into rehab. and there's one song that says, "my dad said i didn't have to go into rehab." and people think that's it. the family tried nine times to get her to... they tried nine interventions. i spent the evening last night with the family to celebrate, to see the film, and to celebrate her life.. did you? ..in a personal way, just to pay my respects to them.

and she comes from a very loving family. i don't... i never bought the narrative of villains and victims. i never trusted that narrative in any way, politically, culturally, because i always think whenever somebody is telling you that there's a villain and a victim, they're doing two things. they're infantilising the victim. and you've got to ask, who are you...? in this scenario, if there's a villain and a victim, you can name the villain and name the victim. who are you? and as an actor, i knew, as a working class actor, there were lots of very well—meaning progressive film—makers, middle—class film—makers who would tell me about the world being villains and victims but, actually, what they weren't aware of was their own narcissism, that they were the heroes of the story, not the victims. because, as a victim, if you try to change their definition of you, if you try to step outside of their definition of you, you destroy their own narcissistic narrative. and so, and so, i...

when i approached mitch to play mitch... and you talked to him quite a lot. i met up with him about three orfour times and i asked him for... he was my main source of research. i asked for photographs. i asked him to record a song for me. i asked for a playlist of his favourite music. i asked what aftershave he wore. really? yeah. because, at the beginning of this interview, i talked about the way actors inhabit roles. yes. and ijust wonder how far you go. are you that kind of immersive method actor, as some call it? well, there are certain plates that you keep spinning. acting is basically spinning plates on poles and make sure that no plate falls down. and some plates, because of your own psychological make—up, they spin of their own accord, and some you have to keep spinning yourself. for me, i always keep the plates spinning, but i'm able to talk to people about, you know, everyday life, and be polite. but when we did ray donovan,

i was always shaking. i was always exploring the idea of the physicality. i would be like this all day long because when the camera rolled, then, i wanted to... because the character has... the character has parkinson's. so, i didn't want to be thinking about it when i'm acting, because of the context that the character's in. it can sometimes seem very extreme, though. i mean, how far do you take it? at the end of the day, you do say, and you've said perhaps this is, again, a product of your past, your working—class roots, that acting is a job, it's a trade. it is a job. yes. it's like many otherjobs. and, ultimately, don't you have to... snaps fingers ..kind of switch off at the end of the day? you do. yeah, i mean, i can switch off. but i give 100% on the day. but i can switch off. yeah. now, thinking about your background and some of the great roles you've played, and award—winning roles like playing in happy—go—lucky, mike leigh's film, where your character was socially awkward, was a loner, wasn't particularly nice.

yes. and then, i think, around the same time, maybe a couple of years separate, you played another very striking role in a film called tyrannosaur... yes. ..where you were, again, a loner, but you were actually a pretty malign character. you were nasty and abusive. how easy is it for you to find ways to play these difficult, troubled, sometimes deeply nasty people? because i don't play them as particularly nasty people. i...think there's just unhappy people in search of happiness and scott in happy—go—lucky, and the husband, the abusive husband in tyrannosaur — both had similar purposes. they both wanted to be loved. scott was basically what we would call now an incel. you know, these people exist on social media now. social media didn't exist then. and when we were doing tyrannosaur, olivia and i were given case studies

of men who were abusive to their wives. and one of the striking features of these reports was that all these men wanted to be loved. they just. .. and that's a more frightening aspect. when you play that, when you play someone who wants to be loved and show the vulnerability at the same time as doing evil things, that's really challenging for the audience. yeah. you can't play ev... you can't play two—dimensional evil characters, it doesn't work. you can. i mean, there are a lot of hollywood movies which are deeply two—dimensional. yeah. are you saying you're now quite picky and you want to go down routes which challenge you and challenge the audience? yes. yeah, yeah. because i'm not... i don't have the confidence to make a bad script good. some actors do, and i can't. i'm just like a musician. i play the notes that are on the page. what about the money? if hollywood comes to you with a frankly silly script in a silly movie, but they're offering you shed loads of money? i'd do it. oh, i'd do it, 100%.

i'd do it. and then, i mean... in acting, you call it f—off money. you put money in the bank and then you can tell everybody for scripts, "i don't want to do that." it's called f—off money. is that right? yeah. and then... so, you've taken a bit of f—off money? oh, yeah, ioo%, yeah. is one reason — and correct me if i'm wrong — but the arc of your career, it strikes me you did an awful lot of theatre in the �*90s. idid, yes. national theatre, all sorts of theatre. yes. very well reviewed, a lot of it. and then, you seemed to decide to go to tv and to movies and to spend much less time in the theatre. well, what happened was i... we had children, and i've got... my children are very close in age. so, we had four very young children. and, at the same time, i was offered ray donovan in america. so, i was commuting back and forth. we used to do ray donovan for six months every year. so, when i came back, the idea of going to do a play and not read my kids

a goodnight story or something, and daddy's going to go off and do a play somewhere — itjust didn't seem logicalfor me, really. and also, the other thing is i never used to get great parts in the theatre. theatre had a very... not only theatre, but the uk had a very fixed idea of me and i had to go over and work in america, for the americans to get a more... to be more open—minded about me, about what i could play. that's very interesting. and they gave me great opportunities. that reminds me of something that the black british actor david harewood has said. yes. that he found that when he went to america, opportunities, parts opened up to him that were never offered to him in the uk because uk casting directors, producers saw him in a particular way and that he was freed from that in america. yes. is that... are you're saying the same sort of thing? 100%. not about race but about class? class, ioo%. i went over to... when i went over to america, i was doing... i was doing ray donovan. and then, they asked me to play... they've just asked me to play john adams, for instance.

and that's something that the british would never do. when i was first doing ajob in... when i was first in ray donovan, my agent called me. she said, "they're doing richard iii, the bbc, "and they're going to offer you a part." now, i played richard iii onstage, i toured and played richard iii. so, i thought, ok, i won't play richard, but i'll probably play a good part. and the offer came through from the bbc and it was a thief with two lines. stephen snorts and i'm working every day with, i you know, on a big hollywood show. and i thought, why do they have this very fixed idea of me? and i didn't go back and work for a little while. and david... sorry to interrupt. that's all right. but you're saying it really, foryou, in britain, comes back to class. yeah. and i think class is something that's very immersed in all our psyches, even people who want to transcend it, it's still something that we still see. we still see the country in those parameters, in those definitions. you've actually opened up for me a whole area that i think is very interesting for an actor these days.

and it's a debate about what they call authenticity, the degree to which actors should and can embrace parts that are far from their own personal experience. right. and it literally has led to huge arguments about whether a non—trans actor should play a trans role, whether ajewish, a non—jewish actor should play a jewish role. ijust wonder, you know, given your view of acting as a craft, as something that you can work at and get better at, and whether that leads you to feel, "you know what? i can play virtually anybody. "nobody should be told they can't have a role "because they're not, in essence, "of the right sort of background." well, two things. the first thing, i think, the great adage of acting is nothing human is alien to me. it's an exercise of artistic empathy. and that means to understand people different from you. i think, secondly, if you come from an underprivileged background, be it due to your sexuality, be it due to the colour of your skin, your race, your class, your religion, whatever, you have to be exceptional

to have a career in this profession. if you come from a privileged background, you can be mediocre and you'll get a career. so, how can somebody, how can a young kid, for instance, from streatham, who...maybe their parents or grandparents are nigerian and they want to be an actor, how can they be exceptional if they can only play a young kid of nigerian descent from streatham? i want young black actors to have the career of adrian lester or david harewood. i want young gay actors to be like andrew scott or sir ian mckellen, you know. i wantjewish actors to be like jason isaacs or like, like henry goodman or like anthony sher. i think there's a need to categorise people in order to tackle lack of opportunity and inequality.

and representation. and rep... but the flip side of this argument is that a gay director—writer like russell t davies has said that he doesn't want non—gay actors playing gay roles because he wants that actor when he's cast the actor to be the best criminal or lover or whatever he can be, not to be a performative gay person if he's not actually 93v- i mean, that's something that he... yeah, but i think the best thing you can do, for instance, when russell did it's a sin... i disagreed with that. i think the best thing he can do for that young cast of, the young actor playing who was gay, playing the gay part, the best thing that you can do for him is cast him in a straight role, in a romantic lead in a straight role, and say, "watch how brilliant he is." because what you're doing then is you're enabling that actor to go on and have a diverse career. and what you're doing is you're challenging the preconceived, the subconscious prejudice

of the audience. what you don't do is say he's a gay actor, therefore, he can only play gay roles. that's what will happen. and what's the percentage of gay people in the country? what is it, 10%, 15%? so, what? they're going to be eligible for 10% or 15% of the roles? you would never have had ian mckellen, you would never have had anthony sher, you would never have had these actors if you said, "well, they're gay, therefore they can only do that." a final thought for you, which is actually about something else you've taken upon yourself in recent years, and that is to have a very powerful political voice. yes. mostly thanks to social media. yes. and you've been very open about your politics. you've been a labour party supporter for a long time. yes. but then, in 2019, whenjeremy corbyn was leading the labour party, you had a massive fallout with the party. you said, and i'm looking at a quote here, jeremy corbyn should be quote, "disqualified from being prime minister "because of his attitude to the internal party debate "over anti—semitism and the way it was handled."

yes. do you think there is a potential problem there, that audiences now see you as eddie marsan, not just the actor, but as the sort of political activist? and it's hard sometimes to separate the two when they might need to be separated. perhaps. but... but i very rarely play heroic parts, i always play villainous parts. so, even if you've got a bad opinion of me, it's quite nice to watch it! they chuckle i get that point. but equally... even within the cast, you know, you might have views that other members of the same cast and, after all, you are a team working together, might really seriously disagree with. i mean, are you ever finding that these days? oh, i mean... as actors become more political... i worked withjon voight on ray donovan for seven seasons, and i disagreed with him vehemently about trump and about the american elections. but also, i loved talking to him about the acting profession and his experience as a young actor in the �*60s and �*70s, with dustin hoffman

and with just gene hackman growing up. also...i think, i think on social media people are defined by their opinions. but when you work with people, people can have different opinions, but you still like them. i've spent... iquite like... there's a lot of people i disagree with politically and i like them. and there's lots of people i agree with politically and i can't stand them. stephen laughs that's a very good point. i think it's probably a good way to end. yeah. eddie marsan, it's been a pleasure. thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you very much.

hello there. some turbulent weather ahead for the next day or two. low pressures driving in off the atlantic, giving heavy, thundery and intense showers, spray standing water, so tricky conditions on the roads, particularly when you add in the strength of the wind. look at the tightly packed isobars. there will be strong to gale—force winds buffeting the uk during much of monday and into tuesday, and it's coming down from the north—west. in fact, as we head towards tuesday, it starts to come down from the north, so it will feel much colder than it has. temperatures below average. so, we've got some heavy, showery rain pushing its way southwards on a weather front. lots of heavy showers following behind, so snow over the mountains. it takes longest to get to southern and eastern areas but temperatures hold up above freezing because of the strength of the wind which takes us through the day today.

this line of really intense rains giving some tricky travel conditions, the winds picking up to strong gale force around the coasts in the west and the south, and lots of showers with hail, with thunder, with snow over the hills and mountains across northern ireland, scotland, possibly the pennines. look at the temperatures — just 9—12 degrees celsius, and it will feel colder still when you add on that wind that will be buffeting the uk. so, squally winds near those showers which continue well into the night and into tuesday. by that stage, our low pressure's moving out into the north sea, so the winds come down from the north again — enough of it, we think, to prevent a frost in many areas, just like we'll see in the morning the glens of scotland, really. but that cold northerly wind will continue to feed showers into particularly central and eastern areas, fewer further west, but there will be because of the northwesterly, some coming into the west of scotland and into northern ireland but perhaps fewer showers in the west generally compared with monday. but a bracing wind in the north sea coast —

40—50 mph gusts of wind, still holding on for the likes of east anglia so, again, it will feel cold, despite 12—14 inland. i suppose, outside the wind, outside the showers, with more sunshine around, it will feel a little more like mid april. but we have to get to the end of the week to see high pressure building in because still on wednesday, we've got low pressure in charge towards the east. these weather fronts rounding western areas, just giving patchy rain or drizzle, so things start to settle down later — in fact, temperatures pick up as we head towards friday as well.

live from london, this is bbc news. israel pledges retaliation for iran's attack, but the un's chief has called for calm. the middle east is on the brink. the people of the region

are confronting a real danger of a devastating full—scale conflict. donald trump will become the first us president to face a criminal trial on monday, facing 3a charges of fraud. and we focus in on sudan as the country marks one year of a bloody civil war that has killed thousands and forced millions to flee. hello and a warm welcome to the programme. i'm sally bundock. world leaders meeting in an emergency session at the un have warned that the middle east is on the brink and that now is the time to de—escalate after saturday night's attack on israel by iran. opening the meeting, the un's secretary—general antonio guterres told diplomats, quote:

adding that: