I found the Times interview in the yahoo group archives -it was to promote his work with Macmillan-but not found the earlier article- I can look some more-any idea what year precisely?
i found it- it is a Telegraph interview from 2005 You can find the full text at livejournal
jamespurefoy.livejournal.com/31278.htmlI knew it was there somewhere, heavens I even have a hard copy of that interview - duh!!! You are so much better at finding these things than me
Here's the whole interview for anyone who can't get onto LJ....
Nice big article about James!
January 8th 2005, Telegraph Magazine
The boy can't help it
James Purefoy, actor, heartthrob and flirt, is so charming that his publicist no longer allows him to be interviewed by women.
Not to be outdone, he turns his rakish smile on Craig McLean. Photograph by Lorenzo Agius.
To the shops with James Purefoy, to buy some fennel. He has invited me round to his house for lunch. As I'm a veggie and he loves a ploughman's, he has decided to forswear his well-thumbed cookbooks ('Nigel Slater is my god') in favour of a robust salad and hunks of manly cheeses and bread. My offering - two bottles of prosecco, for which Purefoy has recently developed a taste after several months' filming in Rome remain unopened. He being a Somerset chap, bottles of organic cider are the more appropriate complement for the double Gloucester and Montgomery, 'the king of cheddars'. And with his bearing more pubbable than clubbable, Old Speckled Hen organic ale is better than fizzy Italian plonk as accompaniment for a crunchy medley of rocket, Wensleydale, pear and fennel.
When I arrived the 40-year-old actor, 6-ft I in in his smart canvas trainers and strappingly broad in his leather biker's jacket, was bounding down the steps outside his handsome three-storey house near Shepherd's Bush in London. He had been intending to nip round to the greengrocer's on his shiny black Yamaha Drag Star motorbike. Instead we walk, briskly.
Immediately it is possible to espy the 'swagger and dashing quality' that led the director Mira Nair to cast him as Rawdon Crawley in her giddy, colourful adaptation of Thackeray's Vanity Fair. He plays the husband of the adroit social climber Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon) with, by turns, sexy slyness, blazing passion, army-officer charm, gambler's dissoluteness and, ultimately, heartbroken confusion. And, it must be said, with excellent use of crotch-high boots.
'There's a certain type of English actor, isn't there,' he will say cheerfully, 'who is born wearing high boots and breeches and blouson shirt.' Is he one of them? After all, it's not the first period drama he has done (see Mansfield Park, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Mayor of Casterbridge). 'I have now become one of them... I've had some dry runs at playing this kind of part. To me, Rawdon's up there with Darcy or Heathcliff, one of the really great male leading parts. I think I've now got it out of my system. I don't need to do another one. I think I was always working towards doing something like him.'
He has lived round this semi-posh, demi-fashionable part of west London for 14-odd years. His former girlfriend, the actress Holly Aird, lives minutes away. They split in 2001, amicably, and equally share responsibility for their seven-year-old son Joseph ('Jo Jo').
Back chez Purefoy, we descend to the open-plan kitchen, dining area and living-room. A year's worth of building work, carried out to his and a designer friend's specifications, is not long finished, and the place is unfussily lovely. The kitchen is a monument to heavy and enthusiastic culinary activity, utilitarian but sleek. Behind invisible panels lurk his stereo and television. The living-room is a bachelor den of comfy couches and fluffy rugs. Through floor-to-ceiling, almost wall-to-wall doors, it looks out on to a garden that rises into a half-covered barbecue and chilling area.
In the middle of the garden is a target. Of a morning Purefoy, standing in the living-room with the doors wide open, will limber up for the day by loosing off a dozen or so arrows from his longbow. Occasionally Jo Jo joins him, on the small bow Purefoy - a sometime wood-turner - made from a tree branch.
One of the things that drew him to the part of Rawdon Crawley is his relationship with his son. It was rare for a Regency man to be so close to his children, 'or take any interest in them at all. He's extraordinary for that. Which, for me, forgives his gambling and his uselessness elsewhere.'
'I felt very strongly that I knew what Thackeray was talking about,' he says as we tear into lunch. 'I have a very close relationship with my own boy and spend a lot of time with him. Yeah, to be able to pull that into a film makes it a lot easier... When the kid goes away to school, you're drawing on feelings of what it would be like to send your own kid away; what it was like when I was sent away to school when I was that age...'
Purefoy clearly dotes on Jo Jo, and you imagine it's reciprocated. Here's dad, a big man with a fizzing sense of humour and a boyish enthusiasm for motorbikes, cars, sports (Purefoy fences, runs and puts in serious gym time). Good at making stuff, whether dinner or wooden toys. Not averse to taking jobs just so his son has something to watch: Sunday teatime serial The Prince and the Pauper, for example.
All qualities, of course, that go some way to explaining why Purefoy is also such a hit with women. Jo Jo may be following suit. 'He has an unhealthy interest in the ladies,' says Purefoy, perplexed (but proud) grin crinkling his face. If they pass an attractive woman in the street, Jo Jo will purr - part Leslie Phillips, part horny teenager - 'Hey, pretty lady...'
'What the heck is that?' Purefoy laughs. 'Where does he get that from? Nobody ever believes me, but I don't go around saying "pretty lady".' It is, he concludes with a grin, 'unnerving'.
None the less, when it comes to women, pleasure-seeking Purefoy is, you might say, a romantic epicurean. Here lies another motivation in his portrayal of Crawley, and we begin to see why he vigorously lobbied -'stalked' as he puts it - Mira Nair for the part.
'I found Rawdon charming, and his relationship with Becky full of delight. He was delighted by her. I think that's a lovely thing to be about a woman that you're with: delighted. So I felt very empathic towards him.' He liked their 'conspiratorial relationship', too, and the 'very un-period' sexual equality. 'That makes him very interesting. And a man apart from the usual.'
A man apart: is that James Purefoy? 'Well,' he says through a mouthful of beer and cheese, 'I have been a little bit like that in my life.' He was never in any gangs at school, and has no close friends from those days.
Purefoy's mum (a businesswoman) and dad (a farmer) split when he was four. He and his three siblings were brought up in Somerset by his mum, before he was sent away to Sherborne in Dorset when he was eight. He had, by all accounts, a fairly glum time. In his experience public schools in the 1970s were 'narrow-minded, bigoted places', where you could be suspended - as he was - for talking to pupils from the local comprehensive. There was no glory in essaying a good Hamlet; to be an actor was to be a sissy. At least if you were in the I st XV you got a different coloured blazer and could express your individuality that way.
By the time he was 16 he knew he was wasting his parents' money. He was learning nothing. He earned one 0-level, in English literature, which he studied hard for simply to spite the teacher who told him he would never pass. On the penultimate day of term, he and a friend contrived to get themselves expelled. That night they pinched a combine harvester, then met up with some pupils from Sherborne Girls' for a drink. They were punished for the social transgression rather than the theft.
Did his schooldays experiences take some getting over? He waves away the suggestion. 'I think we all wrestle with what happened to us in our childhood. Everybody has hurdles that they have to deal with when they're growing up. And frankly, being a part of an incredibly over-privileged class and being sent to a very posh public school is pretty minimal in comparison with what most of the world has to face.'
He had a stint portering at a hospital and took further 0-levels at night school. Moving in with his dad, he took A-levels, including drama, at technical college in Weybridge, Surrey. From there he moved to the Central School of Speech and Drama. Playing Henry V in his final year, he was asked to join the RSC.
He had a 'fantastic' time in Stratford, leaving with five or six major parts under his belt, much experience 'honing and honing' his acting and lots of 'larking about'. 'I lapped it up. It seemed to me you were somewhere where you were working with the best classical actors in the world, in a place that wasn't too under the microscope.' To this day he still doesn't like 'the whole microscope thing', of having to learn your trade and perfect your skills in public. As he says, a panel beater doesn't learn his trade in front of watching millions.
Until college he had been 'a Tory by default', his dad having been a Conservative MP's agent. Then he had 'a political awakening' and became active in far-Left politics. He put in time on anti-apartheid rallies and at Wapping in 1986 in support of the striking printers. While never a card-carrying member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, he did sell the Socialist Worker outside Brixton Tube station. In 1987 he joined the Labour Party, and has been a member ever since.
Was he ever embarrassed by his privileged background while on the picket lines?
'No, because I had a great love and fondness for my dad,' he replies, dodging the question. 'And he was always very supportive of me - of my wanting to be an actor. And he treated my Left-wing politics with great respect. He'd argue the point with me. He was very much of the idea that if you're not Left-wing when you're 20 you have no heart but if you're not Right-wing by the time you're 40 you have no brain. So clearly I still have no brain,' he smiles. 'I think you just live in a better world if you work together rather than separately. To me that's the nub of the whole thing.'
He holds his convictions dear, He believes in the anti-globalisation movement, that the Common Agricultural Policy should be scrapped and that all drugs should be legalised. 'Prohibition is pointless. Take the means of production out of the hands of criminals and put it in the hands of pharmaceutical companies.' He believes in much tighter regulation of big business. And he was so disgusted by what he saw at Wapping that, to this day, he refuses to have anything to do with any of Rupert Murdoch's companies. This means he won't have Sky in the house, and so has to go to the pub to watch football. What if the Murdoch-owned 20th Century Fox offered him a film?
He thinks long and hard about this. 'It would be a really big decision and not one I would take at all lightly. What would I do? It depends on the job, the part, the whole thing. But probably take it then give the money away.'
The relatively late age at which he is finally making something of a name for himself is another thing that sets him apart. And it, too, has something to do with his political beliefs. Having started late - he wasn't done with college till he was 25, 26 - he began his career 'with a deep distrust of the film industry and television. I was a radical socialist and I really believed that where you should be was in the theatre. So I didn't make my first telly or film till I was 29, 30. People like Jude [Law], they were big stars by the time they were that age.'
Thus he wasn't part of any 'film gang like Natural Nylon' (the short-lived production company established by Law, Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and starry pals). He's 40, but not really famous; certainly nowhere near as well known as his old friend Law, with whom he starred in Death of a Salesman at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in the early 1990s.
'I see Jude quite a lot now - well, more than I used to. And it's very alarming,' he says of Law's huge celebrity quotient. 'As long as you're financially rewarded to an extraordinary amount, it's probably all right, you can protect yourself from it.'
As Purefoy says, for all the 18 movies he has made, 'I'm not "film famous", where people point over the street and they're a bit alarmed about coming up to you.' His part as Edward, the Black Prince, in A Knight's Tale may have 'opened doors for me in Hollywood', but it was only a small role. And despite appearances in a Sharpe (Sharpe's Sword), a Catherine Cookson (The Tide of Life) and the giant A Dance to the Music of Time, he's not 'telly famous' - 'where the public own you. And they come up to you and they yabber away, and your five-minute dash to the supermarket becomes 45 minutes.'
What he is, or was for a bit, is 'weird famous'. Or, famous by association. He went out with Aird (Waking the Dead; Soldier, Soldier) for six years, which is probably where he got his insights into the potential traumas of going to the supermarket. Before that he was with Fay Ripley for I I years, albeit before she became a household name via Cold Feet. After he and Aird split three years ago. he had a transatlantic relationship with Piper Perabo, the young American star of Coyote Ugly whom he met on the set of the as-yet-unreleased fantasy film George and the Dragon. And in 2002, to the delight of showbiz editors and to his lasting consternation, he was 'papped' several times around London in the company of Gwyneth Paltrow. The photographs of the pair exiting a fancy restaurant or entering his 1972 Citroen Pallas show a man hunted and trapped.
'A man mortified!' he exclaims. What was most annoying, he says, was the way his career was bent to fit the story. He found himself reduced in the tabloids to Gwynnie's 'mystery man', a 'little-known actor who has yet to make his mark'.
He shakes his head in exasperation. 'Of course,' he laughs, 'it's slightly depressing to be ignored in that way. Because you spend a lot of time and it's a lot of hard work. When we shot A Dance to the Music of Time, I'd just had a baby and I was exhausted and I'd read over a million and a half words, every single novel - which is more than either of the directors had done!"
And there you are, reduced to the bit of arm candy.
'And there I am, reduced,' he echoes, sighing. He's a lot less neurotic about things in general since Jo Jo was born, but still. Things get to him. He mentions another profile, in which he was dubbed a 'shagger'. But then, it always seems to be women who interview him.
'Well, you're the first man I've met for a long time. I've been banned now, by my publicist, from talking to women.'
Why was it always women, and why the ban?
He coughs. 'Because what was happening was, either through my own manner - which is probably flirtatious but let's not take it too seriously... IT'S ONLY A WAY TO KEEP THE AFTERNOON BUZZING ALONG!' he roars good-naturedly. 'There are worse ways of spending an afternoon! I find it very difficult not to have a laugh, because I'm quite genial and I enjoy the company of women...' He pauses for a ruminative chew of fennel. 'I enjoy the company of everybody actually as long as they're not arseholes.'
In a couple of days Purefoy returns to Italy. He's playing the part of Mark Antony in HBO's new epic series Rome. The budget is $110 million, and filming on the first season - which began in February - lasts for a year. It's The Sopranos in togas, if you like. 'Sex and the Sandals!' smirks Purefoy. He describes it as a cross between Caligula, I, Claudius and Upstairs, Downstairs. Vanity Fair may have given Purefoy a quality, arty role to get his teeth into, but Rome will mainline him straight into 'heartland' television audiences around the world as a Sexy Villain bar none.
It's a grandstanding part,' he enthuses. 'He's like a neo-con, which by definition makes him an arsehole. He's militarily very aggressive. He's always trying convince Caesar to attack, attack, attack! But he's also sincerely venal. His favourite party trick was to dress up as Dionysus and go around Rome on a chariot pulled by six lions.
'He's very glamorous. He's funny. He's a playboy. He's a lover and fighter. He just does not give a f*** about anything. He's very interesting like that.'
Another American television network, ABC, has also been making a drama centred on the Roman Empire. On the same day that HBO offered Purefoy the role of Mark Antony, ABC offered him the same part. What do we read into that?
I dunno!' he grins. 'I dunno... you'll have to make that up! But I like playing him. He's somebody who uses charm surgically... he's not just charming. He uses it to get his way. And that's something I find rather interesting. But the other thing about charm, of course, is it being rather vacuous... A rather useless thing... Especially as you get older...' With that, he smirks and brushes imaginary crumbs from his face.
Purefoy is currently in a relationship. No, she's not an actress. She's an art historian. 'But, ah, she's a friend of an actress.' It's going well, but they have just had a minor dispute over how long they have been seeing each other. Is it two months or three months?
Would he have invited a female journalist to his house for lunch?
'Christ no! You never know what might happen do you? Definitely not! Unless I was prepared to completely suppress all of my irony and amusement... you know, I enjoy a laugh. Now that can come across maybe as flirtatiousness. But obviously not to you.'
And with a devilish smile, James Purefoy reaches a toned forearm across the table, masterfully pops the cap from another bottle of beer and slides a Marlboro Light suggestively into his mouth.
...
It could even have been on the old forum, I only really started saving things myself after the 'witches from hell' zapped everything 
