Post by hollyc on Jan 17, 2013 6:10:31 GMT -5
www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/tv-radio/article3657510.ece
Actor James Purefoy: curious about serial killers
Debra Craine
From Resident Evil via Mansfield Park to serial killer:
British actor James Purefoy is at no risk of being typecast
It’s funny how your first impression of an actor can stay with you for years, no matter what
else he or she might do. When James Purefoy starred in the 1998 British rom-com Bedrooms
and Hallways, as a bisexual Irish café owner who beguiled everyone he met, his image was
fixed in my mind. Rakish, louche, devilishly handsome and totally irresistible. It was
solidified seven years later when Purefoy launched his lusty, vainglorious Mark Antony in the
BBC-HBO TV series Rome. Never had I seen an actor relish his own image more.
But this is a man full of surprises. He pulled a big one with his portrayal of Peter Kyle in
Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path, staged in the West End in 2011. As the ageing Hollywood film
star who tries to rekindle an old love affair, Purefoy brought an affecting melancholy to
Rattigan’s Second World War drama.
Now comes another shock — Purefoy as a serial killer who grooms other serial killers in the
gripping new American television series The Following, which comes to Sky Atlantic next
week. The 48-year-old British actor shares the screen with Kevin Bacon, who plays an FBI
agent brought out of retirement to put an end to the marathon of grisly kills. You can forget
the sexy breeches — Purefoy has done countless costume dramas — and the swaggering
seducer persona and instead imagine our latest cultural export as the embodiment of pure
evil, as week after week we will see the horrifying effects of his serial killing crusade.
But why this? Why now? “It’s a desire to be curious,” the actor says. “It’s the most important
thing for human beings in general, to remain curious until you die. To remain fascinated by
the human condition and everything the world has to offer. I get fascinated by the strangest
things: at the moment it happens to be serial killers and cult leaders.”
With his cocky charm, sardonic smile and roguish good looks, Purefoy could easily have been
typecast at the start of his career. But his professional choices were never designed to achieve
leading man status. “There are two kinds of actors,” he says. “There are movie stars who
continue to play varying extensions of themselves — which is a skill in itself — and then there
are actors who like to transform themselves into somebody totally different. I am not a movie
star and I certainly don’t regret that. I like trying on different people. You get offered a part
and you start looking at those worlds and that life; acting affords you the time to delve into
things so that you can try to recreate a man on film or on stage that you haven’t done before.”
From A Knight’s Tale to Resident Evil, from Mansfield Park to Vanity Fair, from Rome to the
ITV series Injustice, Purefoy has been trying on such a variety of characters that he’s made it
impossible for audiences to pin him down. He’s played lotharios and rapists, stalkers and
noblemen, barristers and gamblers, the stylish narrator of A Dance to the Music of Time and,
of course, barnstorming Mark Antony.
“It’s very easy to go down that route of leading man, but it would have been less interesting
for me. And I wouldn’t want to deal with the quality of fame that brings. I have witnessed
fame close hand,” adds the man who once dated Gwyneth Paltrow. “It’s a pact with varying
degrees of payback and not particularly worth it. Besides I’ve always respected character
actors much more. It was what I wanted to be and I’m happier for being one.”
Purefoy was born and raised in Somerset. He left school at 16 but returned to do his A Levels
after two years of odd jobs and travel. He studied acting at the Central School of Speech and
Drama in London and was spotted by an RSC casting director in his final year (he was playing
Henry V at the time) and invited to join the Stratford company. He spent two years with the
RSC; extensive theatre, film and television work followed, so much so that he has rarely been
out of work.
Some fans still haven’t forgotten that Purefoy, never one to shy away from being naked on
screen, was named Hunk of the Year 15 years ago. “It’s hilarious, silly and very charming,” he
says. “If you do go through that then you also need to get out of that period at some stage.
Because you become less pretty as the lines in your face start telling a story. Divorces, death,
children: your face becomes a road map of the life you have led.”
Life has now taken him to New York and into the high-profile world of American television.
Like so many other British actors, such as Damian Lewis, Dominic West, Matthew Rhys,
Charlie Hunnam and Jonny Lee Miller, Purefoy wanted to ride the tide of ex-pats enjoying the
renaissance of US television. “It is a bizarre phenomenon, isn’t it? One day I noticed all my
friends were gone and I decided I wanted to be part of that.”
He signed on to star in a drama series called The Philanthropist — he played a billionaire
playboy who tries to help others — which had a brief run in America before it was cancelled by
NBC in 2009. The Following is assured a longer shelf life since when I met him in Soho just
before Christmas, Purefoy had filmed the first ten episodes and was preparing to shoot the
next five. “That was one of the big attractions of the show,” he says. “There are only 15
episodes a season, which means a total of just seven months shooting in New York.” That was
where his daughter was born a few months ago (his partner is the TV producer Jessica
Adams); his teenage son (whose mother is the actress Holly Aird) is at school in the UK.
The first episode had me on tenterhooks from the start. The Following is like Dexter meets
Criminal Minds, but it’s a lot creepier than either of its sister serial killer dramas. “I know, it’s
intense, isn’t it, and very compelling,” Purefoy says. “The Following is alarming to watch and
very unsettling. I don’t think it gets much worse in the panoply of bad guys.”
What attracted him to such a villainous character? Especially one he might have to play for a
full seven seasons if the show does well? “I went to LA and read every pilot offered. I wanted
to do a TV show but I didn’t want to do a hospital procedural, a lawyer procedural, a cop
procedural. The script for The Following was just terrifying. Joe Carroll is an incredibly
complex character, both a serial killer and a cult leader. He stands on a pinnacle high above
everybody else and with all that power he’s enjoying himself. We tend to like watching
monsters enjoy themselves, and I think Joe Carroll enjoys himself in the most appalling and
sadistic fashion.”
The Following makes extensive use of flashbacks, so we see Carroll as he used to be, an
urbane university lecturer who oozes charm, especially with his female students. Purefoy is
relieved that he doesn’t have to muster an American accent, since the producers decided that.
making his character British would intensify his malevolence. “Americans see the British as
intelligent but emotionally stunted and cauterised. So Joe Carroll being British makes him
more other, and hence more scary.”
Does Purefoy think that television is getting too dark, what with Dexter, Criminal Minds, The
Following and Hannibal, the forthcoming NBC series based on the Thomas Harris character
(and starring yet another Brit, Hugh Dancy)? “Different ideas pop up at different times in our
culture,” he replies. “We have done vampires to death, and zombies. Now it’s the turn of serial
killers. It’s Grand Guignol, part of the tradition of hair standing up on the back of your neck.
And audiences like to be scared.”
When his television commitments allow it, Purefoy would love to return to the stage;
Rattigan’s Separate Tables is high on his wish list of favoured plays. So, too, is Macbeth. He
has been offered the title role on several occasions but the timing just hasn’t been right.
“Macbeth is a monster and a serial killer,” the actor reminds us. “Now wouldn’t that be an
interesting companion piece to The Following?”
The Following starts on Sky Atlantic on Jan 22