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Move over Darcy - Sue Gaisford meets actor James Frain, the new king of costume drama

By Harriet Winslow - Washington Post 10/10/97

First there was Rufus Sewell's dark and brooding Will Ladislaw; next, the famously dripping Colin Firth had all England swooning over Mr. Darcy; now, there is a new face to send lover of classic drama and of tall dark men into a fit of vapors - James Frain, playing the gentle Philip Wakem in George Elliot's 'The Mill on the Floss'. The idea of this succession makes him throw back his handsome head and laugh till his shiny little ringlets tremble. He is, he chuckles, very flattered.

But he is probably not surprised. Before spotting him, I saw the make-up girl whose job it was to prettify him for the camera. This not being an onerous task, she had settled for gazing at him in dazzled adoration. Occasionally, she would sigh, snap out of her dreams, dart into a shot, and dab his nose with powder, to be rewarded with a brilliant smile before the photographer insisted on his resuming a mean and moody look. "I don't feel very mean today," he grumbled amiably.

He is actually rather a cheerful man, with much to be cheerful about. He was born in Yorkshire and grew up in Essex, the oldest of seven children. At 27, he lives with one of his sisters in Brixton, and retains warm affection for all his family, particularly his mother, a teacher. "I always used to bang on about acting when I was a kid," he says. "My Mum probably hoped for something better for me but, now that it has all worked out, I think she's relieved." She should be. From the day he was spotted at drama school and offered a part in 'Shadowlands', he has never been out of work.

Frain likes pasta, autumn, the colour blue, sloppy jeans, vodka, hip-hop music, and New York. He dislikes hipocrisy. This, even more than his looks, could explain his success. He is a throughly honest, intelligent actor. As the loyalist thug Kenny in 'Nothing Personal' Thaddeus O'Sullivan's chillingly realistic film about Belfast in the Seventies, he embodies the frightening allure of power. The film, he says, is appalled by its own violence, by the atmosphere of terror, and the threat of sudden death that comes from living on the front line in a ruthless civil war. Yet the unemployed and dispossessed of Ulster cling desperately to the queasy glamour and the sense of identity offered them by brutal paramilitaries.

He is proud to have played the lead in Penny Woolcock's urban, contemporary 'Macbeth' - as much documentary and community project as filmed Shakespeare. Again, his interest is in the motivation of the murderer. "He is such a mess, so crippled. The violence is not what gets you - it's the root of his anguish that makes you despair."

After such gritty taxing roles, it was a relief to play Philip Wakem, a character with real inner strength and vision, who flirts with suicide but resists it. "Any idiot can hate someone and point a gun at them, but it takes courage to learn, instead, a different way of loving them."

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