| The baddie role he has embraced most recently is, of course, the one he was filming just prior to our chat, Patrick Koster in Don't Say a Word. |
| "He is quite despicable, really...." Sean says, lazily, with a mischievous smile, in a voice reminiscent of GoldenEye's 006 baddie, Alec Trevelyan. "He is quite unpleasant.... But I always think when you're playing someone, you have to look at it from the character's point of view, and why. He obviously doesn't think he's being that awful, because he's got a good reason to be doing what he's doing. He feels as if he's been ripped off, he's been cheated, and he's being punished for that." |
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I comment on the oddity of being called in to film just one short scene which will translate into only a few seconds of screen time. "It is very concentrated into a few seconds," Sean agrees. "And they are a very important few seconds - all that's important is what you see on the screen. At that moment the little girl has alerted her mother to her whereabouts, so I'm pretty pissed off about that.... If you think of it, over a 14 hour day, there's probably only about 30 seconds...maybe a minute of filming...so you've just got to be ready for that when the camera rolls...and the rest of the time you've just got to relax." |
| I wonder if there was an apocalyptic moment when he was younger, a defining moment that he could identify as the moment he realized he wanted to become an actor? |
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Sean shares the chocolates from the bulk container on the counter with me. "Not really," he says, "no." His mouth is momentarily filled with a lot of liqueur-centered confectionery, and he's struck by the humour of trying to swallow it all and speak at the same time. "Bit boring, really," he says, in the slightly self-conscious manner that I've become used to over the course of our conversation. "It was a gradual thing. I found I could channel my energy into something I really enjoyed doing. It was actually a bit of a surprise to me, because I never envisaged being an actor at all. I wasn't interested in it at school, or in school plays. I used to think only eggheads did that sort of thing. I suppose people come to find what they want to do at different times. It's twenty odd years ago now." |
| "Acting used to carry a sort of strange tag...whereas now you get a lot of young people acting in school plays. In the old days everyone who went to RADA was sort of middle upper class, and I think that excluded the rest of the population. It's only people like Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, Alan Bates...people like that...who broke that sort of stranglehold. They were in really gritty, interesting dramas like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning...and A Kind of Loving." |
| Each of which, we both recall, were also dramatised on the radio - narrated by Sean. |
| We chat briefly about the traditional British class structure, the system which has permanently labelled Sean as a "working class lad from't north". His father, who owns a steel fabrication business in Sheffield, fully expected Sean to carry on with the family firm, and become a welder. I suggest, a little hesitantly, that, if one's father owned a comparably successful business in North America, one would not be labelled "working class" at all, since our social structure - if it exists at all over here - is defined more by one's annual income than by one's occupation and where they were born and raised. |
| Sean seems a bit bemused by my concern. "One thing about the States and Canada is that they are very open to giving someone a chance...no matter who you are, what colour, what background," he concedes. "In England, it's got to do with your accent and the company you keep. It's a bit boring being pigeonholed - people are much more complex than the way the media may sometimes like to present them. It's easy to pigeonhole you - 'oh! He talks like that, so he's like that.' or 'She talks like that, so she's like that.'" |
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Significantly, Sean was looking beyond a future as a welder, even when he was a child. "I was interested in drawing and painting and I would have liked to have developed a career as an artist...but I think it's much more difficult to become an independent artist where you can paint what you like and become financially secure. I still doodle...I do a lot of things in my diary when I'm on the phone. My diary's full of pictures and sketches. If I had a bit more time I'd like to take it up again and see what I could achieve, for my own good, my own self-interest. I'd do it for my own enjoyment." |
| Intrigued, I wonder whether one would find his works of art hanging on the walls of his house in London. |
| "I used to have. They're all sort of stacked away now. I've got quite a few pictures that I did when I was younger, and some of them are pretty good...but I've not really got into it since then. If I had a bit more time.... I know this blacksmith who lives in the country. I went to his workshop the other day and sort of put a few bits and pieces together in metal, and brought it back home and put it on the mantlepiece. That's something I might like to do a little bit more of - this guy has a typical blacksmith's barn - it's just nice to mess about with bits of metal. I've actually got a welding kit in the garage. I don't use it very often, though." |
| What else is one likely to find on his mantlepiece? A souvenir or two from Sharpe, perhaps...? |
| "I've got lots of mementos from Sharpe," he says, and then, with a laugh, adds, "I had that put in my contract. I've got my green jacket and sash and sword..... It's an original 19th century sabre. I've got that at home." There's that look of mischief again. "I'm gonna put that on my wall." |