There's method in Paddy's mad acting

10 April 2012

He first caught the eye in his friend Shane Meadows's coming-of-age tale A Room For Romeo Brass (1999).

Indeed, so compelling was his portrayal of the maladjusted Morell that the film's executive producer simply assumed that Considine was a real-life weirdo rather than an actor. 'He thought that Shane had found me in a field or something,' grins the dark-haired 27-year-old.

Now with the release of Last Resort, an unlikely love story set in a bleak English coastal community, Considine is again proving his remarkable ability to work without a fixed script and to develop a character. 'I just find it really stifling when you have a script and you've got to stick to it word for word,' he explains.

'Initially, I had quite a sparse part in Last Resort, but through discussions and workshops with the director Paul Pavlikovsky, it became much bigger. The guy I play, Alfie, is a damaged bloke who's done something in the past and he can't return to his community, and so he's found a life for himself in this seaside town, which is where he meets and falls in love with this Russian refugee.'

As one of six siblings growing-up in a working-class family in Burton-upon-Trent, Considine soon realised that 'whoever shouted loudest got heard in the house. I was always acting up as a kid, and I didn't need an audience or friends'.

A completely self-taught actor, who's still based in the Potteries, Considine is now finding his idiosyncratic talents much in demand. There was a cameo in the romantic comedy Born Romantic ('The first time I had worked with a script'), a role as a psychopath in Happy Now alongside Susan Lynch and Alison Steadman, and he's just started filming Michael Winterbottom's Factory Records drama 24-Hour Party People, in which he appears as Joy Division's manager, Rob Gretton.

'I still have trouble considering myself as an actor,' he confesses. 'I've done two films I'm really proud of, but I haven't done my best work yet.'

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There's method in Paddy's mad acting

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