A question of morals

Damian Lewis is feeling giddy. 'I've always romanticised the theatre,' he says excitedly, traces of make-up from a recent rehearsal still visible around his eyes. For someone better known for playing action roles on TV, it's a surprising confession. But Lewis truly means it.

'When I was a student at Guildhall, stoned, wearing too much black and playing guitar, I would see actors such as Simon Russell Beale and Ralph Fiennes at the Barbican and think how cool it would be to be on that stage and be able to shout like that. I've always romanticised the South Bank too. And here I am, playing the lead. I'm more excited about this than about anything I've done in years.'

'This' is the role of Karsten Bernick, the supposed pillar in Ibsen's rarely performed Pillars Of The Community. Bernick is a wealthy shipbuilder and local community head who presents himself as a philanthropist, yet whose reputation is built on precarious foundations.

Inevitably those foundations fissure as Bernick, who has secretly formed a consortium to buy up public land through which a railway will soon be built, is forced to go to increasing extremes to preserve his status.

With its savage portrait of an industry fat cat jeopardising public interest in the pursuit of private profit, the play is also a remarkably prescient attack on the moral values of capitalism. Lewis, however, has great sympathy for Bernick. 'He is exceptionally human,' he says. 'It's remarkable how rarely we meet someone who is unequivocally honest.

We all establish new truths for ourselves every day so that we can get through and convince ourselves we are good people. Yet because Bernick is so driven and has manifested so much power for himself, there's also a palpable dishonesty there. Although if that sounds boring, I should remind you that there are also several whopping love stories.'

A natural charmer, Lewis, 34, has, nonetheless, always been drawn to characters who are morally compromised in some way, from the emotionally repressed Soames Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga to a relentlessly fantasising Jeffrey Archer in the BBC's satire Jeffrey Archer: The Truth.

'There's a lot to be said for playing evil with complete relish or good with complete relish but I haven't played a character like that for some time because I'm interested in that conflict within people,' he says.

'I've noticed how me and my friends spent our early twenties being very idealistic and principled, and how that's been diluted over time. Yet I've also noticed how those people, and I include myself, have become more understanding and sympathetic. That's the irony, and that's partly what I've been trying to find in Bernick.'

Lewis is not a disingenuous man. 'I know full well why I'm here,' he says wryly. 'Because of the telly.' As an actor who spent his childhood in thrall to the dazzle of the American musicals his father used to take him to in the school holidays, and who admits to having nurtured a snobbish disdain for TV, he finds a certain irony in the fact that he has become famous through his appearances on the box.