Marguerite's man

Multi-tasking: Ovenden has made an effort to play a diverse range of roles

10 April 2012

Julian Ovenden has the kind of dark, smouldering good looks you don't walk past without registering. But people can never quite put a name to his face. You might remember him from his TV roles (The Forsyte Saga, Foyle's War or The Royal, in which he was the dashing Doctor Cheriton) or as the Diet Coke Man in one of those steamy adverts.

He has also starred twice at the Donmar Warehouse (in Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along and as the lovestruck con artist in Michael Grandage's production of the 1930s musical Grand Hotel), and last year co-starred with Nathan Lane is a Broadway revival of Simon Gray's 1970s comedy Butley. His highest profile role in the US, however, was in the recent Cashmere Mafia, comedy drama from the producers of Sex and the City, with Lucy Liu.

Now Ovenden, 31, is back in the West End, with Ruthie Henshall in the new musical Marguerite: an updating of Alexander Dumas's classic 1848 novel La Dame aux Camelias. The story has been transposed to occupied Paris, where a notorious courtesan (Henshall) risks her relationship with a high-ranking Nazi (Alexander Hanson) for a love affair with Ovenden's penniless jazz musician.

Marguerite is billed as a love story set against the background of war in the mould of Casablanca. "Unlike an awful lot of musicals around at the moment, it's not a kids' musical," its director, Jonathan Kent, has promised.

It is written by the team who created Les Misérables, London's longest running musical, and Miss Saigon — Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schön-berg — with additional material from Oscar-winning composer Michel Legrand and lyricist Herbert Kretzmer. But Marguerite, the third — and final — production in Kent's daring season at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, is potentially risky.

"I've no idea whether it's going to work," Ovenden tells me in a break from rehearsals. "But I'm pleased to be involved with something that's trying to treat the period with integrity, and deal with a love story that is complicated but also romantic. It's very cinematically constructed — the opposite of naturalism. So many musicals now are revivals or big American things or TV vehicles, so it's nice to be in something there's a bit of mystery around."

He has been immersing himself in literature of the period — and watching documentaries such as The Sorrow and The Pity. "What is interesting is how the young people of the era felt pretty disenfranchised. The Germans had occupied their town, there was a feeling of powerlessness. Many just wanted to survive. I assumed it was a pretty bleak time but actually there were huge parties and nightclubs. It was almost Bacchanalian, with people finding release by going out and getting drunk.

"My character is a drifter. He falls in love with the mistress of a German general, unaware he is in charge of deporting French Jews out of Paris. But his best friend is a Jew, and his sister has connections to the Resistance, so gradually he is drawn into that world, which adds a danger and an urgency to the story."

In the flesh, Ovenden is warm and down-to-earth, yet he has quite a pedigree. His father, Canon John Ovenden, is a chaplain to the Queen and lives next to the church at Windsor Castle. The royal family often go round for drinks after the Christmas carol service.

"They're very lovely and incredibly normal. Or as normal as they can be," he told a journalist eight years ago. He even sought the Queen Mother's advice when he was cast as Noël Coward in a play. She invited him round to her home at Windsor and, over gin and tonics, confided that the playwright had been a spy.

Sadly, these days Ovenden is more circumspect about his royal connections — his early indiscretions got his father into trouble. "It was one of the first interviews I ever did and I made a real faux pas and shot my mouth off about some things," he admits. "People think it's much more of a big deal than it is. In America, for example, they think it's amazing'. They may as well be calling me His Royal Highness. But I've got nothing to do with it, it's my dad's connection."

Ovenden was born in Sheffield in 1976, one of three children, but grew up in London where his father was a priest in Primrose Hill. Aged seven he won a choir scholarship to St Paul's Cathedral. Then he went to Eton on a music scholarship but as one of the more ordinary pupils — some boys' parents arrived by helicopter — he says it made him a bit of an "inverted snob". Next came a choral scholarship to Oxford where his contemporaries included James D'Arcy and Rosamund Pike.

After graduating, Ovenden made a conscious decision to go to drama school (the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art on an Arts Council scholarship) because he wanted to widen his repertoire. He was soon cast as a herald in the RSC's Japanese production of King Lear, starring Nigel Hawthorne. Then came Merrily We Roll Along and Adrian Noble's A Woman of No Importance at the Haymarket.

After the Sondheim, he was inundated with musicals. "I could have taken that path but was advised to hold out and try and build a broader base. I'm pleased with the different material I've done, and I have improved over time."

He says he's always had to work hard to constantly change his image — turning down lucrative roles, which left him "horrifically poor". And he unembarrassedly targeted America three years ago. "What else is there to do in this country? I'm afraid — without sounding like a complete snob — our TV has just gone so downhill. There's much less investment in writing. Reality TV has taken over. The only things I get excited about are Paul Abbott and The Apprentice. Whereas I was amazed by the breadth on offer on US TV — there's some of the best writing you'll see anywhere."

He paid to fly himself to New York to convince the producers of Butley that he should play the role of Nathan Lane's gay ex-lover. "I was fairly bullish about it." He and Lane bonded immediately. "Just to see how dedicated he is as a classical actor was thrilling. Some American audiences had problems with the play of course — seeing him playing a depressive, very cynical character after the high comedy of The Producers, it shifts your expectations. But I personally had an amazing time working with him."

Lane has a reputation for not suffering fools gladly (there were rumours of diva behaviour when he starred in the London transfer of The Producers). But Ovendon has nothing but praise.

"I don't know where those rumours came from. I think he wasn't intending to do The Producers here. And then when he came, he was shattered because he'd been doing it for two years on Broadway. His back was bad and he was dealing with a lot of stuff physically. From my experience, he is a strong personality but he's someone whose love for the theatre and skill are second to none. He's a true star."

Ovenden's hopes were high for Cashmere Mafia, set in the world of high-powered Manhattan professional women, but the reviews were damning and after the Hollywood writers' strike, it was put on hold. It was a blow, but meant he could do Marguerite.

Like many young actors, he finds spending time on the road lonely. "You have to be really tough and very emotionally able to distance yourself."

Although he has a strong gay following, he is quite open about his attraction to "strong older women". Ex-girlfriends i ncl ude Ally McBeal star Jane Krakowski, 11 years his senior, and actress Sarah Parrish.

For now, though, his focus is Marguerite. When Ovenden first started out he was quite baby-faced but now, in his thirties, he is finally gaining gravitas. His role models are Rupert Graves and Damian Lewis — handsome men who have earned their status as proper actors. "I'm looking forward to playing roles where I'm more of a man," he laughs.

Marguerite runs until 1 November at the Theatre Royal Haymarket (0870 4000 626).

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