The king of Rock'n'Roll

10 April 2012

Rufus Sewell has spent most of his acting career trying not to be stereotyped. He tells me this as he skewers around on his chair. In fact, he spends most of the interview contorting himself into a variety of positions, wriggling himself this way and that so much that I end up asking him if he finds the whole thing too tortuous for words. "It's not that really," he says, running his hands through his thick black hair, now greying a bit at the edges. "It's just that people have this view of me and it gets very tiresome."

What type of a view? "Oh, they ask me if I was a Byronic baby." A Byronic baby? "Because of the hair," he says, sighing.

It is true that he does have a lot of hair, which ruffles up attractively enough. What else does he get called then? "Oh - Mr Pouty, Mr Moody, Mr Smoulder. But I don't smoulder, do I?" he asks rather desperately and I have to report that he doesn't.

He is, however, by anyone's standard, a handsome man. He is tall and pale skinned and has greeny-brown, wide eyes that other people go into raptures about. "Everyone mentions the eyes," he says. "Always the eyes. I don't get it."

It is true, however, that every woman I spoke to before I met Sewell went weak at the knees when I mentioned his name. "Don't swoon!" said one. "Oh, he's so divine," said another. But this is not going to wash with Rufus Sewell at all because the 39-year-old actor would much rather be known for his body of work than his body. (You see? Now even I'm doing it.)

His most high-profile performance has been his most recent one. He has just finished a stint as Jan in Czech-born Tom Stoppard's play Rock 'n' Roll, for which he was crowned Best Actor at today's Evening Standard awards.

The play, which is set in Cambridge and Prague, starts during the 1968 revolution and finishes with the aftermath of 1989's Velvet Revolution. Sewell's Jan is a young Czech student who is sent to Britain to snoop but ends up returning home and listening to rock music, most of which is then blasted out to the audience. Rock 'n' Roll sold out the Royal Court before moving to the West End. It has just changed cast.

The play caused a stir when it opened, which is something Sewell was not necessarily expecting. "I was shown the script of the play about a year ago and I thought it was really exciting, but I didn't want to get very attached to it as I had no idea if and when it was going to happen. But I kept thinking about it, and it did happen, but then I was told it was going to be put on at the Royal Court and I was surprised. I mean, Tom Stoppard at the Royal Court? There could have been mass walkouts as Tom is considered to be Right-wing and up the Tories, and the Royal Court represents the opposite of that."

As it turned out though, the buzz about the play was positive. Did Sewell think it would be such a hit? "You can never tell," he says. "You can be in something you think is great but then no one gets it. I don't read reviews any more. I'm not trying to be arrogant or ignorant - although I can be both those things - I just find it too depressing. There is nothing I can do about them, so why get bothered?" So he didn't read the reviews then? "Oh no, I did of this one, because I was told they were all good!"

But what was it like working with Tom Stoppard and Trevor Nunn, who was directing? "I worked with them before when I did Arcadia 12 years ago," he says, "I thought it was pretty special then and now I appreciate it even more.

"The problem for me with this play is that, at first, I didn't understand it. I was only just born in 1968 so it didn't ring any bells with me but, as the rehearsals progressed, I begun to feel as if I had friends who had been there at that time. That's why Stoppard is so brilliant. The play is moving and funny and it doesn't alienate anyone and yet, half the time, no one has the faintest idea what is going on."

Given that he was fishing in the dark somewhat, how did he manage to put in such a stunning performance? "Well, we were all aware of Tom being in rehearsals every day. When it got nearer to the opening night, if he crossed his legs, we took it as a sign of disapproval. But Trevor, who is highly intelligent, helped us all out - well, me in particular - by saying things like: 'Tom, on page whatever, I don't think I understand what you are getting at.' Honestly, I could've fallen at his feet I was so grateful."

When Sewell was at Central School of Speech and Drama he was spotted by the same agent as Judi Dench. "I got taken on, then Tim Piggott-Smith saw me perform and cast me in a play he was directing. Suddenly I was touring the country and it was great and I thought I was on the first rung of the ladder." But nothing happened for years until he was offered Will Ladislaw in the BBC's Middlemarch. "I loved doing that," he says. "It always happens like that - nothing, then that and Arcadia at the same time, then nothing again."

Doesn't it get depressing, all this hanging around not knowing what will happen?

"Not really," he says. "I could get depressed. That is perfectly possible, but it's not that I don't get offered work, it's just that I always want to hold out for something really good. But then I hold out for so long and nothing turns up, so I take something worse than previous offers."

What type of stuff does he get offered? "Cruel, horseback-riding prince with lots of hair and thin smiles," he says. This type of role came off the back of his performance as evil Count Adhemar in the 2001 film A Knight's Tale. Surely he got lots of offers from that? "Yes, I did get offers - as a cruel, horseback-riding ..."

Did he never feel tempted, at that point, to go to Hollywood and capitalise on the film's success? "Yes, of course I did," he says. "I did go to Hollywood. Goodness, I am not so grand as to think that is beneath me. No, I went to Hollywood and had meetings and sat around and talked about things and nothing much happened."

If it's so hard and difficult and awful, why did he decide to become an actor in the first place? Maybe it's because he' s so terribly good at it. I saw him at the Duke of York's in 1995 in a play called Rat in the Skull. He was tremendous. And when it comes to Jan in Rock 'n' Roll he really convinces as an Eastern European.

"I nearly didn't become an actor," he says. "There were lots of things I could have done. When I was a teenager, I was into playing drums and cartoon illustrations. My dad did that. His claim to fame was that he worked on The Beatles' Yellow Submarine and I though that was pretty cool."

Ah yes, his father. Sewell tells me that much has also been made of the fact that his father, Bill, a roguish Australian artist, left Rufus, his older brother Caspar and their mother when Rufus was a young boy. The Sewell duo apparently then went on the tear round their home town of Twickenham and were in constant trouble.

"I'm not sure about that," says Sewell smiling. "Were we well-behaved? No, but no teenage boys are really, are they? I don't think we were worse than anyone else."

But he played truant from school - Orleans Park - and was going nowhere until drama teacher Tina Hurley picked him up, marched him off to Central and paid his fees when he got in.

"Yes, well, when I was younger, I didn't realise you actually had to try at things," says Sewell. "My father didn't seem to try at anything very much but I thought he was charming. He was always late for everything. My mother had lots of jobs to keep us afloat. One day, for example, I realised that although I had been good at art, I had made little effort and that I was, in fact, now not very good compared to other people at all. I just seemed to be best at acting."

Well, it all worked out and his mother - his father died when he was 10 - must be relieved and proud, surely? "I hope she is," he says. "I think she is proud of both of us. My brother is in a band called Grand Union and they've just got a record deal, so we've been OK, haven't we? She'd never let on though."

He is far more tight-lipped about his own personal life. He has had relationships in the past with both Kate Winslet and Helen McCrory - he is on good terms with both - but in 1999 he married his long-term girlfriend, fashion buyer Yasmin Abdallah. They were separated within a year and Sewell was soon linked to poet Amy Gardner. They had a son, Billy, in 2002, married quietly in 2004 but have since separated, relatively recently.

Since then he has been linked with his Rock 'n' Roll co-star Alice Eve, 25, daughter of Trevor Eve and Sharon Maugham. She has reportedly moved into his house in Shepherd's Bush. "I am not saying anything about that," he says. "I believe that if you open the door to your personal life, it's one you cannot shut."

What he will say is that, of course, Billy is his priority. "I would love to travel more," he says. "I would love to know what jobs were coming and then I could plan to go away for half a year or something. That's what I have always felt like doing in the past, but Billy is about to start school and I would never want to be away from him that long. When he was little, he'd join me on set and he's travelled everywhere. He is great fun." Does he see him often? "Yes." Is it problematic? "No."

So, what else does he do with his life then? "I lead a very frugal life," he says. "I have to because there are vast periods when I don't earn much money. I have nothing on right now and I've blown all my wages so, at the moment, I am living as simply as possible." He says he likes to take photographs and hang out with his friends.

In the end, though, does he wish he'd taken on more work? "No," he says thoughtfully. "If I had just had success after success, I think I would have become an arrogant arsehole. I mean, God, most actors can be arrogant arseholes at the best of times and I think I would have been one of the worst."

So unemployment has kept his feet on the ground, then? "Yes," he says happily. 'It's made me a nicer person, I think. I hope so, anyway."

Rock 'n' Roll is at The Duke of York's Theatre until 25 February (0870 060 6623).

The king of Rock'n'Roll

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