There's more to me than Martine

Steve John Shepherd is uneasy being in the public arena. He's not whingeing when he wonders out loud: "Have I forgone my right to publicity just because I am an actor?" No. But in the bizarre, red-top tabloid world, he forwent it by hooking up with Martine McCutcheon a while back.

And Her Majesty's Gutter Press have, since their recent split, offered him silly amounts of dosh to spill the beans, which he has turned down. His lips remain shut to even the politest enquiry.

"I'd really rather not talk about it," he says. There's a pause. Followed by a steely "with respect". Then, as the "no comment" drawbridge crashes down, he flashes a grin. It's a kind of guilty, boyish, dazzling grin.

Our chat up till now has been fitful. We've covered parents. Middle class? "It's not up to me to apportion what they are." OK. But who are they? His mother is part-Burmese. His grandfather-was a British serviceman-there. "She was from a very, very poor family." His father is British and "there's some Chinese in there, somewhere".

His childhood was spent in the East End, then Essex. Now 28, he lives in Bow. "It's very beautiful. But it's getting gentrified. I guess we're just waiting for some organic pubs to open."

He was once going to be a ballet dancer, mainly because he fell for a girl who was. But having got into ballet school, he was "quietly asked to leave" a year before graduation. Frankly, he couldn't dance. Now he says: "The British public just don't need to see my legs in tights."

It's enjoyable speaking to Steve John Shepherd, but he's wary. He says he's not. But he's certainly shy. And not sure about exposure. He had immediate success on leaving drama school in the ITV prime-time Gulf War drama The One That Got Away, and as Joe, the legal clerk in This Life.

He is greatly enthused about his latest role in an updated revival of the play that established JB Priestley's reputation in 1932 , Dangerous Corner. Reinvented a few years ago, by Stephen Daldry's production of An Inspector Calls, Priestley remains a surprise.

His old-fashioned ways of exposing the hypocrisy that hides beneath the middle-class veneer in Britain can still thrill and shock.

Every character in the play has a twist and it would be unfair to reveal what his is. But, as one of the other leads says, summing up the evening's revelations: "One of my business partners is a liar and a cheat and a thief. The other - God knows what he is - some sort of hysterical young pervert, and the girl's a greedy little cat."