‘I soared to Hollywood fame – but the BBC would only give me 2 lines’

Eddie Marsan is one of Britain’s most celebrated actors (Picture: BBC/CBS Studios/Lilja Jons)

He’s shared the screen with Robert Downey Jr, acted alongside Christian Bale and been directed by Martin Scorsese – but for some reason, Eddie Marsan continues to be criminally underrated.

What is often mentioned as a reason is his adaptability. One week, he can go from being a slow, moustached Kentucky sheriff in The Bombing of Pan Am 103, to then embodying Amy Winehouse’s father in Back to Black.

Whatever it is, it’s baffling. Truly. Especially in a year where a veteran like Stephen Graham has exploded on the global stage with the success of Adolescence.

But while the King and Conqueror actor sits there across from me on a swank velvet sofa in an equally swank London hotel, I can say with confidence that I don’t think it bothers him one bit.

‘I left school at 15 with no qualifications. I was an apprentice printer before I became an actor,’ Eddie, who grew up in Bethnal Green, London, tells Metro.

‘The industry wanted me to be a caricatured cockney, and I knew that was not only a disservice to me – it was a disservice to the people I grew up with.

The prolific TV star explains how the industry treated him like a ‘caricatured cockney’ performer (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images) He stars opposite Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and James Norton in King & Conqueror (Picture: BBC/CBS Studios/Lilja Jons)

‘My friends are really intelligent and really bright. We are colloquial, we have a little slang… but we are not this character that seems to be prominent now for middle-class people to have working-class people be this comfortable caricature.

‘I refused to be that caricature [at the start of my career] and I said I’m going to be a diverse actor and that’s what I wanted to do. I want to play a diverse range of roles, and I didn’t want people to define me. I didn’t even know who I am myself, so how dare you try?’

If playing diverse roles was his aim at the start of his career, today, more than 30 years later, Eddie has certainly achieved that.

From playing Will Smith’s nemesis in Hancock to being Inspector Lestrade in Sherlock Holmes, the 57-year-old continues to defy expectations, even joking that he would one day be up for playing Vladimir Putin. One can only dream.

His latest project, King & Conqueror, which stars James Norton and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Harold Godwinson and William the Conqueror respectively, is certainly no exception.

Starring as King Edward, also known as Edward the Confessor, Eddie manages to stand out amongst a stacked cast with this fascinatingly in-depth character study into a monarch who, for all intents and purposes, is portrayed as an unstable mummy’s boy.

Eddie played Terry Donovan in Ray Donovan, the older brother of Liev Schreiber’s titular character (Picture: Getty Images)

@Knightanddog summed it up best on X when he said: ‘Since being a boy, I have loved English medieval history…. I never before thought of Edward the Confessor as being anything like the way the brilliant Eddie Marsan has played him. Great stuff.’

But it hasn’t always been this way for Eddie. Certainly not when he shot to fame on the American crime series Ray Donovan, starring Liev Schreiber.

‘I started to do alright [in my career], and I went over to America to do Ray Donovan. This is where it changed.

‘Before I did it, I had played Richard III in Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, in Europe, and it was quite a good show.

‘But while I was out in America, and I had rented a house in LA with my family, and I thought “I’m a movie star.” My agent told me that the BBC are doing Richard III, and they want to offer you a part.

‘I didn’t think that I was going to play Richard, but I still thought it was great, brilliant in fact. But the offer came through, and it was a thief with two lines.

‘I thought, “I’m working with Liev Schreiber for an award-winning drama and in Britain they want me to be a thief with two lines.”

He’s also previously starred in Sherlock Holmes, V for Vendetta and Happy-Go-Lucky (Picture: Getty Images)

‘So I stayed in America, and they cast me in many diverse things. When I came back to Britain, they suddenly said, “Okay, give him bigger money.” But I had to go over to America to do it. I couldn’t do it here. Here, they just wanted me to be one thing.’

Discussing his upcoming series with the BBC, the actor is still as passionate as ever.

Central to his hopes for what the audience takes away is that it can challenge this ‘binary superficial national narrative we have in Britain’.

He tells me: ‘People think that we have to have this binary interpretation of the world in order to feel safe, and it’s not true. We’re more interconnected than we like to think… people are terrified of that.’

That message is certainly delivered across the space of eight sprawling episodes, as is Eddie’s wonderful, if not deeply uncomfortable, portrayal of Edward the Confessor.

One thing I do know is that I won’t be making any bets on what his next role will be.

King & Conqueror is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

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