Eddie Marsan
Eddie Marsan
Edward Maurice Charles "Eddie" Marsanis an English actor. He won the London Film Critics Circle Award and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Happy-Go-Lucky in 2008. He has appeared in the films Gangster No. 1, Mission: Impossible III, Sixty Six, V for Vendetta, Hancock, Sherlock Holmes, War Horse, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, The Best of Men, and The World's End. He also appears in Showtime's TV series Ray Donovanas Terry, and...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth23 June 1968
Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder.
As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.
It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence.
With a face like mine, I'm never going to play a character who conquers the universe, I'm going to play characters who are subject to forces bearing down on them. My career's based on how we are rather than how we wish we were - they get the good-looking boys in for that kind of role.
I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face.
I come from a place where there's violence and inarticulacy. I worked in a pub from the age of 12 or 13. I used to see people smashing glasses over each other. I was never tough. I was scared of them.
I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't.
I'm used to being in front of camera and knowing what to think. But if you're asking me to be me, I get very self-conscious. My job isn't to be me. Being an actor, people think you can do a eulogy at a funeral, a speech at a wedding. I find all that very nerve-racking.
I wanted to work with Bryan Singer because I like his films.
I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said, 'You know, it's funny, it's when you've got no clothes on, no one recognizes you.' I said, 'What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?
There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.
I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.
I've got four kids to feed and a wife to provide for. It's a worry but a great responsibility as well and one I relish.
Mike Leigh taught me about making choices - as an actor, you choose between being honest and clever, and with Mike, it's always about being honest. I learned how to behave on a film set from Jim Broadbent. He was a great example of someone with a fantastic career who kept his feet on the ground.