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
character gay interesting
I've never played a gay character on screen, so that would be interesting. I've never played a gay character, and that would fascinate me because I'm not gay, so that would interest me.
fun thinking play
I'd love to play a Bond villain. Yeah, I'd love to play a Bond villain. Everyone always says this to me; they always say, 'You've got to be a Bond villain', 'We're going to make you a Bond villain...' But they've never, ever approached me, I've never had a whiff of it. I think I'd love to play a Bond villain; I'd have great fun.
stars thinking oxford
I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing.
dad boys men
When you're the youngest and the only boy, you get spoilt but you get told you're spoilt so you don't get to enjoy it very much. I was the only man in the house because my parents divorced and my dad moved away when I was 13.
ego actors want
I want to be respected as an actor. There's my ego. But I don't have a great need to be liked by an audience.
jobs character thinking
The trick to acting is not to show off; it's to think the thoughts of the character. I was lucky because when I started acting, it was doing jobs above pubs. I learned to act in anonymity, so by the time people saw me, I knew what I was doing. I was crap for years, but no one saw me being crap. It's a trade you learn.
drama party school
I wasn't one of the ones voted most likely to succeed when I was at drama school, but I persevered and concentrated on the acting rather than going to the right parties and getting the right agent. Eventually, after ten years, it paid off.
house actors firsts
I was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor.
thinking years wife
I was approached to do something for seven years, and it was a quality project. I did seriously think about it, but I didn't want to be away for six months of the year. I've never done the L.A. thing where you go and have loads of meetings; I can't say to my wife, 'I'm going to wait by a pool for six months.'
character men play
I have friends who are leading men, and they're only ever allowed to play leading men of a certain type. But as a character actor, there's a wider variety of projects available. On the big Hollywood films, all they care about is having their lead in place, so it's actually easier for someone like me to slip in. And I'm happy to do so.
race class people
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.
school class people
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.
play suffering actors
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.
character boys play
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.