Esquire Magazine 2000

A Drink with Steven Mackintosh

SQUIRE: What's your poison?

STEVEN MACKINTOSH: Just water, thanks.

SQ: Fair enough. Before I got here, I was reading some of your previous interviews and it seems that there's a set formula: a female journalist talks about how lovely you are in a non-macho way, then she laments that you've got a wife and kids.

SM: Really? I don't know what that's all about. But yeah, I suppose I've done a lot of interviews with women. I don't know what to make of that one.

SQ: And they all talk about your hands.

SM:That's because I've got girl's hands.

SQ: I can't work out whether they want to shag you or mother you.

SM: God knows. It's not something I take too seriously Obviously I'd rather talk about my work, but I'm not going to feign annoyance at getting a bit of female attention. If it's part and parcel of a fairly intelligent chat then, hey, that's alright.

SQ:You're currently starring in David Hare's play, My Zinc Bed, at the Royal Court.

SM:Yeah, going back to the theatre was a bit of a leap to be honest because I haven't done it in eight years.

SQ: Didn't you work under Peter Hall at the National Theatre for a while?

SM: Mmm, that's right. I felt that it didn't really suit me and I came away thinking that I didn't want to do it again for a long time, if at all. And nowhere I am. It wasn't an easy decision to make, but this play is just so good and I feel incredibly privileged to be part of it.

SQ:Well, David Hare is not to be sniffed at.

SM: Exactly. I would have been a fool to turn it down.

SQ: David Hare is obviously a highly acclaimed playwright, while your co-stars Julia Ormond and TomWilkinson are both classically trained actors.

You've never attended an acting lesson, so is it strange for you to be working with people like that?

SM: In some ways I feel far less equipped because I've never had a method when it comes to approaching a script. I tend to be quite instinctive about it, picking up things as I get to know the text better. Now and again I feel like I could have benefited from a bit of guidance, but maybe that's not what they teach you at drama school. Sometimes I watch actors who are trained, and I see the way they approach a script, asking certain questions, really getting inside what they're doing, and I think, "Christ, you really know what you're doing, don't you?" In the end, it has to be instinctive for me, and that's what I tend to go with.

SQ: At the other end of the spectrum, your most famous piece of work is probably Lock, Stock, in which you worked with first time writer/director Guy Ritchie, and a cast of people who had, largely, never acted before. How different was that?

SM: It was a million miles away from anything I've ever done. But that's what is so fantastic about doing varied work. One minute I was on set with Lenny McLean listening to stories about dodgy casinos and people getting nutted, and the next having serious talks about emotions and relationships and auras.

SQ:You're about to star in the psychological TV drama Care, in which you play a man struggling to come to terms with the abuse he suffered as a child. What was it like being directed byAntonia Bird?

SM:Totally amazing. Both exhilarating and exhausting. I'd worked with her before on the film Safe but she just offered me this one out of the blue,

which was weird because that kind of thing doesn't happen to me very often. Anyway, when I read the script, I thought that it was the most mindblowing thing I had come across in my life. Very shocking, very powerful. It's just a very human story that deals with the horrors that occur everyday in this country, but which no one wants to talk about. If anyone has the ability to deal with that kind of story, it's Antonia.

SQ: It must have drained you.

SM: God, yeah. For some reason you just keep on going while it's being shot, but when it finished it was like, "Oh my God, what did I just do?" But it's a pretty invigorating thing to do as well. When there's a group of you working like that you start to get a rapport with everyone, and you feel like you're really part of it. And that's a pretty good feeling, that. ©

'My Zinc Bed' is at the Royal Court, London, until

28 October (for bookings, call 020 7565 5000);'Care'

is on BBC 1 on 8 October 2000