Celebrity Interviews
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Three times a crook
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| Embraced by Hollywood: Actor Mackenzie Crook has found fame after a long spell on the stand up comedy circuit. |
MACKENZIE Crook is the most unassuming chap you could hope to meet.
Perhaps it is the 10 years he spent on the comedy circuit trying to break into acting - "I only meant to do it for two or three" - or the fact that he sees himself as an ordinary dad living in north London - "my daughter's three months old and my son is five" - but Crook doesn't seem to have let his time hanging out with Johnny Depp while filming Pirates Of The Caribbean go to his head.
Crook is promoting his latest film, Three And Out about a Tube driver who takes desperate measures to escape his miserable life, and once he starts talking, there's no mistaking David Brent's hollow-eyed, war-obsessed right-hand man.
Despite his new-found fame, the 36-year-old former comic, dressed today in a smart blazer and faded jeans, says he still finds descriptions of his physical appearance, such as 'cadaverous', rather unfair.
"I know I'm thin and have bags under my eyes, but that means corpse-like. But that's the look that's got me most of the parts I've played."
And as if suddenly aware that complaining about his looks is, at best, ridiculous, the actor grins. Since The Office, Crook has been embraced by Hollywood. Given a recurring role as Ragetti in the Pirates Of the Caribbean trilogy, which has grossed almost three billion dollars worldwide, he's also worked with Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland and Matt Damon in The Brothers Grimm.
"I feel like I'm very lucky to be working as a professional actor and don't feel I have the right to turn down a role. During Pirates I was away for a very long time, almost six months of my son's first year. Doing Three And Out was mostly based around north London which was ideal because I could walk to work."
In his latest film, Mackenzie plays Paul Callow, a depressed Underground train driver who wants to be a writer. After watching two people fall under his train, his workmates tell him that three 'one-unders' in a month equals instant retirement and a payout. And - on the edge of breakdown - Paul decides to find someone willing to be his third.
The movie has already been the subject of controversy. Accusing the film's makers of insensitivity, the union of train drivers has threatened to picket the premiere, arguing that suicide shouldn't be a source of comedy.
"It's a bit disappointing I have to admit that," Crook says diplomatically. "It's not like my character enjoys running someone over and gleefully goes off to try and do it again. He is traumatised by it. It's also not what we dwell on, and not what the movie's about. I think when the people who are objecting go and see the movie, they'll be pleasantly surprised."
During the film, Paul Callow strikes up a friendship with potential 'one-under' Tommy Cassidy (played by Star Trek actor Colm Heaney) and has a fling with future Bond girl Gemma Arterton. Crook says for the first time he was faced with a love scene.
"Admittedly she didn't know she was a Bond girl at the time," he laughs. "That was a bonus. It was interesting that there was this romantic storyline in there, because I'm not often offered those sorts of parts."
Tackling his first sex scene, Mackenzie admits he was nervous: "I wasn't looking forward to it -just because it's such an intimate and awkward thing to do, even with someone you're in a relationship with. I think she was nervous as I was, but in the end it wasn't as terrifying as I thought it might be.
"The director had worked out the structure he wanted and it was all done very sensitively. He didn't just let us get on with it and call 'cut' half an hour later."
Although happy to be based in London again, Crook describes working in Hollywood as a dream come true.
"I can't quite believe that I'm in this position. It was always my plan to work in movies but that's not to say I expected it to happen. The whole experience of doing Pirates Of The Caribbean felt like being in Hollywood back in the 50s. We rehearsed our sword fights in the Debbie Reynolds studios. Doing a pirate movie in Hollywood - it was like stepping back in time."
As "the best drawer in the class", Mackenzie originally intended to become an illustrator but failed to get into art college. Discovering acting, but unwilling to go back into education, he tried the unusual route of stand-up comedy. Hosting a comedy night in Deptford, he describes how he and his peers cut their teeth on the circuit.
"In Deptford my guests would be Julian Barratt, Catherine Tate, Noel Fielding, Dave Mitchell and Robert Webb. All these people that you now see on TV and in the movies. We're all contemporaries. It's amazing.
"Although I never got too despondent, I'm sure towards the end of that decade I wondered if it was going to happen. But every year in August I'd go to the Edinburgh festival and come back thinking that anything was possible."
Without embarrassment, Crook says he knew immediately that the script for The Office was something special.
"At the time I was auditioning for a lot of stuff and wasn't nervous anymore, until this script came along. I thought there's something important about this. It was the one I had to get. I remember Victor Lewis-Smith absolutely slating it the Evening Standard. He really went to town about how awful this new programme was. I wish I'd cut that out."
Still a keen writer, Mackenzie admits that he has always found motivation a problem.
"I'm not very good at doing things under my own steam. I've been working recently with my writing partner Greg Ellis and found that makes it so much easier."
Together they've finished a feature film script about the historical character Dick Turpin. According to Crook: "The proper historical figure was a vicious, nasty piece of work, as opposed to the dandy highwayman legend invented in Victorian times. We sent the script to Sam Mendes. He read it and was complimentary but said it's not something that he would be interested in directing. But he gave us some notes. We have got an actor to play the part of Turpin - he's called Mackenzie Crook!"
He is also trying his hand in the theatre. After playing Konstantin in a Royal Court production of The Seagull last January to critical acclaim, there is talk of taking the production to Broadway.
"If that got the same reception that it did in London that would be lovely. I try and be cool and not worry about what people think, but I think it does worry me. I joke about only reading the good reviews, but I wish I could. If I read a bad one, I find it gutting, absolutely gutting. But that's part of the job. Not everyone's going to like you work all of the time."
But at the moment, everyone seems to love him. Well, apart from the union of train drivers.
7:00am Saturday 3rd May 2008
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