ALL ABOUT EVE - Chrissy Iley meets Trevor Eve

He used to play the bad boy alot. He'd take his clothes off a lot, too. But not any more. What changed the Waking the Dead star; his mum or his bottom?

I was not expecting to be seduced by Trevor Eve. Actors renowned for playing louche bad boys who know their way around a pair of handcuffs or a two-way mirror. (The Politician's Wife and Evil Streak, respectively)are normally a disappointment in real life. Besides, I had a notion that several seasons in a succesful series - the dark puzzle of Waking the Dead - might have mellowed him, and not in a particularly attractive way.
But I was wrong. The expected mellowness that might come with being 50-something has also bought a rather compelling knowingness. It's a kind of spicy mellow. A very loose and sexy demeanour, but at the same time, a coiled spring. Of course, he's known for his capacity for the dark side - for seduction and deviousness in landmark roles like the adulterous and weak Tory MP Duncan Matlock in The Politician's Wife, gruesome Felix Cramer in A Sense of Guilt, and the rather curdling voyeur in An Evil Streak.
He has a twin career as a producer with his own company, Projector - we meet in his production offices, high up in a buzzy part of Soho. I hadn't expected that, either. The company is thriving. I get coffee with caffeine; his is decaffeinated because of his "natural adrenalin". he says he's easily driven and easily lazy. He's comfortable in his skin and at the same time, uncomfortable about everything.

"The last series I did was Shoestring, 25 years ago. There were only 21 episodes and it ran for two seasons, but people who weren't even born remember it. I didn't enjoy Waking the Dead at the beginning. When it started it seemed we were all making a different programme. Eventually, scripts came in that were accurate in that they fitted the characters, and then in the second series, it became enjoyable."

"Showing your manipulative side is the therapeutic angle of acting. That's the theory, isn't it? But people with a dark side are more fun to play, because everyone does have one. Nobody is straight down the line. "The thing about playing bad is that you never believe you're so bad. You've got to find the lovable good qualities, the things you like your character for. I don't think there's anybody out there who thinks they're really, really awfull. But we love to love and hate the monsters, don't we? I mean, look at Thatcher. She splits people right down the middle. Politics and religion are best not talked about because suddenly you'll find someone's politics and you'll find you reassess friendships."

"Psychotic politicians, dark-side politicians - it all goes hand in hand. I'd have the passionand the commitment to be a politician, but I wouldn't have the diplomacy. I'm always amazed at the passive state politicians get into in debate. They keep their cool. I couldn't."

"She was fiery. Five foot two, a bit of a party animal, loved a good time. And Welsh. The flip side of that is the black mood, but their passion is pheunomenal. She didn't like watching me playing the nasty ones. She liked it when I was playing good guys. There was a phase in the 80s where I took my clothes off and she didn't like that. She didn't want to see my bottom. I think that it was that her friends saw my bottom and she didn't like it. "But when one gets older, one considers one's bottom less attractive. I don't get asked anymore. Sex happens between 20 and 34, you know. I mean, I would get it out. I don't have any moral reasons. It just hasn't come up, whereas it used to a lot. In the Politician's Wife, there was even that bit of being tied up."

"No, I guess I always knew what to do with a pair of handcuffs."

"They kicked me out when I was 16 and took me back under special contract to do my A-levels. It was just general appalling behaviour, really. A combination of things - mostly that I didn't spend many nights at school. I used to climb down four floors at two in the morning, spend the night with a girl, then climb back up. Incredible when you think: what was I doing risking my life climbing down the drainpipes of an old building?"

"For a while, I didn't know if I'd walk again, so I had to think of an alternative way to earn a living - but there's a side of me that thought: I'll do this to show that I'm not an airy fairy, floaty sort of person. Producing is an agonising business, a very difficult industry to crack. The death rate of production companies is huge, as is the birth rate. People have dreams and visions of what they want to make. The tragedy is, they're not encouraged to make them. We go not with passion, but with what's tried and tested. Some fantastic visions will never be made, and such a lot of crap is made."

"I suppose I'd have been delighted if I'd got a major movie and become Hollywood A-list and box office, but the fact was, I was there with my family - my two sons were born there - and my daughter was 12, and we decided not to put her through American high school."

"I'm not good at that. I'm an actor. Comfort doesn't suit me. You don't really know how, psychologically, to adjust to success. You don't accept success. It's elusive. People might endow you with it, but it's not like you're a businessman who can measure it. They've got a yacht, a plane, a house. To the artist, the actor/painter/musician, there are always new things to be conquered. There's an insecurity of doing what you do that's ethereal. You can't define it. I think actors thrive in adverse situations. We feel guilty about comfort."

"I can't imagine it any other way. (Trevor Eve is married to Sharon Maughan). It would be hard to explain the panics and insecurities you have as an actor to someone who wasn't one."

"She found it quite amusing. If you're prone to jealousy, that might be a tricky one. You read about people who've stormed onto the set enraged. But I don't."

EVE's CV

BORN 1951, Birmingham. Father was a drinks wholesaler, and was 50 when Trevor was born. One brother 25 years older from father's first marriage ("I only see him at funerals"); another ten years older.
MARRIED Sharon Maughan, 1980. She starred in ads for Gold Blend in the 1980s and is now Tricia in Holby City. Three children: Alice, Jack and George.
EDUCATION Bromsgrove School, Kingston School of Architecture, Rada.
ACTING Came to prominence on stage in Willy Russel's John Paul George Ringo ...& Bert (1974). First major film role in Dracula, 1979. TV breakthrough as private investigator Shoestring in same year. Spent much of the 1980s in Los Angeles, including starring in the TV series Shadow Chasers, a comedic precursor to The X-Files, before playing a series of TV baddies in the UK: a philanderer in A Sense of Guilt (1990); another adulterer in The Politician's Wife (1995); a voyeur in An Evil Streak (1999). Has played Det.Supt. Peter Boyd in Waking the Dead since 2000. Spent 22 weeks last year filming for Troy, but had only one line in the final cut.
PRODUCTION Runs TV production company Projector with Sharon Maughan. Credits include ALice through the Looking Glass (1998), starring Kate Beckinsale; Cinderella (2000); and Twelfth Night (2003), with Parminder Nagra. Shortly to make drama about Suez crisi, in which Trevor Eve is to play Anthony Eden: "It has obvious parallels to Iraq."