ABOUT AN EVIL STREAK INTERVIEW

Manipulative role means the clothes stay on; Rob Driscoll talks to Trevor Eve about his latest role which unusually does not involve him in gymnastics between the sheets

He's famous for playing a string of sly and seductive heart-throbs, but in his new TV drama Trevor Eve leaves the passionate scenes behind to play a voyeuristic academic who pulls the strings of other people's relationships. "I found it quite interesting to be the one who's NOT on the bed doing the gymnastics," laughs 47-year-old Trevor, who stars as the Svengali-like puppet master Alex Kyle in ITV's An Evil Streak, the latest drama serial from the ever-torrid pen of Andrea (Bouquet of Barbed Wire) Newman. "But it's not the end of my pectoral-flashing days," he adds with a cheeky grin - probably appeasing the worries of millions of female fans in the process.

An Evil Streak marks Trevor's return to the work of Andrea Newman following 1990's a A Sense of Guilt. This time around, his character Alex is a worldly-wise but cynical university classics lecturer with unconventional sexual tastes, who decides to make life more exciting for his adored niece and god-daughter Gemma (Rosalind Bennett). He engineers an affair between Gemma and the handsome, married David Mereday (Richard Dillane), and Alex's vicarious pleasure equals theirs, until his chilling masterplan ignites and self-destructs before his very eyes. "I don't think of Alex as evil, even though the word is in the title," says Trevor. "I think he's a manipulator, and he believes that everything will be fine - but what he doesn't take into account is that it could all go wrong, and therefore he'd be perceived as evil. "He's clearly bisexual, an appreciator of both the female and male form, and he's been emotionally incapacitated through the death of his brother; he's locked in, with an inability to express or communicate love with people, so he does it vicariously. All told, that's an interesting mind-set for an actor to tackle."

These days, Trevor's fans are lucky to see him before the cameras at all, so immersed is he in his other professional commitment - his own production company Projector, which last year made the Channel 4 film Alice Through the Looking Glass. "I started going into production a few years back, after I broke my back in a horse-riding accident, and took rather a long time to recover," reveals Trevor. "During that time, I thought I'd better do something if I couldn't walk again. Producing was always something I wanted to do, but this made me more determined to do it." Trevor's accident occurred in 1995 - just six weeks after American actor Christopher Reeve endured a similar fate which left him paralysed. "I was out cold for 48 hours, and you do go into shock," recalls Trevor. "During the course of the next few days, you realise the full extent of your injury. But I was very fortunate, and six months later I remounted a horse. It was terrifying, really scary, but something I knew I had to do to conquer any fear of doing it again." Thankfully Trevor recovered fully from his accident and now he has the best of both worlds, working both behind and in front of the cameras. His company Projector is about to announce its second project at the current Cannes Film Festival, a film for Channel 4 again, which he describes as "a romantic, magical fairy tale. It's a literary classic, a period piece." Producing is something that Trevor warmed to immediately. "I've only produced once, and I don't think I've cracked it, but I enjoyed it and that's the main thing," he says. "I think with 25 years of acting in the can, you do pick up a reasonable amount about the process of making a film. "I've long had a genuine respect for producers - after all, you're the guy who starts from nothing, just the idea, and you've got to get everyone interested. It can be a rather lonely experience. But what amazed me more, working on Alice through the Looking Glass, was my respect for actors. We were filming on the Isle of Man with people like Kate Beckinsale, Ian Holm, Sian Phillips and Greg Wise. They'd turn up, dressed in ludicrous costumes, walk to the set, do a tiny bit of rehearsal, then the director says "Action!" And there's Ian Holm on horseback in abominable weather, reciting a complete poem perfectly, while we're losing the light all around us. You suddenly witness such astonishing creative confidence that seems effortless."

Trevor's wife, actress Sharon Maughan, is currently enjoying success in America with a regular part in a TV series called Felicity, from the makers of Ally McBeal. "She's also written a screenplay for the same company which we'll do next year," says Trevor. Their three children, meanwhile, remain suitably unfazed by Mum and Dad's small-screen fame. "They've never watched me on TV, and that's fine by me," says Trevor, father of 17-year-old Alice, 13-year-old Jack and five-year-old George. "They've never seen an episode of Shoestring in their life - it was made before they were born. And we're not the kind of family that sits down to retrospectives of Dad's work! "Alice has resisted the business," he says proudly. "When we lived in Los Angeles, she screen-tested at the age of about ten, but she's been very cool, and turned down a lot of films that I'd love to have been in! She's going to wait, she's very academic - she's got a wonderful combination of beauty and brains, which to me you can't beat."