Carl Barat: from Libertine to theatre actor

Barât has taken the afternoon off from rehearsals to meet at the Boogaloo, a trendy Highgate pub that’s decorated with photos of its celebrity clientele. Fittingly, just over Barât’s shoulder is a framed black-and-white print of Pete Doherty. If you know anything about Barât, it’s probably as Doherty’s co-frontman in the Libertines. They split more than five years ago but, like Morecambe and Wise, they remain eternally linked in the public consciousness. Throughout their turbulent relationship, the low-key Barât always appeared to be the more talented member of the partnership, teaching Doherty to play guitar and writing the lion’s share of the music.

What he always lacked was the cocksure swagger and self-belief of his old partner. Where Doherty can make his half-baked junkie ramblings sound like the words of a poet mystic, or retain a magnetic aura while stumbling drunkenly on stage, Barât would hide, apologetically, behind a floppy, foppish fringe.

“I can see that some people might think it’s odd that I’ve got into acting, ’cos I always used to get terrible stage fright,” he says. “It got to the point when I was getting through a whole bottle of whiskey during the course of a performance. Not any old whiskey, but Jameson’s Special Reserve! And then I’d be well into another bottle after the gig. I soon found out that that led you to a hospital bed.”

Doherty might be able to function purely on a diet of alcohol and Class A drugs, but Barât never took quite as comfortably to the rigours of rock’n’roll. “There was the time, in between the two Libertines albums, when I smashed my face in pretty bad after a night of drinking whiskey,” he says, glumly. “I was hospitalised pretty badly. I had to have bone grafts and everything.”

In 2006 he fell off a motorbike in Taiwan and broke his collarbone. Then, in 2008, another whiskey-fuelled bender led to him being admitted to hospital with acute pancreatitis. “I’ve been told not to drink again,” he shrugs, “but you know how it is . . .” There have been numerous other scrapes: a benign tumour behind his right ear led to a protracted operation, which has left him partially deaf. “Some of those tiny bones in my ear were damaged. My dad told me that you can replace those bones with a lizard jaw. I spoke to my doctor and he wasn’t quite so enthusiastic.”

Since splitting up his post-Libertines project Dirty Pretty Things at the end of 2008, Barât has been keen to cut down on the mindless hedonism and push himself in other directions. He’s tried to confront his stage fright by playing solo — just him and an electric guitar, Billy Bragg style — doing a coast-to-coast tour of North America in support of Glasvegas.

He has also started writing his first solo album. “My management told me, rather than making another f***ing indie record, why don’t you try and make something that you don’t care if anyone buys? So I’ve stopped trying to write hit singles and started writing the kind of songs I love again, writing on the piano rather than the guitar.”

And then there’s the acting. Last year there was a well-received cameo as Gene Vincent in the Joe Meek biopic Telstar, and a role in one of Har Mar Superstar’s short YouTube comedies, Crappy Holidays. Both have given him the confidence to take it farther.

The history of thespian pop stars is not, however, a particularly noble one. For every resounding success, such as Will Smith, there are dozens of dismal failures. “Oh, I’m aware of that,” he sighs. “But that’s why I want to learn the craft properly, on stage.”

Maybe Barât has a hidden theatrical gene. His complicated family life in Hampshire (his mum was a CND activist, his dad worked in an armaments factory) included a few actors. “Two of my great-grandparents were music-hall performers,” he says. “My sister Lucie trained as an actor, she’s been in a few films. And my mum does amateur dramatics — I saw her just before Christmas, at home in Hampshire, performing with the Whitchurch Amateur Dramatics Society.”

He did a theatre studies A level and completed two years of a drama degree at Brunel University. “Initially it was a chance to get a grant and get out of your home town,” he says. “And all the good-looking girls seemed to do drama, so it was an obvious choice. But, although I always paint a bit of a blagger’s picture of studying drama, I did take it seriously. I just got disillusioned with the course — I got frustrated with all the queenie types, you know, empty vessels making the most noise, but in reality I just lacked their confidence. I didn’t star in any productions. I read lots of theory — Artaud, Stanislavski, Meyerhold — and I directed a Harold Pinter play. I really got my teeth into that. I wanted to make it as nasty as possible.”

Even in the early days of the Libertines, Barât retained a love for the theatre. “When I moved to London, I supplemented my music income by working as an usher in several theatres — the Old Vic, the Aldwych, the Lyric. There’s that family vibe and togetherness in the theatre that I love. There’s a poetry in the whole collaborative system of it, the hierarchy, the directors, the old hands, the shared wisdom. It’s all rather more civilised than music. You can’t just roll out of bed into a rehearsal stinking of alcohol. Well, not officially. It doesn’t work quite so well when you’ve got to learn a script. But I like that discipline.”

His forthcoming stage debut in Shepard’s Fool for Love promises to be a baptism of fire. He stars as the rodeo rider Eddie, a demanding role previously occupied by heavyweights such as Ed Harris, Bruce Willis and, in the 1985 movie version, Shepard himself.

“It’s a great play. I saw the film, which was directed by Robert Altman, and I didn’t like it that much — I found it a bit slow and laboured. I’d like to make it a bit more frenetic and exciting.”

Starring opposite Barât, as Eddie’s illfated lover May, is Sadie Frost, 13 years his senior. “I’ve known Sadie for ages, just from parties and stuff. We were never that close, but we get on well. Dramatically, there’s a real rapport between us.”

Barât and Frost will depict Eddie and May’s tempestuous love affair. “It’s a violent, love-hate relationship,” Barât says, “two people stuck in a rut, in a perpetual wheel of tragedy, one that’s doomed from the start.”

Does it, perhaps, mirror his own relationship with Doherty?

“God, I’ve honestly not thought about that before.” He looks a little dazed by the question. “Maybe I’m going to have to get used to people asking me it! I’ve said before that my relationship with Pete was a bit like an intense love affair. There was a level of romance, certainly. Not physical, of course, but we definitely share an intimate understanding. Nowadays we don’t talk that often — maybe a couple of times a year there might be a text. But there’s a strong bond and a kind of understanding.”

Doherty has recently repeated that he is desperate to work with Barât again. Any chance of the Libertines reforming?

“Well, I’m far too busy at the moment. And there’s too much furore that would surround every little movement. If we’re going to do it, I’d rather do it properly and give it 100 per cent. But he’s a funny one, that Pete . . .”

Fool For Love opens on January 28 at the Riverside Studios, W6 (020-8237 1111)