Is it possible to star in three of the most popular films of all time and still not be recognised in the supermarket? For Bernard Hill it is. He played the captain of the Titanic in the blockbuster starring Kate Winslet, and King Théoden in the second and third parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But in the wilds of rural Suffolk where he now lives he is seldom troubled by fame.
He moved to the area 10 years ago and enjoys the tranquillity and slower pace of country life. The only problem is that on the roads things can sometimes be a little too slow even for him.
“Beware Suffolk drivers smoking a pipe or wearing a hat,” he frowns. “Pipe smokers are dozy buggers anyway — they think they are still in their living room so they don’t really pay enough attention. And if they wear a hat that means they think they are out for an afternoon stroll and they’ll be looking everywhere but the road ahead.”
It makes you wonder whether the real Hill is closer to the angry northerner in Boys from the Blackstuff than the kindly old Théoden. He made his name as the headbutting, unemployed Yosser Hughes in Alan Bleasdale’s seminal 1980s series and it launched his career as a character actor. Perhaps it’s a trick of the light, but Yosser’s manic look seems to re-emerge in his eyes as he warms to his theme.
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“They drive around here at 10mph below the speed limit,” he fumes. “There’s never any urgency — they just poodle around. If you are late, you have to overtake, but as soon as you try that they won’t let you past. They pull out and close the gap or accelerate when you are coming up on the outside. Well, if they try that I make my feelings felt — I will pull in front of them and give them hand signals.”
Hill, 61, was born and raised in Manchester and remembers his first car, a Morris Minor. It had been involved in a crash and he picked it up cheaply. The downside was that it had no passenger window and the door had been bashed in.
He ran it until the gearbox failed, whereupon he got out and walked away, leaving the car where it had died.
He was also a keen motorcyclist for a while, graduating from the classic British BSA C15 to a Norton 750. He reluctantly gave up bikes when he was 25 after a series of accidents.
After his breakthrough role in Boys from the Blackstuff in 1982 he moved to London to take up more offers of work on stage and screen. Knowing he would need a car for the city, he arranged to buy one in Stafford on the way down. “That was my favourite ever car — a Volvo 122S Amazon,” he smiles. “I found a place where they tuned racing cars and had the suspension improved as well. It ran beautifully, and even after I sold it people would say to me they had seen my car.”
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As his television and film career gathered pace — he played alongside Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine — he upgraded to a BMW 320. It was a great car to drive, he says, but not to be seen driving.
“It doesn’t matter what your personality is, if you are driving a BMW in London you’re considered a wanker,” he says. “It hit me one day in Islington when I borrowed a friend’s Citroën 2CV. I was pulling out from parked and I had trained myself to expect not to be let in, but suddenly I looked around and there was a gap. Someone had stopped and was gesturing to let me out. It was so unexpected and then I realised it was because he wasn’t threatened.”
As well as a classic 1958 rag-top Land Rover, Hill now owns a more modern Discovery for everyday driving. He says he needs the newer vehicle to take his son Gabriel to school each day in nearby Southwold. Although rural, the area is hardly off-road territory but Hill justifies the use of a 4x4 by saying he needs it to negotiate country lanes that are regularly covered in detritus from lorries transporting the annual sugar beet harvest.
He bought the Discovery in 1998 when models had only just hit the showrooms, but it was not a happy experience. “Practically everything went wrong,” he says, “but it was always a case of returning to the garage, where they would quickly get it under cover as if to hide their mistakes. It clearly wasn’t done to let it be known their new car had broken down.
“The turbo blew and the back door hinges were too flimsy for the weight, so I had trouble with those. In fact the dealer had just finished ironing out all the problems when Land Rover introduced a new version of it.”
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Hill’s last major television outing was playing David Blunkett in last year’s muckraking docudrama
A Very Social Secretary. “I’ve got no conscience about showing politicians in a bad light,” he says of his Blunkett portrayal. “I’d bag them all if I could, they’re not worth shoe leather, any of them.
“I think we should impeach (Tony) Blair — he and (George) Bush have just upped the stakes in international terrorism through the Iraq war and neither of them should be allowed to get away with it.”
Hill has a new film out later this year, Save Angel Hope, which reunites him with Billy Boyd — who played the hobbit Pippin in the Rings trilogy — but says his secluded life in East Anglia means big roles are increasingly hard to come by.
“It’s all about ideal age and size, and I’m neither,” he says. “You’ve got to live in America if you want to be busy at my age.”
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Pipe-smoking Suffolk drivers apart, however, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
On his CD changer
I take my iPod into the car so I carry all my music with me anyway. In the morning it will be classical to keep everyone calm on the way to school but on the way back it will be jazz — perhaps Miles Davis or Wynton Marsalis