Back in his art school days, Paddy Considine enjoyed a spell as a Method photographer. “If I was taking pictures of Elvis fans,” he explains, “then I had to have the Elvis back catalogue. I had to have all the books on him. I had to absorb it all. When I was photographing this bare- knuckle fighter, I started imitating him and quoting him. One of my mates said: ‘You don’t just photograph these people, you become them.’”
Such meticulous empathy served the 31-year-old well when he became an actor. Considine pored over tapes of Rob Gretton before playing the New Order manager in 24 Hour Party People, and enrolled on a religious education course to prepare for his role as Phil, a born- again Christian in My Summer of Love (out this week on DVD). That dedication, and a saturnine onscreen potency, has led to him being dubbed the British Robert De Niro.
“Come on!” he sighs, goodnaturedly. “Let’s get things in perspective. He’s been around for 40 years and I’ve only done a handful of films. Do I consider myself a Method actor? Well, I joined a religious class and De Niro drove a cab Taxi Driver. If that makes him a Method actor, then I guess it makes me one, too. But you can never totally inhabit a character. That’s just b*******.”
It’s probably just as well, because Considine is the creator of some of the most unsettling creatures in recent British cinema. From the zealot Phil to his unpredictable stranger in his first film, A Room for Romeo Brass, and his axe-wielding vigilante in Dead Man’s Shoes (the latter two films directed by his friend Shane Meadows), he specialises in men whose sullen exteriors betray the promise of violence. Off-screen, Considine is a far more benign presence.
“I’m drawn to people who are damaged, but I’m an affable bloke,” he says affably. Inspiration instead comes from the dubious characters who populated his childhood in Winshill, Derbyshire, although he is reluctant to go into detail. “I do have a black hole of experiences that I draw on, but it’s stuff that I can’t really talk about.”
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Considine plundered the black hole once again for the forthcoming Stoned, in which he plays Frank Thorogood, the builder who has been linked to the death of the Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones. “It was a total clash of cultures,” he explains. “Frank was a very repressed working-class guy. To meet someone like Brian — this fey, bohemian bloke surrounded by loads of girls — played havoc with his head.” Considine, though, has some sympathy. “Brian used to ponce around in blouses and floppy hats. I’ve got builders working around where I live at the minute — I’m sure if I walked out like that they’d be saying: ‘Who the f*** does he think he is?’”
After Stoned comes Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, in which Considine appears opposite Russell Crowe’s 1930s boxer as “a guy who’s lost everything in the Wall Street Crash. Basically I am the Great Depression.” More sweetness and light then? “I’d love to do a comedy one day,” he laughs, but not at the risk of blemishing an impressive CV. “I’m not interested in playing Joe from the office who gets off with Claire from acccounts. I might as well not get out of bed.”