Toby Jones: ‘I don’t get to play James Bond’

The 45-year-old can afford this kind of self-deprecation. Over recent years he has established a quiet ubiquity, slipping from one supporting role to another with an ease most actors would find impossible. Perhaps it helps that, even after an hour in his company, you cannot decide whether his face is incredibly ordinary or incredibly distinctive. He can do Hollywood — both the big, popcorn-shifting stuff like Captain America: The First Avenger or The Hunger Games, but he is also sought by Academy Award-winning directors such as Oliver Stone and Ron Howard, with whom he worked in W. and Frost/Nixon respectively. Last year he appeared in two British cinema successes: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and My Week with Marilyn. His portrayal of Truman Capote in the 2006 biopic Infamous may have been overshadowed by the release of the film Capote a year earlier, with Philip Seymour Hoffman winning a Best Actor Oscar in the same role, but critics rated Jones’s performance equally accomplished. He has an Olivier Award for his stage work and has given life to CGI characters – he voiced Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter films and appeared, via motion capture, in The Adventures of Tintin. “If I can avoid repeating myself in the kind of parts I play, I will,” he says.

We meet because Jones is about to appear in Julian Fellowes’ four-part miniseries Titanic. “There is a degree of expectation surrounding it because of who the writer is and because of the subject matter,” he says. He plays John Batley, an Irish second-class passenger in thrall to the hierarchy of the class system and to his own aristocratic employer . . . although it would not be a spoiler to say that his character’s attitudes might start to change once their ship commences sinking.

Jones is straightforward and innately likeable, and seems faintly amused that anyone would want to know about his life. He lives, as it happens, in South London with his partner, Karen, a barrister, and their two young daughters. He has a warm chuckle and tries not to give the impression that being an actor is anything more than quite a nice job. “I’ve always been surprised by the level of interest in actors. It often bewilders me at how many versions of the same thing you can hear them say.”

He even expresses concern that some things he has said about performances and scripts and the “emotional journeys” they can take you on might have sounded a bit, well, pretentious. He sighs. “Talking about acting, there is always a danger that on the printed page it can all sound very serious, and as though I think it matters more than it actually does. My job is to serve specific dramas and fit into stories. On one level, it isn’t very complicated at all.”

He admits that, if his take on the profession seems downbeat, it’s probably because of his upbringing. His father, Freddie, worked as an actor and appeared in almost 50 films and dozens of TV programmes. “He became an actor when he was 29, and had worked in a laboratory before that,” Jones says, “He came from a background in Stoke-on-Trent where acting was as remote a possibility as it could be. There were never any celebrity parties or getting to go on-set or anything like that. I think he has always treated it as a job, and that rubbed off on me.”

It also meant that Jones had a first-hand view of the turbulence the profession can cause to family life. Along with his two younger brothers, Jones attended Abingdon School where he grew up in Oxfordshire, first as a day pupil and later as a boarder. “In practical terms, my father was away a lot of the time. He worked unpredictable hours. There wasn’t much routine.”

So has he made a conscious effort to not be away from his own children too often, given his own childhood experiences? “I can really, honestly say that I haven’t. I will look back on my professional career and think, ‘I’ve been really selfish about the kind of jobs that I’ve chosen.’” He lets out a little laugh. “I have a fantastic partner who has enabled me to choose the work I want to do. And fantastic children who seem to be flexible enough to cope with that.”

So did he and Karen negotiate some kind of licence for him to take any job he wanted anywhere in the world? “Er... no,” he says, shifting in his seat. “It’s an ongoing thing. Like all families, there are things that need to be sorted out job-to-job. But I can’t remember a time when I’ve been stopped from taking a role I’ve really wanted because we felt I would be away too long. I know that generous and kind actors — much more generous and kind than I am — make that a practical consideration. I just hope and trust that my children feel the same way about it that I did, which is ‘that’s just the way it is’. It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just how it is.”

He remembers using Skype to talk to his daughters while on location in rural China a few years ago. “They were watching Dr Who, so they turned the laptop screen around so I could watch television with them. I was just a face on the sofa. That’s what they seemed to want to do,” he chuckles. “They didn’t want to chat or anything.”

Is there any sense that either of his girls might follow him into acting? “You look and think, ‘Are they showing any signs of the disease I’ve got?’ And it doesn’t have to mean tap-dancing at the age of two or getting up and reciting poetry. Sometimes, perhaps if someone is shy, performance can be a way out of that. But it’s not something I’m wishing on them,” he quickly adds. “If they could do anything else on the planet, I would be very happy. It’s an especially brutal job for young actresses.”

He says his own childhood years were spent mostly trying to fit in with his peers, bonding over “standard teenage boy stuff” such as “films, comedy and music. Dylan, Springsteen, punk rock... jazz, when I was a bit older”. A lot of his friends were the children of Oxford academics and he remembers being struck by “how much just knowing stuff was just a given”. Jones explains: “Being academic was just expected. They all seemed to know stuff I had no idea about. I think when I was about 16, I had the gall to ask my dad if he had ever heard of Samuel Beckett.”

These days, weekends are mostly spent “ferrying children to various engagements: to music lessons or parties they’ve got to go to”. He says , if he’s lucky, he might have a chance to catch up with some friends “rather than talking about catching up with some friends”. He used to play a lot of cricket – he was “a fearful batsman and an ambitious off-spin bowler” – but that kind of ongoing commitment is hard to maintain when you’re away a lot. “People get bored of you not showing up,” he shrugs. “It’s something I miss.”

Still, all said, it’s not a bad trade-off. He has his pick of parts, critical acclaim, a supportive family and what seems a normal-ish life. It helps that he has the ability without an ego to match. He may never play Romeo or James Bond or Batman, but that’s fine. If anything, you suspect, it would be a waste of talent.

Toby Jones stars in Titanic, ITV Sunday, March 25, 9pm

Toby Jones’s perfect weekend

Early to rise or lie in?

I can’t lie in.

Organic berry smoothie or full English?

Smoothie. There’s loads of sugar in them but they feel healthy.

Run in the park or watching sport on TV?

Used to do both, can’t do either now.

South or North London?

I live south, although I do most things in the north.

Kids: let them run wild or seen and not heard?

Can it be a bit of both?

DVD on sofa or premiere at cinema?

DVD, I’m afraid

Pub with friends or hit the dancefloor?

Dancing. I love it. Used to do it a lot in Manchester.

Five star hotel or B&B?

The hotel. Are you mad?

Hogwarts or St Trinians?

Hogwarts.

I couldn’t get through the weekend without...

Buckets of coffee.