Nice-guy Jason Isaacs tries to avoid villain roles

By Luaine Lee

PASADENA, Calif. - Ever since he played the venal British colonel in The Patriot, Jason Isaacs has been on everybody's villain wish-list. 

Still, he keeps resisting evil. "I do get offered off-the-shelf villains and say no to almost every single one of them," he says. 

"The things that people instinctively think of me for are the things I wouldn't like to do. If I'm lucky enough to be able to continue to find interesting work, that's what I'll do. But if I end up playing the same thing over and over again just to fill the fridge, then that's what I'll do, 'cause it's a job." 

The man who played Lucius Malfoy in three Harry Potter films and the snarling Capt. Hook in Peter Pan, violated his own policy when he accepted the role of the charismatic Rhode Island hood in Showtime's brave, new series, Brotherhood, premiering July 9. 

"This is different," says Isaacs, who's dressed in a black T-shirt and crisp, blue jeans. "This is really a complex, rich part with a real journey. The pilot is something you commit to as an actor. You haven't seen the other scripts because they're not written. When a show gets picked up, they write 11 hours and they get a whole bunch of people in and they come up with stuff you could not have foreseen." 

Originally Isaac studied to be a lawyer. "I think I know why I ended up acting," he says, resting his elbow on chair arm. "It wasn't anything to do with the acting. We moved when I was a teenager. I was awkward. I spent a lot of my life like a lot of people, feeling self-conscious, and I didn't quite belong wherever it was. No matter what impression other people might have had, that's what was going on inside," he says. 

"When I went to university it was yet another huge social trauma because I was surrounded by what seemed to me incredibly confident young men and women. They were always very comfortable having sex and bank accounts and living away from home and all kinds of things that seemed very daunting to me. And all there was to do was go out and get so drunk you could (win over) people and (that) seemed to be the currency. That's what American teenagers do as well."  

He also stumbled on an audition. "I thought, as a student, I should try everything. I should try ballroom dancing and cake making and parachute jumping, shooting. I thought, 'I'll do a play.' So I went in to do an audition. I walked past this room, I was drunk ... then I went into this room and she said, 'Can you do a northern accent?' I thought, 'Oh, I'm from Liverpool, a piece of cake.'" 

He snagged the lead in the play. A "terrible mistake on her part," he says, because he'd never acted before. 

"But the relevance for me was I found a group of people where I belonged. Acting is very eclectic. It doesn't matter what your background is. It didn't matter that I came from what I thought was a different world to most of these people. I had something to do and really, if I'd happened across the hammock-making club, it would've been the same thing." 

The third of four boys (one is a doctor, one a lawyer, one an accountant) Isaacs, 43, says his folks were supportive, though his student plays were enough to traumatize any parent. 

"The first thing they saw me in I was naked and covered in chicken blood. The second thing I was castrated with a cheese-wire. Then I did 'Bent' and I talked myself and somebody else into orgasm, staring at the audience. Then I did Steven Berkoff plays in which I mimed having a 60-foot penis - and those were typical student plays.  

"When I came out of drama school my first professional job was a big television series in England, which was based on the finance district. I had a nice suit, a nice car and played a really nice man. They were so relieved." 

Isaacs and his wife, Emma, have been together for 18 years. They met at drama school, but when Emma gave birth to their first daughter, Lily, 4, she announced she was through with acting. They have a second daughter, Ruby, 10 months old. 

In fact, he was filming Brotherhood when Ruby was due. "On the call-sheet they had 'baby cover.' Normally you have 'rain cover.' They were incredibly gracious about setting up alternative scenes. We had 'baby cover' for a couple of weeks. The baby came during a night-shoot, and I had to leave the set and they used a double and shot over my shoulder. It was a very, very hairy ride by the time I got back to where I lived and drove to the hospital - which I couldn't find in the dark - the baby was born 17 minutes after I pulled up in the parking lot. Her waters broke while I was pulled over to the side of the road reading the map. Lost," he chuckles. 

Unlike other actors, Isaacs does not plot out his career. "I have no ambition left other than to play celebrity golf tournaments," he says. "I like my job. I like telling stories. I don't have any great desire for power. I can't believe I get as much money as I do and have as many opportunities as I do to tell interesting stories. If I can continue to work and pay the school fees I count myself incredibly lucky." 

Copyright © 2006 KRT News Service