SCOTS ACTOR DOUGLAS HENSHALL STARS AS ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE IN A NEW DRAMA - AND HIS WORK ON STAGE AND SCREEN IS RESPECTED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
Something's been bugging Douglas Henshall - the flame-haired Scot is fed up being misrepresented in interviews. Now he wants to clear something up - and he's chosen today to vent his frustration about the mistruths that have been written about him. But it's got nothing to do with his failed marriage, a supposed relationship with Sophie Dahl or being asked about his mate Ewan McGregor. It's about his hair. 'This is something that really shouldn't bother me, but it really does,' says the actor, settling into a battered old couch at his favourite club in London's Soho.
'But it really f****** does bother me. I don't have ginger hair. I've never had ginger hair. I'm nearly 40 for f*** sake.'
Good grief. Such venom. This is clearly a point the Orphans and This Year's Love star is passionate about. 'Let me explain,' he says, smiling to reveal he's half-kidding.
'Just before we filmed This Year's Love about eight years ago, I dyed my hair platinum blond, just because I was feeling a bit mad and wanted to see what it looked like.
'Then, when This Year's Love came along I tried to dye it back to its original colour and it came out a bit red. So that's where the red thing came from. A dye job. But of course I've been described as a f****** ginger ever since.'
His tresses have hardly done him any harm. Described as a leading member of the so called 'Jock-pack' which sprung out of Scotland in the mid '90s, Henshall's now regarded as a quality actor first, a Scottish actor second. So healthy is his reputation among the movers and shakers that he's starring in London's west end in an award-winning production of Arthur Miller's play Death Of A Salesman.
He plays Willy Loman's son Biff - a part he's coveted for years.
'This was the only part I ever really wanted to play,' he says, sipping mineral water.
'It's one of my favourite plays. In fact, it's probably the first play I ever read. That or John Osborne's Look Back In Anger. But my old man was a salesman for years, and I looked at it and thought, Arthur Miller knows my family quite well.
'The desire to perform in it has been there for 25 years with me. Finally I got the call. I'd always kind of thought in my heart that it was my play, you know?
'But then you find out that everyone who's read it thinks that.
'That's a tribute to Arthur Miller. Somewhere in his plays he manages to sort of just hit people, in a really primal place. It's an amazing feeling, and I think you get that sort of big connection from an audience.
'Anyone who's ever had a father or a mother ...' he tails off.
'It just kind of hits people.' Critical response to the production, has been favourable. Dougie says: 'It's astonishing. It's had a great reaction. And quite rightly, because it's an incredible play.
'I think the buzz about it is a good thing. The fact it's so well known can be a blessing or a curse. This could have turned out to be just another version. It had been to Chicago and Broadway, let's remember, before coming to London. So yes, there was an expectation for me. I had a lot to live up to as a member of the British cast joining up.'
And with that comes the obvious worry about a Scotsman doing an American accent in a cast full of Americans. 'The accent's fine now, I've worked on it with an accent coach,' says Douglas.
'For the first week you sound like every other bad actor trying to do it, but once you get through that it begins to sound more natural.'
Arthur Miller and Death Of A Salesman aren't the only legends of literature that he's become closely acquainted with recently.
This week, the Barrhead boy takes on the role of Scottish literary giant Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who created Sherlock Holmes.
The BBC production aims - and succeeds - in giving insight into the grinding difficulties faced by Doyle in his life.
His alcoholic father, his dying wife and intense relationship with another woman are just three things most of us don't know about the man.
There was much more to him than the world's most famous detective.
Douglas agrees. He didn't know much about him either.
'That's to my eternal shame,' he says. 'It's his legacy, I suppose, that so many people know of Sherlock Holmes, and that he was responsible for writing that.
'But I knew nothing of his life. And it was a big life, he was a huge man.
Now I think Sherlock Holmes was in some ways the least of him.'
The docu-drama - which co stars Scot Brian Cox and has a brilliant final twist - depicts Doyle's early life as chaotic and troublesome, implying that his psychological state was often turbulent. He lived with the intense guilt and remorse of having his father locked in an asylum and somehow coped with the pressure of a dying wife, huge fame and a decision to kill off the creation that made him a global legend.
Douglas thinks the writer's private life influenced his writing.
He says: 'The pain that must have been around him having an alcoholic father who is untreatable, and to then have him put in a sanitorium where he dies on his own. Then for him to kill off Sherlock Holmes when his father dies. Well, that link appears quite obvious to me.'
Of course, Doyle resurrected his leading man for Hound of The Baskervilles. 'Rather than thinking of him as a curse, he realised that it was something he could do that would be enormously successful.
'So instead of it being a chore, he accepted it as a blessing, something fortunate, and something that made him enormously successful.
While Doyle might be a tough part, Douglas relished the challenge.
He says: 'I find human conflict and the way people sometimes find redemption is interesting. Not just in work, but in life.
'I suppose I could have been accused in the past of having been drawn to drama of any kind.'
The drama meant a return to Scotland for the single actor.
'My ma died about eight years ago, and my dad lives in Cyprus now. So I've not been back for a while,' he says. 'Glasgow's changed so much since the last time I was there. There are bits of the city I just don't feel I know now.' But he no doubt respects the anonymity London affords him.
Paul English Daily Record July 23rd 2005