He may have the sartorial presence of an unmade bed, but Henshall's dishevelled appeal is hard to resist...
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Jean West has a close encounter with the tired and emotional star of Peter Mullan's acclaimed Orphans
Douglas Henshall is late. When he does shuffle through the door of his Soho publicist's office, he looks like he's been run over: bleary-eyed and whiskery with long, lank locks draped over slouched shoulders, he commands the sartorial presence of an unmade bed.
And yet he is perversely attractive, exuding all that is stylish and appealing in the scruffy bugger. He shakes my hand, sparks up a cigarette, gulps at a coffee and I am appalled to find myself shallowly pondering the tall actor's handsome, dishevelled appeal.
But if I'm thrilled that Henshall has shown up, he is doubly happy that I'm without a photographer. He is nursing, if not the mother of all hangovers, then an experienced babysitter.
You see, it had been one of those nights - it got to one in the morning and he was bored so he called up some friends and, well, they went for a beer, one thing led to another and night edged closer to day.
Sleep became necessary and then a hearty meal was needed to mop up all those free radicals devouring his system and lift his plummeting blood sugar back up around the normal level. But then this would have to wait, there was the interview.
We're here to discuss Orphans, the award-winning directorial adventure from Peter Mullan. Since lifting the Best Actor award for My Name Is Joe at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Mullan has become Scotland's man of the moment.
Henshall, however, has known him for years. They both appeared in David Kane's television project, Jute City, and knew each other socially, so Henshall is delighted that the Mullan wasn't so starstruck by the rollercoaster events that propelled him into the international limelight as to forget his friends. He recaptures a conversation from another night out on the randan, this time with Mullan.
"I remember going out with Peter years ago and standing in a nightclub chatting. He told me 'One of these days I'm going to write and direct a film and have you in it'. I just thought it was one of those things you talk about when you are drunk, but eventually I got a script written by him through the post. I thought that was great."
Orphans is an alternately harrowing and hilarious tale of redemption, set (and filmed) in the southside of Glasgow about four grown-up siblings on the eve of their mother's funeral.
It chronicles the terror, even as adults, of accepting that a parent has died, and all the implications that brings with it. Henshall plays Michael, one of the brothers who becomes caught in a pub brawl and ends up being stabbed.
He spends the whole of the film denying both his emotional and physical wounds. Staggering drunk from shot to shot, haemorrhaging haemoglobin, he takes a dark journey through that night via a massage parlour, a trip to see his ex-wife and child, a further clash in another pub and a quasi-religious experience on the Clyde.
Mullan wrote Orphans (which bagged trophies at the Venice Film Festival) after the death of his own mother in 1994. Henshall has experienced similar bereavement and didn't always find the material easy to handle.
He won't elucidate much.
"You have to realise that this is a job of work and make the separation between your own grief and that of your character. We were filming for seven weeks. Sometimes I would turn up on the set almost with a feeling of dread because my character was taking me to a place that was not especially nice. But I used to run away to the Highlands at the weekends during filming."
The extraordinary movie flows effortlessly between social realism and the surreal, but Henshall knows these concepts often unite in grief. "The film underlines the absurdity of what happens to people in grief," he says. "You might find yourself doing odd things, things you would not believe."
He gives examples from Orphans, such as the comic scene where his brother, Thomas (Gary Lewis) carries his mother's coffin alone, martyr-like, on his back through the cemetery, immortalising the words: "She ain't heavy, she's my mother" and the equally bizarre (in the circumstances) rantings of another sibling, keen to exact revenge with a bullet on the knifeman who stabbed Michael.
Henshall acknowledges that laughter and pain are separated by a fine line in such situations.
"It's quite weird, but it's also a blessing. The humour comes out of the madness of it. But I have to say that during the actual filming, I was not aware of how funny the film was going to be. I was thinking where is this humour?" Watching the finished product left him in no doubt, however.
"I would defy anyone to go to the film and not laugh and be moved by it."
Henshall cannot imagine shifting from acting to writing like Mullan, despite aspirations to become a journalist in his earlier years.
"Until I have something to say, I wouldn't attempt to write," he offers. "I think it's arrogant of a lot of actors to think for a second that they can. But Peter is not self-indulgent and besides, he's good for actors because he has done the job himself.
"He understands the process very well and is not someone who feels he needs to stamp his authority on a project. He treats the cast and crew the same."
Henshall talks freely. Move from the professional to the personal, however, and he starts laying out some ground rules. Yes, I can ask how old he is, but at first he's isn't going to tell. Then, "OK, I'm 32". Later research fills in the gaps.
Henshall was born in Glasgow's Barrhead, the son of a nurse and a publishing executive. Acting was never really considered as an option as a boy: first came football (he supports St Mirren and Chelsea).
Later, journalism or art school beckoned but after becoming involved with the local youth theatre, he turned to acting and found himself at London's Mountview Drama College. Did he enjoy it?
"I was 18-years-old, it was my first time away from home, living in London - of course, it was great." He recalls the first time he saw himself on film: "I thought no, no, I'm much more handsome and cool than that. "
Henshall was most currently in the public eye thanks to This Year's Love, which teamed him up with David Kane again for a romp through the chequered affairs of a group of twentysomethings living in London.
"It was one of the happiest jobs I have ever been involved in," he says of the Brit hit. "David Kane was a joy to work with. There was a really good atmosphere on set. It was summertime, we were in Camden and the World Cup was about to start.
"The pressure was not too heavy, but I was working with people who were good. The last thing you wanted was to be seen as the one who was not carrying their weight."
He speaks affectionately of fellow thesps Dougray Scott, Kathy Burke, Catherine McCormack and Jennifer Ehle as if they are real pals and admits to being chuffed that Scott, from Fife, is enjoying work in Hollywood with Tom Cruise and director John Woo in the sequel to Mission Impossible. Envy is an emotion that genuinely seems off limits.
"You can be very cynical in this profession but I constantly meet people who give me enough faith in what I am doing to keep going. I love my job - I get paid for doing something I love. It is my greatest achievement."
Hollywood sounds like a nice idea but he says it would have to be a worthwhile project. "Some of the best film-makers on the planet are in Hollywood. If they wanted me to work on say another Mission Impossible 2-type film, I would think about it for, oh two seconds and be there like a shot. But not just because it was Hollywood. Some popcorn movies are fun but I can't handle things like Independence Day and Godzilla. They don't respect the intelligence of audiences. I am so glad Godzilla bombed."
Real charm comes for him from classics like Some Like It Hot, On the Waterfront ("Marlon Brando is as perfect as anyone has ever been"), Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia.
WITH two feature films under his belt as well as the forthcoming Psychos (a six-part drama set on a psychiatric ward of a Glasgow hospital) Henshall isn't too depressed at currently being unemployed. "If you sit and dwell for too long on it you would be as well to pack it in and get another job. I used to beat myself up about being out of work but I don't bother anymore." Especially when his star is rising: it is rising isn't it? He is characteristically self-effacing. "My name is worth about £5," he says. "And a bag of chips."
Chips, though, will have to wait: right now there's a hangover to shift. Anyone got some Irn Bru handy?
Sunday Herald - 11 April 1999