Douglas Henshall isn't really a psycho. He just plays one on TV. Actually he plays a psychiatrist in Psychos, Channel 4's bound- to-be-controversial drama set in a Glasgow mental hospital. With scalpel-sharp dialogue, electrifying emotion, hand-held camera work and slick direction, music from underworld and an ensemble cast featuring some of Scotland's best known actors, Psychos is like ER meets Trainspotting. As Dr. Danny Nash, Henshall is a maverick, prone to prescribing unorthodox treatments, behaving in an extrovert fashion and riling his fellow doctors. Sometimes he even wears a Celtic shirt to work.
In person, Henshall is nervy and unassuming, uncomfortable in the spotlight and wary of the notion of celebrity. Also, he supports St. Mirren. Nevertheless, at the question and answer session after a screening of the first two episodes of Psychos, Henshall was asked how he dealt with " those dark periods in every actors life when he doesn't have any work", whether he had ever taken lithium, if he could understand the suffering of the mentally ill, and whether he, like his character was prone to crazy behaviour.
For the most part, he answered straight forwardly, dismissing questions with brusque put-downs and looking incredulous as the enquiries led to the inevitable but unspoken: are you mental? The headlines were heading in the air : My Secret Schizo Shame by Top Scots Actor. Henshall shifted in his seat and his lower lip quivered, in either irritation or unease or both.
添ou can ask me anything you like", he smiles firmly when we sit down together later. 的 might not answer you, but ask me anything." In orangey velvet jeans and an orangey cardigan, Henshall clashes horribly with the red velvet sofa. His shock of strawberry blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail but now frames his angular face. He looks a bit like a lizard and might have split ends. We talk about the questions he was being asked earlier.
的 don't mind about talking about my work because that's part and parcel of the job, but I don't think it's necessary to ask me about my personal life. I don't think it's peoples' rights to know about my personal life. If you go up to some guy in the street and ask him questions like that, you'd be told in no uncertain terms to **** off, yet apparently it's expected for us to talk about it.
典he thing of the public having a right to know is your own justification," he continues. 展hat you are saying to me is: 'You're in the media eye and we, the media have the right to know.' And I'm sorry but you don't have that right." He stares me straight in the eye, almost daring me to disagree I don't. Even if doing an interview is like dancing a tango, Henshall is a reluctant partner.
Psychos' producer Chrissy Skins says when she met Henshall, she knew he was Nash, but Henshall is less forthcoming. He says he likes the maverick doctor but doesn't say he is like him. 滴e doesn't suffer fools gladly he's passionate, he's witty, intelligent, he cares deeply about what he does. I think he's as good at his job as he can be. He's not the kind of person who would just walk away from a problem. He's got a lot of integrity." Certainly Nash is all of these things, while also being frustrating, pig-headed and seemingly egotistical. As the series progresses he shows depths not visible at first, becoming endearing in a mad 澱ig brother" sort of way. Pressed over whether he shares any of Dr Nash's characteristics, he smiles enigmatically and says: 的 aspire to anyone who's got integrity. It's one of the more worthwhile virtues."
As well as starring in Psychos and the well received Britcom This Year's Love, Henshall appears in Peter Mullan's award-winning Orphans, as one of four adults on the eve of their mother's funeral, a spate of roles which has put the 32-year-old from Barrhead in Renfrewshire unavoidably in the public eye. His outstanding performance in Orphans- as the distraught, drook it Michael, who embarks on a journey through denial, anger and acceptance - provoked questions about his own mother's death and his reaction to it. Questions which Henshall resolutely doesn't answer. 的致e never talked about that and there's no way on God's earth that I'm going to turn my mother dying into a cheap hook for a story for someone - do you know what I mean? It's worth a bit more to me than tomorrow's chip wrappers."
Of Orphans itself, however, he has nothing but good things to say. 的t was Peter's first feature as a director, it was Frances Higson's first as a producer, Rosemary Stevenson had hardly acted in her life before, and for me, Stephen McCole and Gary Lewis, it was the first time we were playing major roles in the movies. There were an awful lot of firsts going on there: an awful lot of nerves. Subsequently, it was a really supportive atmosphere.
" I knew the people I was working with and I respected them and it was easy to be directed by Peter. From that point of view, it was very good work. It was difficult because of the subject matter, regardless of what your personal feelings are. It's still a difficult place to go because you've got to find it in yourself. That was alright because I was well up for that anyway. Working two nights doing night shoots isn't fun anywhere. When it's cold and you're wet and you've got a wind machine in your face it's not great."
He pauses " Artistically fulfilling but quite ****ing miserable. I got quote depressed by the end of it." He stares down at the plate of buffet nibbles in front of him. Douglas Henshall is hungry.
Douglas- Dougie - Henshall wanted to be a journalist once, but didn't get onto the course at the then Napier Polytechnic. He also failed to get into art college and eventually decided to go to drama school, the scenic sounding Mountview in London (that well known bed and breakfast as he puts it). Eleven months after graduating none of his letters asking for work had produced results. Then he wrote to David Hayman, then artistic director at the Glasgow-based touring company 7:84.
的 was desperate. I just wrote an outrageous letter demanding that he see me and thankfully, Davie, with a sense of humour, rang up and said, 'OK who are you?'. He was the first person to give me a job, he gave me my equity card, and I worked for 7:84 for two-and-a-half years on and off."
From there, Henshall performed alongside Peter Mullan in Michael Boyd's feted production of Crow, based on the Ted Hughes poems, at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow. After that he moved back to London, where he worked on some of the most acclaimed plays of the decade including David Mamet's American Buffalo at The Young Vic, Simon Donald's Life of Stuff at the Donmar Warehouse and Chris Hannan's The Evildoers at the Bush. He worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company for a year, at the end of which, he was sick of theatre and performed with Ewen Bremner at The King's Head in London on the curiously titled Greenfingers.
的t was a laugh," he smirks, suggesting that it was, if only because of Bremner's company.
He also worked with Ewan McGregor -with whom he remains close friends- on Dennis Potter's Lipstick on Your Collar in 1993. So it's natural to ask about the Scotpack actor set and whether he harbours any resentment as the poor- that is less famous - relation of McGregor, Carlyle et al. I'm Jealous of My Top Scots Mates by Douglas Henshall
" I don't like the Scotpack thing actually," he responds. 的 think it's divisive. Ewan, John Hannah, Dougray Scott - it might seem perverse but I'm really happy for them all. I always think those people are successful and the reason is that they're good. It's not because they're a member of some fashionable new group or that Scottish actors are flavour of the month... they're there because they are good."
In fact, Henshall is more than happy with his career as it is. After making three films back - to - back last year , then this Year's Love then Psychos, he has been unemployed for around six months ( which is " rubbish") and is now waiting for his next job. He is signed up for a second series of Psychos if Channel 4 recommissions it - which, even at this early stage, looks like a foregone conclusion - and has no great desire to go to Hollywood. " If I got offered a script from America that had a good character, a good director, people I wanted to work with, I'd jump at the chance," he concedes, "I'd be daft not to because some of the best film-makers on the planet are there. But I don't have this ' It's Hollywood so you've got to go' attitude."
For the time being, he is enamoured by film.
"I like the working atmosphere and I also like being in the movies. It's a buzz. I love going in everyday and being part of a crew and when the thing you're working on fuels you artistically, it's great." Which is why Henshall maintains he became an actor. " I liked the fact that you could say something on stage and make an audience laugh. I liked that you could make people listen, I liked some of the words you got to say, the characters you got to play. I liked all that about it: it's a way in which I can express myself completely. I find it terribly fulfilling and I get paid for it." Henshall is at ease when talking about the joys of acting and the camaradie of his profession.. He continues chatting and when I mention the Brixton bomb ( he lives near Electric Avenue), he goes from just personable to almost friendly. 的t went off during a thunderstorm," he gesticulates wildly. " I was at home watching the telly and it went off and the windows were going in and out like this ( more gesticulating) and I was like, ' Jesus that sounded a wee bit like a bomb'. And then it came out that there had been a bomb outside Iceland and the thing that worried me - because I intimately know that place- on Saturday afternoons, it's absolutely mobbed. I thought, God, there could be carnage down there. I read in the papers that it was Combat 18 and I thought after the Stephen Lawrence thing, how much more provocation does that community need?"
He breathes out a long breath after this uncharacteristically emotional outpouring. There is a momentary silence. Henshall has revealed himself as himself, and not as Douglas Henshall in publicity mode. Animated, passionate, warm, the bloke next door who pops into Iceland. Then, like dancing partners who have trodden on each others' toes, a moment of awkwardness follows and is dispelled by a muttered " Anyway a " from both of us.
Then my time is up and I leave this most reluctant star to his sushi and the next interview. He is looking forward to his sushi. Douglas Henshall isn't really a TV star. He just plays one on TV.