While he’s always been considered a lynchpin of the Scotpack of charged young actors, Douglas Henshall has consistently lagged behind that of his old friend Ewan McGregor. This year, however, looks set to be the one that puts Henshall on the fast track: though admittedly, it’s hardly likely to see him match McGregor’s oncoming bout of Jedi fever.
Still, Henshall is something of an inescapable presence right now. After playing his romantic card in the Camden comedy This Year’s Love earlier this year, the 32- year old Glaswegian can currently be found in two, tough demonstrative roles.
For starters there’s a film: Peter Mullan’s magnificent slice of Glaswegian gothic, Orphans. In it, he plays a man estranged from his wife who is stabbed on the eve of his mother’s funeral and tumbles into a real dark world of the soul. Wandering the city p****d – up, precious life’s blood dripping away he encounters the barman from hell before finally reaching an early morning epiphany on the Clyde.
“It was ******* miserable being covered in mud and blood he remembers, “but I really wanted to do Orphans. It’s an urban Bible story. I went into my own experience of my mother dying – which was difficult – but that’s what’s so good about Peter’s script, the denial and fear that goes along with having to accept that a parent’s dead.”
Then, there’s the TV series. This week see the start of Psychos, a six-part drama on Channel 4 in which Henshall plays the distinctly unconventional Danny Nash, a doctor who seems as mad as the people he is treating.
“Oh I don’t think so,” he argues. “He suffers from manic depression, which isn’t uncommon in his job – but his philosophy is to heal as many people as possible. That way, maybe he’ll heal himself.”
Henshall’s career began with the politically grounded 7:84 before he got his TV break in 1993 as a wife-beating thug in Lipstick On Your Collar written by Dennis Potter (“a generously spirited, acutely intelligent man”). The fear of being typecast, however, led him back into the theatre and some odd films, notably Angels and Insects with Patsy Kensit.
Meanwhile he found himself watching from the wings as one of the minor players in Lipstick on Your Collar Ewan McGregor – became the tartan toast of the town. Is he ready to take his place alongside his old pal?
“I certainly don’t look at myself now and think I’m a success. That would be being able to choose scripts and who I work with and I’m nowhere near that stage.
“Anyway, I’m really suspicious of stuff like that. If you start thinking you’re on your way somewhere you always get kicked in the teeth. All I seem to do at the present is talk to journalists. It hardly seems like an honesty way to make a living.”
By Gavin Martin NME May 8th 1999