Be afraid, be very afraid Bill Paterson is up to his neck in hauntings
Fresh from big-screen success in Miss Potter and Amazing Grace, Bill Paterson returns to TV this week as ghostbuster Douglas Monaghan in spooky new Sea of Souls two-parter on BBC1. Monaghan is a university professor who specialises in parapsychology, and as his new story begins, he’s investigating an old fashioned haunted house.
Ian and Karen have moved to the wilds of Scotland to try and make a new start after a personal tragedy. But as they work on their dream home, they discover strange mystical symbols painted on the floorboards.
Monaghan reveals that the house was once owned by Robert Dunbar, a notorious Victorian occultist played by Primeval’s Douglas Henshall. Dunbar was hanged more than 100 years earlier for murdering his wife Mary. But now his spirit is restless and Ian and Karen are in terrible danger…
With his quiet Scottish accent and down-to-earth manner, Bill Paterson, 61, looks every inch the academic when we meet for breakfast in a café near his London home. While plenty of actors of his generation have seen relationships crash and burn, Bill has been married to theatre designer Hildegard Bechtler for more than two decades. They have two children, Jack and Anna.
This new two-parter is really scary! Bits of it feel like they came from The Shining.
‘Heeeeeere’s Dougie!’The story is far-fetched, but I liked it. I didn’t find it stretched my belief as much as some we’ve done before, because there are flashbacks to an earlier time when people did believe in spiritualism. There was also this fascination with séances and speaking to the dead.
Do you believe in life after the here-and-now?
I think that we all do. Having said that, the paranormal isn’t a huge driving thing in my life, I’m more Calvinist and down-to-earth. I like the scientific rather than the inexplicable.
Are you easily spooked?
I feel quite strongly about buildings and I can be quite unsettled if I get a sense of bad things that have happened in my life there. I live in a late Victorian house and I got a really benign feeling about as soon as I walked in it. Maybe I have some kind of internal feng shui going on!
If you could meet a ghost, who would it be?
Buddy Holly. I’d like to ask him what he had planned for the future, because that was a life cut off somewhat short. I was a teenager when he died – we were split between the ones who liked Elvis and the ones who liked Buddy Holly. He’s probably have gone into writing musicals, so I’d ask him if he would have turned into Andrew Lloyd Webber, or if he could have stuck with rock ‘n’ roll.
You’ve been married a long time – what’s the secret?
Constant bickering! Getting it all out there!
Do either of your children look likely to follow you into the family business?
My son is at art school doing graphics and my daughter is very keen on photography and film editing, but she has no designs on acting. Lots of kids go into acting now as it’s no more insecure as any other job, but I really don’t think that we’re going to have a dynasty!
What’s next?
I’m waiting to do a film which is a big one for me. It’s been postponed but it’s likely to happen in June. If I reveal exactly what it is, it’ll probably go away again. All I can say is that it’s a contemporary Scottish variety act who fall on hard timers. Hopefully it will happen.
Mary Comerford - April 2007