JOHN SIMM, A CASTING DIRECTOR'S DREAM

When John Simm left drama school, in 1992, it was a good time to be a chippy northerner. A new breed of television writers were slouching southwards and ripping up the rulebook: Jimmy McGovern’s “Cracker” had a fat, bolshie, Scottish alcoholic as its hero; Paul Abbott and Russell T. Davies’s “Touching Evil” revolved around a Geordie cop who thought and looked like a criminal. Simm—born in Leeds, raised (like Abbott) in Burnley, and exposed young to the granite audiences of working men’s clubs, by his musician father—was a casting director’s dream.

Simm cut his teeth in “Cracker”, then made his mark as the directionless hedonist Danny in “The Lakes”. He shone as the over-committed reporter in “State of Play”, and as poor, tortured Sam in “Life on Mars”, forever trapped in a kipper tie, a brown shirt and the macho world of 1970s policing. It’s no accident that writers as inventive and crowd-pleasing as McGovern, Abbott and Davies kept working with him. Simm tugs at the edges of his roles, pulling them out of two dimensions and into three—or, in the case of the Master, Doctor Who’s fearsome nemesis—four.

His face is made for television: it’s delicate-boned, and he keeps his head still, to let the audience connect with his eyes—dark, pinpoint-steady and often enigmatic above a pouty-serious mouth. His forehead, fine-skinned and mobile as a child’s, registers every wrinkle of emotion like wind blowing over water. And while his characters can be hard to like—Sexby in the over-ripe civil war drama “The Devil’s Whore” was brutal—they’re marked by a kind of pity, as if snared by their own humanity.

Now 39, he is doing more theatre. Last year’s “Elling”—a black comedy about mental illness, no less—won him an Olivier nomination; now he’s in a revival of “Speaking in Tongues” (pictured), Andrew Bovell’s thought-provoking thriller from 2000. Simm is joined by Kerry Fox, Ian Hart and Lucy Cohu, so it’s a chance to see a lot of screen talent step outside the box.

"Speaking in Tongues" Duke of York’s, London from September 18th

~ ISABEL LLOYD