Voice of Joyce

LET'S face it, Jim Norton is an unfamiliar name as an actor until he throws in dramatic bombshells like he played Einstein in a special Star Trek episode starring scientist Stephen Hawking... or that one of his big breaks was controversial cult movie Straw Dogs. Add to that, Norton has spent weeks locked in a York University sound room as the golden-growling voice chosen to place the work of countryman James Joyce on audio-CD, and the interview takes on a distinctly "tell me more" atmosphere.

It's a little like that with Norton's starring role in The Pillowman. Those in the know are aware that last year the black comedy by Martin McDonagh won the Olivier Award for Best Play and the plot centres on a police state dealing with a young writer who finds his stories of child murder are being imitated in real life.

The majority may observe that it's a new play from The National Theatre being toured to Newcastle's Theatre Royal so it must have some merit. Surprisingly, Norton falls into the latter category. He says: "I was actually doing a film in Australia when the play opened and didn't see it and then John Crowley the director wrote to me saying he and Martin McDonaugh would love me to do the tour. So, I read it then and I was hooked."

Norton plays Tupolski, a policeman who automatically suspects the writer when crimes he's written about start happening near his home. "Tupolski is a man of many parts, most of them missing," he jokes. He describes The Pillowman as "an Aladdin's cave of theatrical devices, full of wonderful scenes like a Brothers Grimm fairy tales for adults. It's very, very, funny but also disturbing and exciting which is what Martin McDonagh does best."

Norton, 66, hasn't done that much touring theatre and the last time was another National Theatre play called Closing Time about three years ago. "The nice thing about this tour is that we're going to Newcastle where I've never been before. I'm a big athletics fan, I run, so I know all about Newcastle and I'm really looking forward to visiting," he says.

The actor's also desperate to follow the Six Nation's Rugby Union tournament, despite spending most Saturday afternoons inside a theatre. The fanatical Irish supporter from Dublin says: "I've got the whole programme of games stuck up on my wall, but it doesn't help when my missus comes into the room when I'm watching football and asks 'who are they fighting?'."

Norton, when not teasing his nearest and dearest about lack of sporting knowledge, is essentially a character actor. He and his policeman co-star in The Pillowman, Ewan Stewart, also appeared together in TV series Rebus with John Hannah. "He was playing a tough policeman and I was a serial killer so we weren't far away from our roles now," jokes the actor who got his first big break in London at the Royal Court Theatre.

"One night Dustin Hoffman and Sam Peckinpah came to see the show and I was approached about doing Straw Dogs (the raw-boned Cornish-set tale of rape and murder released in 1971). I still get fan mail although I'm not a blue-eyed, blonde psychopath any more," he says.

After seven years at The National Theatre, Norton was offered a year-long Broadway run of The Weir and that led to roles in TV series Star Trek and Babylon 5. .

"It took four-and-a-half hours of make-up to become Einstein in Star Trek and that was because Stephen Hawking turned up one day at the studios and said he was a big fan. They asked him if he'd like to do an episode and he requested a scene with Einstein, so they wrote this special episode and I got to act with Hawking and his electronic voice. He turned out to be a really funny man with a great sense of humour."

In Babylon 5 Norton played a series of amazing characters in masks "so I had a ball doing that".

He adds: "I like to come out of different boxes and I imagine it would be very boring to go on playing the same kind of characters all the time. For example, out of the blue a few years ago I was offered the TV series Father Ted and I played Bishop Brennan and many people didn't even know I was Irish at that time. A lot of people come back stage after shows and I think they're coming to say 'I love your performance' but they're actually coming to say 'my father's a big Father Ted fan will you sign your autograph'."

He's just finished a movie called The Oyster Farmer in Australia which is due out in the UK in May.

Norton reckons, semi-seriously, that the one challenge ahead of him is possibly pantomime having just "done the impossible and recorded Ulysses by James Joyce on 31 CDs for Naxos on audio. I've thought 'is there anything more difficult than that?' but we managed to do it at York University where they locked me in for two weeks. Roger Marsh produced it as the director of music at York and the CDs came out a few months ago and have done very well. But I did about four months preparation because this was a huge labour of love. I have a contract to do all of James Joyce except Finnigan's Wake ,which they're twisting my arm to do. It was a great honour to be asked, but there are so many experts waiting to hack you to pieces about what comes out of your mouth that you've got to get it right." Norton feels he was chosen by Naxos because of his voice-over work and that his start in acting came on Irish radio.

He's also been seen recently in Heartbeat and Holby City playing baddies using that husky Irish voice of authority or, as Norton puts it, "if you've got it flaunt it".

* The Pillowman runs at Newcastle's Theatre Royal from Tuesday until Saturday. Box Office: 0870 905 5060.

Published: 17/02/2005