It might be a Hollywood blockbuster, but £90m has been spent outside the US using an all-British cast to create one of history's most fabulous characters. Steve Pratt talks to King Arthur stars Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd and Ray Winstone.

THIS isn't Camelot and the table isn't round. Instead, the latest actors to impersonate King Arthur and his knights are seated behind a long table in a London hotel. The film, from Pirates Of The Caribbean producer Jerry Bruckheimer, reworks the Arthurian legend and takes the story back to the Dark Ages as the warrior battles Saxon invaders.

Despite being a Hollywood movie - although made in Ireland, where a section of Hadrian's Wall was constructed - the cast is peopled by British actors. The makers didn't feel the need to add a big American name for commercial purposes.

Clive Owen, best known as TV's Chancer, is Arthur with Lancelot played by Ioan Gruffudd, seen as Hornblower in the ITV series. Other knights include Ray Winstone as Bors, Hugh Dancy as Galahad and Newcastle-born Ray Stevenson as Dagonet. Even Guinevere, played by Keira Knightley, gets a makeover, emerging as a scantily-clad warrior who joins the men on the battlefield.

Cast on the back of low budget film Croupier which became a cult hit in the US, Owen needed to brush up on his horsemanship to play Arthur. "I'd done very little riding and stuff I'd done in previous movies not very successfully," he admits.

"When they asked me to do the part, no one actually said I'd have to ride, so I kept quiet about it. Eventually I rang Jerry's office and said, 'I have to get on a horse tomorrow'. It was very necessary and important because playing a knight I had to look like I was good on a horse.

"When you have to ride at speed in a hostile environment, you want to have the confidence to do that."

Actors also went to "boot camp" to prepare for their knightly roles, learning how to handle weapons and use fight choreography. Only Winstone was excused. "I was working on something else, earning a living," he says. "I thought if I went to boot camp it would kill me."

Cardiff-born Gruffudd has the personal challenge of growing a beard. "It took me about three months to grow that little straggly one I had. Being Celtic, it turned out red, so I had to get it painted every day to get that black effect."

Another make-up decision proved more of an embarrassment. "I made the very foolish error of deciding to be one of the vainest knights of them all and to curl my eyelashes every morning," he admits.

"It was rather unfortunate to be caught out by Ray Winstone. As you can imagine, word got around very quickly and I soon became Sir Lashalot."

There was also talk of Lancelot wearing a kilt. Costume designer Penny Rose put Hugh Dancy's Galahad in a kilt and it worked, reports Gruffudd.

"You put me in a kilt and I look like a drag queen. So I decided to go for leather trousers, boots, tunic and chain mail on the arm to make me look a little bit more masculine. Then I went and spoilt it all by curling my eyelashes."

The Lancelot of the new King Arthur film isn't the usual romantic hero who sweeps Guinevere off her feet. He's as rough and ready as the rest of the knight shift in David Franzoni's screenplay.

Gruffudd says: "He was written as a much darker, more brooding, angrier character. All he's known for is his life of killing and warring. I enjoyed the fact that he's this darker character, different from the traditional telling of the story as this gallant knight of knights in shining armour. He becomes a much more realistic, more human character as a result."

He was a man of action at sea as naval hero Hornblower but enjoyed the different kind of fighting that filming King Arthur provided. "All the guys will admit that, as much as it was hard work every day, being on the back of a horse was quite exhilarating. One of the best ways to clear the cobwebs from the night before is to get on the back of a horse," says the actor, who's now based in Los Angeles.

"There's no real acting involved when you're doing that. You're in costume, you're on the back of a horse, you've got Hadrian's Wall built there for you. So you don't have to imagine anything. The physical aspect was, for me, much more exhilarating than hard work."

He's sure that playing Lancelot helped him win a leading role in the forthcoming comic strip movie The Fantastic Four.

He'll play Reed Richards and his alter ego Mr Fantastic, who has the ability to stretch his body.

For screen hard man Winstone the film reunited him with one of his co-stars from the 1980s TV series Robin Of Sherwood in which he played Will Scarlet. Mark Ryan, who was Nasir in that programme, was sword master on King Arthur.

"I still get together with those guys once a year, we've always kept in touch," says Winstone.

"Working with Mark was quite a surprise, I don't know why, about how capable and good he was at what he does. He's probably one of the best I've worked with. The great thing about it is you learn your fight, then break it down and make it dirty."

Published: 29/07/2004