John Hurt was the best man for the job when it came to playing real life romeo MP Alan Clark.

Hurt won a glowing endorsement from Clarke's wife Jane. Steve Pratt reports.

ACTOR John Hurt has never been one to shy away from controversial characters. Roles such as Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and John Merrick in The Elephant Man are evidence of his risk-taking. Portraying flamboyant Tory minister Alan Clark in a new BBC-TV series adds to that list. Hurt stars in The Alan Clark Diaries, a six-part dramatisation of the infamous diaries during his political career from 1983 to this death in 1999.

"My reason for doing the series is that I've always enjoyed playing individuals and you can't get more individual than Alan Clark," explains Hurt, 63.

"Clark was larger than life and that was exactly the appeal of the role. He's a fascinating character and, in my game, that's what you're looking for all the time. And he has a very fascinating background.

"The whole political thing is interesting and the diaries are demonstrative, forthright and unusual. You couldn't help but be interested."

Clark was MP for Plymouth for 18 years, and represented the Kensington and Chelsea constituency at the time of his death. He was criticised for his role in the arms-for-Iraq affair and admitted, during the 1992 Matrix Churchill trial, that he had been "economical with the actualite".

The cast of the six-part series includes Jenny Agutter as Clark's wife Jane, Victoria Smurfit as his secret mistress X, and Julia Davis as his frosty secretary Jenny Easterbrook.

Jane Clark, who was married to the politician for 41 years, acted as a consultant on the series, and was more than pleased with the actor chosen to play her late husband. "I thought the casting of John Hurt was brilliant," she says. "When he smiles he's just got that wonderful mischievous smile, he smiles with his eyes as well. I thought, yes, he'd see the point of Al."

Hurt repays the compliment, calling her a "fantastic woman" and adding that he hopes she likes the series.

He points out that she adored Clark despite his extra-martial shenanigans. "She had awful times, people do. They didn't pretend there weren't awful times to be had. They didn't suffer from the American disease that everything has to be just splendid all the time, because it isn't, and they both seemed to be able to cope with it."

The actor approached playing Clark the same way he does any other role - without going on a major fact-finding mission about his subject. He's never done much research, preferring to rely much more on imagination.

"Even if I'm doing something which is based on fact, or even a person's factual existence, albeit deceased, I still treat the script in exactly the same way as if it was fiction. It has to come from the script, because if it isn't in the script, it doesn't exist," he says.

"What makes a thing get up and run is imagination, it isn't research. You can research until you're blue in the face, but even then you don't know that you're right and it doesn't help you to get up and act it."

All the research is done by the writers, basically, and he knows enough about Alan Clark to play him. "Research is absolutely fascinating but it doesn't help because I can't be him. I have to deal with it in a different dramatic way," says Hurt.

"Hopefully, it encapsulates the essence of him, but I'm not trying to look like him. I'm not doing an impersonation and it isn't a biography. It's a diary, which is quite different. They are statements that he has made and whatever is acted out, is acted out from those statements."

Hurt has no idea what the future might hold, but hopes it involves acting. Not that he can name his ideal role. "I don't have ambitions in that sense. The problem with having ambitions is that you might achieve them, and then what would you do," he says.

"In terms of what I've done, I don't have any favourite. I enjoyed Quentin enormously, but it also made a difference in terms of the public and business perceptions of me as a performer, so that was probably the most important."

If he hadn't been actor, he would probably have continued with his studies at St Martin's School of Art in London, where he was heading towards being a painter before winning a scholarship to studying acting at RADA.

"But had I got the academic qualifications, which I never would have got because I couldn't pass maths, I would quite have enjoyed going into diplomacy - but only if I could have been an ambassador," he adds.

* The Alan Clark Diaries begin on BBC Four on January 15

Published: 08/01/2004