Following several years as a jobbing actor, David Bradley hit the big time in the Harry Potter films. He tells Viv Hardwick about his lastest bad guy role.

YORK born and bred, David Bradley, 61, is enjoying his first starring role for the Royal Shakespeare Company partly thanks to the magic of Harry Potter and the obnoxious Hogwarts' caretaker Argus Filch.

Until now, he's been a jobbing supporting actor living in Stratford-upon-Avon, who has featured in 24 RSC productions.

Thanks to interest in the Harry Potter books, his character's name is known around the world and it's hardly surprising that the RSC has offered him the title role in the bloodthirsty Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus.

Bradley broke off from rehearsals - preview runs of Titus started on Friday and the play opens on Tuesday, September 23 - to discuss the late flowering of his career, which has included two best supporting actor awards.

The thin, mild-mannered Yorkshireman bursts into delighted laughter when his Harry Potter profile is mentioned. Does he think the two films had anything to do with an offer to play Titus?

"It may have had, although I like to think that Titus owes nothing to Argus Filch," he says. "It certainly has put my name on the map, but the big break for me in terms of television was going to Newcastle to do Our Friends In The North. Leaving the RSC after a lot of years can be a bit of a problem because casting directors assume you're still working there five years later.

"Ten years ago, I went to do Our Friends In The North and had a year in Newcastle, which was a dream job because I love it up there. But I suppose in terms of films being shown around the world, Harry Potter is the one. I get approached by a lot of kids, which didn't happen before, and I'm already a hate figure for children everywhere."

Tyneside theatre-goers will hardly be surprised when Bradley's Roman general character Titus takes revenge on a murderous Goth queen by having her two sons baked in a pie, which he tricks her into eating.

The actor admits it was his children - George, 23, Jack, 18, and Francesca, 17, - who insisted he auditioned for the Harry Potter films after persuading him to read the books.

"I said 'Which part should I go for?' hoping they'd say somebody suave like Snape but they said 'No dad, you're a Filch, you're a natural Filch' and I said 'Thanks a bunch'. But I've got a lot of kudos and cred at the moment.

"They are still reading the new Harry Potter. I haven't had a chance so when the book came out they said 'It's okay dad, Filch is still in there.'" Growing up on a York council estate, the young Bradley fancied himself as the next Robert Mitchum but ended up as a trainee precision instrument maker.

His bricklayer father's backstage job at the old York Empire fired a love of theatre, although he says he was tricked into joining York Boys' Club's drama group.

"The youth leader gave me a cup of tea one day and said 'Go down to the basement and give this to Mr Pickering,' who ran the drama group downstairs. He said 'Come here boy and read this,' and when I did he said 'Marvellous, marvellous - the part's yours.'"

The next week, another "snotty-nosed kid" appeared with a cup of tea for Mr Pickering and he realised that was how the drama club gained recruits. His move from trainee engineer to actor came after a show producer told him to stop mucking about and audition for Rada.

"'What's Rada?' I replied, because I was living in a small town and I was blissfully unaware of what the business was about and I had no ambitions to be an actor," he says. After two years at Sheffield Playhouse, Bradley had joined the ranks of the jobbing actor, but worried his self-effacing style would always be a hindrance.

"I knew I wasn't very good at being ruthless about getting work and I never have been but, fortunately, I've gone to a lot of auditions and seem to have got away with it," he says.

Of Titus he says: "Titus is not a despot, he's a war weary general who's lost 22 of his 25 sons in battle over the years and he comes home after defeating the Goths. It's not unremitting horror and grief, it's shot through with dark humour. We don't know the reaction because laughter and tears are so close together.

"With some plays, you can relate and say 'That happened to me once' but with this, you can't. It's just beyond belief."

* Titus Andronicus plays Newcastle's Theatre Royal December 2-6. Box Office: 0870 905 5060.