Roy Kinnear may have been a comedy legend, but that didn't help his actor son Rory get a drink. Viv Hardwick reports.

WATCHING the slim, scholarly, slightly hesitant approach of 25-year-old Rory Kinnear, you wouldn't associate him at all with the larger-than-life reputation of his comedy actor dad Roy. Yet, on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the actor transforms into a confident scene-stealer who has every chance of carrying the heavyweight Kinnear legacy on his shoulders.

Newcastle's RSC tour in November-December sees Rory making a promising debut in two plays, John Fletcher's tribute to The Taming Of The Shrew called The Tamer Tamed, and Shakespeare's rarely seen work Cymbeline.

In both, Rory has inherited Roy's talent for twinkle-eyed comedy acting. Kinnear senior is credited with helping to create Britain's insatiable appetite for satire with his cherubic contributions to the 1960s TV show That Was The Week That Was.

Around 100 films and countless TV and theatre appearances later, Roy died, aged 54, after falling from a horse while making The Return Of The Musketeers in Spain in 1988. Rory was just ten when his dad was killed, but he's anxious to keep Roy's legacy alive and hero-worships him.

Nor is he worried about being judged on a "Is he as good as his dad?" level. He laughs politely at the question and says: "What I've particularly enjoyed in the last couple of years is people talking about my dad and working with actors who worked with him and people who knew his work and respected it.

"My dad was so well-loved that pretty much every time you meet someone who's worked with him, they've got a new story or something that warms the cockles. I've found it particularly rewarding because it doesn't matter how many films or videos you've got at home to remind yourself, it's nice to keep his memory going and I think he does hold a particular place in a lot of people's hearts. It's nice to provoke it and not something I feel I'm working against. I certainly don't ever consider ourselves in competition or comparison."

Even Rory's opportunities to perform comedy haven't caused him any problems. "I honestly don't ever think that I wouldn't do something because I might be considered in my dad's shadow. It's something that excites me or challenges me and I enjoy playing comedy and straight drama, as did my dad," he says.

Rory confesses that he does find it difficult to watch The Three Musketeers or its sequel but he laps up other re-runs of his dad's work.

"He made over 100 films and the other night on TV I saw the title sequences at the beginning of a programme and I thought to myself 'it's an early 1970s British comedy, I bet my dad's in it'," he says. "Sure enough, up came his name at the top. I thought 'Yeah, 1973, second child on the way, that'll be why he's done it'. "It's nice that you still have that kind of relationship and as you grow older, you become aware what it means in acting profession terms and what your dad was doing and why he was doing it - my dad, obviously, not being there to talk to."

Rory's actress mother Carmal Cryan - he also has an older sister, Kirstine, in theatre casting - tried to talk the young Rory out of acting.

"She did, only because she thought I could make more money elsewhere. I think now she's quite proud, but that's what you have to do as a mum," he says.

Rory doesn't feel he was predestined to be an actor. He says: "With acting, I guess because my dad died when I was little, there wasn't the sense it was always around when I was growing up. It was something I found for myself and only started doing at secondary school when I was 13. My mum always thought I was far too intelligent to become an actor and said 'your dad and I did it because we couldn't think of anything else to do'."

Rory gained an English degree at Oxford University and now feels experiencing post-grad life outside dramatic circles was a bonus. "At university, we went to Japan (with a production of The Taming Of The Shrew). It was fascinating because there is quite a deep history of Shakespeare. We went to four different places and each town had amazingly different reactions to the performance. Some cities would laugh at the jokes that even we didn't understand and some, Tokyo especially, were silent throughout and then at the end there was this rapturous applause, which left us thinking 'Did you understand any of this?'

By a quirk of fate, Rory is also debuting in The Taming Of The Shrew at Stratford, just as his dad did back in the days of artistic director Trevor Nunn. Sadly, Tyneside audiences will miss The Shrew because the set is currently on its way to Washington, US, where Shakespeare's and Fletcher's pieces will run side-by-side at Christmas.

Rory says: "If you read The Tamer Tamed, it is very much a companion piece and the way Fletcher wrote it was almost to grease Shakespeare's palm. The next play both of them wrote together.

"The plays stand very well by themselves and I think almost the best way to see them is back to back."

Rory likes Newcastle and is looking forward to the RSC tour because he has friends living in the city, which he visits often on the way to his dad's family in Edinburgh.

"My dad re-opened Newcastle's Theatre Royal in the mid-1980s and the theatre bar used to be called Kinnear's," he says.

"I went up to see my friends and went to Kinnear's bar, where there were pictures of my dad, and went up to the barman and thought I might be able to wheedle a drink out of him, but he was from Australia and he didn't know who the hell I was."

With luck, even the Outback will know about Kinnear junior before long.

* Rory Kinnear appears in The Tamer Tamed, Newcastle Playhouse, November 17-22 and as Caius Lucius, a Roman general, in Cymbeline at Newcastle Playhouse, December 2-6.

* Newcastle's Theatre Royal hosts: Richard III, Measure For Measure and Titus Andronicus. The Playhouse also presents As You Like It. Box Office: 0870 905 5060.