Robson Green has won loads of awards for acting. Dramas such as Reckless, Student Prince, Touching Evil and Grafters have made him a household name and led to Hollywood offers. Then there was that short-lived singing career which saw him, with his mate Jerome Flynn, knocking Oasis off the top of the pop charts and making a fortune in the process. But there still remains one person the Geordie actor wants to impress. That's the English teacher who told him to forget a career in showbiz when he was at school in Northumberland.
Robson, 34, caught the performing bug after playing the lead in a class production of Joseph The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat when he was nine. But his tutor told him he'd never be any good and to get a job in the local shipyard. 'He was the careers officer and when I told him I wanted to be an actor he said: "You'd better forget that. You can't do it."' Robson recalls. Then his teacher told the dejected miner's son: "You need experience of the acting profession in your family, and you have none, so forget it."
Twenty years on, Robson, back on ITV week in Rhinoceros, can smile at the memory - confident he's had the last laugh. 'I haven't seen him since I left school but I really hope he watches telly.' he says. Another person who failed to spot the actor's early heart-throb potential was a girl he fancied at school who gave him a brutal rejection. These days women would fight to be in her shoes, but Robson admits he was very different back then.
'I was the kid who never got a girlfriend,' he says. I suppose I was an ugly kid with an awful haircut. My teeth weren't so good and my dress sense was - well, let's just say ahead of its time. 'I'd go up to girls and ask them out and they'd turn me down flat. I remember there was one girl who I had a big crush on, called Donna Potts. The first day I saw her I thought she was extraordinary and very pretty. The trouble was, I had this terrible notion that she was interested in me, too. So one day I went up to her and she was with a group of girls and I went: "Donna," and she said: "Before you even think about it...no !" and all the girls were giggling and I felt totally humiliated and rejected.'
He hoped that becoming an actor would change his run of bad luck with women but he soon had more important things on his mind, like finding enough food to eat after quitting his job at the shipyard to pursue his dream. 'I had no work, the horizon looked bleak and I thought: "Oh my God, what have I done ?" I didn't have a girlfriend, Mum and Dad didn't have any money and I was living in a bed-sit. "
"I thought I'd made a huge mistake. I'd given up a secure, well-paid job for a career I didn't really understand. My parents were against me doing it. I got veg from my dad's garden and bought a book called Food For Free to help me get by. I used to go mushroom picking and I'd cook my own bread. I'd spend the rest of my days reading books, looking out of the window and going for walks. I was on the dole for three months before my next theatre job. Gradually things got better.'
That's the understatement of the year. After landing the role of Jimmy the porter in Casualty, followed quickly by Tucker in Soldier Soldier, Robson's never looked back. He's now hunted by Hollywood, too - studios are vying to sign him up with offers of scripts. None have tempted him so far, and the down-to-earth actor retains a healthy cynicism about Hollywood, especially when he was sent a script rejected by Sylvester Stallone.
'They told me Sylvester had seen it first, like I should be flattered. It was about this bloody lunatic who goes round shooting everybody. In another script a woman was being chased by a killer and I'd have played a guy on a motorbike who comes along and clobbers him with the butt of a gun and saves her. As if I'd do that! I mean me dressed in leather saying "Hasta la vista, baby" just wouldn't ring true.'
American television networks have tried to woo him as well, but so far Robson, who now has his own company Coastal Productions, has stayed put in Britain. 'If you want to do Hollywood then that's the way in and if I was single and ruthlessly ambitious in terms of my career then I'd be there now, but I'm not. I'm not saying I'll never go and do something there but I'm not going to go over and get a place and settle down there.'
Robson has recently finished filming a new series of the hit ITV drama Touching Evil, playing Detective Inspector Dave Creegan. Then he will be filming another drama, The Last Musketeer, in which he'll play a fencing teacher who goes to work at a private girls' school.
In Rhinoceros he plays Michael Flynn, an ex-soccer star whose world is turned upside down when his teenage son Danny, who has learning difficulties, goes missing. Michael is thrown back together with his ex-wife Julie, played by former Heartbeat star Niamh Cusack, and as they try to find their son, years of repressed hostility are exorcised in the heat of their rescue mission.
To research the role, Robson read George Best's autobiography and Tony Adams' book Addicted. 'It helped explain the thought process of someone who's life is so high profile,' he says. 'In that sort of career your whole world would be catered for, but if an injury took away the only thing you could do in life then it must be hard.'
It seems highly unlikely to happen, but Robson is confident that he'd have no worries if his career ended tomorrow. 'I'd be fine,' he declares with a smile. 'Not a problem. I've done enough to fulfill a career in acting. 'It's a job that I enjoy but it's not everything. When I go home I vacuum, wash dishes, walk the dog and I don't even think about acting. On Saturdays I go and watch football matches with my wife Ali. That's what it's all about !'
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