Oddball of 'Last Samurai'

By GREG DIXON

I thought I knew how it would go: "Please hold, caller," the publicist would say, "there's a radish on the line from Taranaki."

After all Timothy Spall, the jolly, fat English actor I was about to speak to, is, in these parts, most famous as Auf Wiedersehen Pet's hopeless, bemused builder Barry "the radish" Taylor.

But instead of a sad little red root noise, Spall's smooth, confident timbre comes on the phone. His South London accent - not Barry's Brummie whine - is all business, too.

Spall is in Taranaki to play a role rather more impressive, too, than the TV role that kick-started his screen career back in '83.

The 45-year-old will star as Tom Cruise's mate in The Last Samurai, a big-budget Hollywood number.

The film tells the story of an American Civil War veteran, Captain Woodrow Algren (played by Cruise), who travels to Japan in the 1870s to train modern troops for then emperor Meiji. The new army was used to break up the samurai, the warriors who traditionally protected the emperor and Japan.

"I play Simon Graham," says Spall. "He's an Englishman who's lived in Japan for like 20 years. My character becomes Tom Cruise's translator.

"My character not only speaks fluent Japanese - which is a bit of task because I don't speak any at all, I'm learning the lines phonetically - but he's also a photographer trying to record the old Japan before it disappears.

"He's sort of a minor aristocrat, sort of a third son of a minor baronet somewhere. He's what you would call a remittance man who's found himself in a place that he adores, incongruously in another culture entirely.

"And he's a very eccentric character, my character."

Which, you'd have to say, is rather what all his characters are. From Barry to Kerry Fox's cuckolded husband in 2001's controversial Intimacy, to Graham, Spall has made a career of playing social pariahs, likeable idiots and minor heroes.

Partly this is a result of how he looks, he concludes. "Don't forget I'm built the way I'm built. I have the face that I have and it doesn't usually cover the glamour areas.

"I'm often asked to play characters that are not exactly glamorous or the sort of characters people would like to be, and I always feel my job is to make those characters as human as possible. And, even if they're full of contradictions, to make sure they are funny or touching even if they're a bit unattractive.

"I do tend to play human beings the way they are, not they way we want them to be."

Which Spall has done in a succession of bittersweet dramas by left-wing English director Mike Leigh, including Life Is Sweet, Topsy-Turvy and Secrets And Lies, the 1996 film that Spall says prompted Hollywood to take an interest in him.

That led to a minor role in Mark Wahlberg's vehicle Rock Star in 2000, then to Cruise's second to last outing, Vanilla Sky - and that seems to have led Spall to the Naki.

"I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or not. It certainly says to me that having had a slice of me the first time around it wasn't a deterrent [to Cruise] the second time around," he says with a throaty chuckle.

After Samurai, he has a cameo in the next Harry Potter film on his books. More importantly for those of us in these parts, Spall says Auf Wiedersehen Pet, the belated third series of which screened here late last year, might go to a fourth series.

Spall says it was "very peculiar indeed" returning to the radish after nearly 20 years.

"It was something that was so popular in Britain that it didn't do me any favours for a few years. It was something that I was always associated with, and people thought that that character was me. I had a tricky time for about a year where I couldn't really get work I wanted to do. In fact I didn't work for about 10 months.

"It was an odd one to go back to, to feel that you were kind of acting something that was a success but had the odd paradox of being successful but not particularly personally [successful]. But I think the world of entertainment is a different place now. I think in them [sic] days being typecast was a real fear, but I think that's completely gone now."

Well, apart from those whose careers involve playing social pariahs, likeable idiots and minor heroes.