The first sighting will be on the big screen in Thaddeus O'Sullivan's shockingly violent
Nothing Personal, which opens on October 18. In it Frain plays Kenny,
a Loyalist squad leader battling his way through one blood stained
night in Belfast. Making the film was tough, he says, but more
because of the cold they endured than the vicious thuggery of the
role: 'making a film is a very practical matter; you're worrying
about how to do a scene, which angle to hold your gun...'
In the case of "Macbeth On the Estate", Penny Woolcock's documentary style drama
which was filmed on location in Birmingham's Ladywood Estate, what
worried, or rather enhausted Frain who plays the lead, was the
gruelling intensity of his part. To be screened in December as part
of the BBC's Performance series, the film portrays a Macbeth high on
Temazepam, wielding iron bars and baseball bats. Frain, who had never
played Shakespeare before, was bowled over by the poetry of the
language. 'But it was so emotional. I got to the end thinking I
definitely don't want to be a murderer anymore.'
As luck would have it his next role, which he took on immediately,
was Philip Wakeham, the gentle lyrical hero of George Eliot's "Mill on
the Floss", now dramatised by the BBC. 'Philip is a hunch-back who has
an intellectual love affair. He has real moral courage; it was a much
more pleasant part to play.'
Versatility has been the keynote of Frain's career so far; fans will
remember him as Peter Whistler in Sir Richard Attenborough's
"Shadowlands" and Julius Trevenick in the pretty television series "The
Buccaneers". Aged 27, he comes from a solidly middle-class background
in Essex, his father a retired City trader, his mother a housewife.
His interest in acting first sparked at school, "but at that stage I
thought drama school would be a bit poncy, and I wanted to do
something academic and interesting, so I went to the University of
East Anglia to study drama and film."
Once there, the bug really bit. With friends he formed a company
which took plays up to the Edinburgh Festival and, having tasted
success, decided he needed serious training. During his third year at
The Central School of Speech and Drama, he was offered his part in
"Shadowlands". Until then, he says, film had been a vague ambition 'up
in the clouds somewhere', but having tried it he found he felt much
more at home in front of the cameras than on stage. He abandoned
Central...'once you've done a job like that other doors open much
more quickly than you could ever have anticipated.
In fact, Frain can boast that in the three and a half years since he
left Central he has worked solidly. In November he hopes to be in
Paris, starring in Julian Temple's film about the life of French
director Jean Vigo. "After that I've no plans - give me a break, I
just want to be where the good parts are.' In time he would like to
both write and direct, 'but that's way down the line for me. Right
now I'm perfectly happy acting.'
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited
ADVISING YOU to look out for James Frain would be pointless: in the
coming months it will be hard to avoid him.