The Stage

Playing his cards right - Marc Warren

Published Monday 16 February 2004 at 12:15

After playing many evil roles, Marc Warren has finally found a likeable, albeit criminal, character to play - con artist Danny Blue in BBC1’s Hustle

Think Marc Warren and you tend to think of dark and dangerous characters, troubled minds and warped visions. Like disgraced copper Dougie Raymond in ITV’s The Vice, evil misfit Monks in ITV’s Oliver Twist and the sex and drugs addict of Channel 4’s controversial Men Only.

“Yeah, that’s me, I always play the perverts and rapists,” laughs Warren. “Intense guys with loads of problems.”

So it is hardly surprising that this charismatic Northampton-born actor is thrilled with his latest and biggest profile television showcase yet - BBC1’s Hustle, which drags him away from the usual mental maelstrom and casts him as a likeable and cocksure con artist called Danny Blue.

“He’s a cheeky chappie, a loveable rogue, bring on all the cliches - but it’s a really welcome change from all the nutters I’ve played,” says Warren, whose most recent TV work includes BBC1’s acclaimed thriller series State of Play and ITV1’s gender-swap comedy Reversals.

“I definitely wanted to do something a bit fluffier, if that’s the right word, and play someone you wouldn’t actually mind meeting. And I think with Hustle, it’s mission accomplished.”

 Hustle is the ultimate in slick, glossy escapism, combining retro sixties chic with millennium cool. It is the story of five expert con artists let loose on the streets of London, all of them specialists in the ways of the grifter and keen to liberate cash from the amoral and undeserving.

For Warren, the series was also a unique chance to act alongside one of the legends of classic American television and cinema - Robert Vaughn, aka Napoleon Solo in The Man from UNCLE, now 71 and starring as the Hustle gang’s mentor Albert Stroller.

Warren admits he is a bit too young to remember The Man From UNCLE but he is a massive fan of Bullitt and The Magnificent Seven - both films which co-starred Vaughn and Warren’s ultimate hero, the late Steve McQueen.

“On the second day of shooting, I ventured to ask Robert about Steve,” recalls Warren. “I said, ‘Will you give me 30 seconds on him?’ and he gave me 20 minutes. There’s stuff I can’t repeat. But he would always give me little snippets.”

When the four-month shoot of Hustle wrapped, as a leaving card Vaughn gave his new friend Warren a card with the classic photograph of McQueen from The Great Escape on the front. Inside Vaughn wrote: “My dearest Marc, we were very drunk the night before this shot was taken. He had to work, I went to bed. He is no more and, as Sondheim said, I’m still here.”

Warren beams with pride as he describes Vaughn’s parting memento. “I’ve had that card from other people but you don’t normally get it from somebody who was with McQueen the night before the picture was taken. It really blew my mind - when I first read it I couldn’t take it in, so I went straight to Robert’s trailer to thank him.”

It was not only the lighter side of his latest small-screen creation, Danny Blue, that attracted Warren to the role. He also strongly connected with his dexterity in card tricks and all things magic. For the past few years, the actor has been studying the art of mind-reading with associates of TV illusionist Derren Brown and is becoming quite an expert.

“It’s called mentalism and I’m getting pretty good at it,” he says. “I feel that the tricks and cons in Hustle are a natural extension to that.

“Danny Blue is a young rookie con artist who excels at card tricks and pick-pocketing. I’m not bad with a deck of cards myself. When we were filming Oliver Twist several years ago in Prague, Ali Bongo taught me a few things. He was there ostensibly to teach Robert Lindsay some of Fagin’s pick-pocketing skills and when you’re hanging around on a set for so long, you want to do something - so I got Ali to show me the ropes. That’s when he first taught me how to make a two-pence piece disappear and once you’ve done that, it’s the start of a very long road.”

Since completing Hustle - which he describes as the most gruelling yet rewarding acting project of his impressive career - Warren has completed a feature film opposite John Malkovich, entitled Colour Me Kubrick, based on the real-life story of a serial imposter of film director Stanley Kubrick.

“I’ve been very fortunate over the last six months to work with people the calibre of Robert Vaughn and John Malkovich,” says Warren. “If you’d told me that a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

He would welcome a run in the theatre, too - although he approaches that notion with just a little caution. “The last time I was on stage was two years ago, at the Royal Court in Clubland and it was terrifying,” he says. “I remember having real fear before going on, my knuckles were white.

“I’d not been on stage for five years and I’d forgotten how terrifying it was. On film, you just do it again until it’s right, in the theatre, you don’t get that option. I know that sounds obvious but it really hits home to me when it’s happening.”

Meanwhile, there will almost certainly be more Hustle in the offing. “We’ve actually signed our lives away for three series, so I’d be very surprised if the BBC don’t go for it again,” says Warren. “And I’d be more than happy to do it, we are a proper family and this is a project with legs.”

• Hustle begins on BBC1 on Tuesday, February 24 at 9pm.