Ben Whishaw: Newcomer lands iconic roles

When news broke that the coveted role of Sebastian Flyte in the new £20m film of Brideshead Revisited had gone to Ben Whishaw, purists were startled. How could a working-class, dark-haired actor play the embodiment of aristocratic blond privilege?

Whishaw grew up in Hitchin, Bedfordshire. He didn't go to boarding school. His father works in IT, his mother sells cosmetics at John Lewis. By his own admission he knows very little about the aristocratic world. Primarily known as a theatre actor, he's as far from a foppish Hugh Grant type as you could be. But actually his casting in Brideshead makes perfect sense. No one plays damaged better than Whishaw.

For those of us who watched the original TV series, Sebastian is bathed in a nostalgic light. We tend to remember the tea parties and picnics, the silk shirts and the teddy bear Aloysius. But if you go back to the original Evelyn Waugh novel, it's clear that Sebastian is a petulant, wayward alcoholic - however adorable.

One senses that Whishaw will get the balance between light and dark exactly right. On stage he's carved out a brilliant reputation for playing doomed youths (Hamlet, Konstantin in The Seagull, a feral gang leader in Philip Ridley's apocalyptic Mercury Fur). And yet he can also be painfully, absurdly funny. No wonder some of the hottest directors are queuing up to work with him.

First, we'll see him play Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's film I'm Not Here. He's also just finished shooting Pawel Pawlikowski's The Restraint of Beasts, based on the Magnus Mills novel: he and Rhys Ifans play Scottish labourers who accidentally kill their own boss. And Jane Campion has cast him as John Keats in her next film, Dark Star.

With his thin, wiry frame and expressive face, Whishaw sometimes looks about 14. Critics have described his performances as wild, feral - even borderline autistic. One dubbed him "a tragic hero for the iPod generation". But actually Whishaw is 27 this year. In person, he exudes a new maturity. Yes, he's still ridiculously, ethereally beautiful. But there is a new confidence to the way he speaks. He knows his own mind - and, for all the charm, you sense a core of steel.

Whishaw hates talking about his personal life or his family - a fact that sometimes brings him into conflict with journalists. "I have felt in the past a slight indignation that I haven't revealed more. That's not the reason I got into doing this, it's not what the job's about." But ask him about his projects and he lights up.

He explains that Haynes cast seven different actors as Dylan - including Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger - as a way of conveying the musician's chameleon quality - "the way he seems to reinvent himself every time he comes back into the public sphere". He says his own character represents Dylan when he started to write less social protest songs and make more surreal lyrics. "My character is a bit of Dylan and a bit of Rimbaud."

Whishaw reveals that he never actually met the other actors playing Dylan. "I'm being interrogated so all my stuff is against a white screen, we're in a kind of prison cell. It's sort of a monologue that's spliced into the film. So I didn't get to interact with the other Dylans. I'm intrigued by what everyone else got up to."

By contrast, Campion's film will chart Keats's three-year love affair with Fanny Brawne before his tragic death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. "It's a much more extended exploration of what that man was about. I know we don't have any footage of him, so again there'll be an element of imagination, but there's more space to explore all the facets of him. I'm really excited."

He admits he didn't know a lot about Keats before auditioning, but Campion had seen his role in the film Perfume. "She sent me a little letter and then we just had a session and played some of the scenes from the screenplay. You look for a connection with somebody, don't you? That's what I do anyway: you just hope you'll feel they're somebody you could work with, and that it will be an interesting collaboration. And I think that's what she was looking for."

Anyone who's seen him on stage knows that Whishaw is a very physical actor. Dressed today in black T-shirt and jeans, he constantly runs his hands through his hair. To emphasise a point, he pulls his T-shirt wildly out of shape, hugging his thin body. He has exquisite manners, apologising as he tries to bolt his lunch and answer questions at the same time. But just occasionally you catch him looking at you with amused eyes. There's quite a lot going on behind that beautiful mask.

It is his grit that stops Whishaw's beauty ever becoming boring. Matthew Goode, who is playing Charles Ryder opposite him in Brideshead, recently admitted he would have loved to play Sebastian, but added, "I wasn't pretty enough. They gave it to Ben because when the camera settles on him you just gasp at his beauty. I mean, I have a girlfriend and all, but still..."

Last year, in Kate Mitchell's stripped-down, modern adaptation of The Seagull he played Konstantin as a wonderfully sulky, insecure teenager, desperately trying to get his mother's attention. So raw was his performance it was easy to miss the technique: he acted one whole scene upside down inside a grand piano. "I love Katie's perversity - her balls, really," he enthuses. "She has such a specific vision, and you're put through a very particular process as an actor. It's like listening to someone interpreting a piece of classical music but pushing it so the structure almost collapses, but doesn't quite. I learned masses from her. It was a happy time for me."

And yet, he adds, it was also a painful role to play. Elements of the character of Konstantin were too close for comfort. "For a variety of reasons, I found that it brought up something that was not very nice. It bled into my life a bit." But, I insist, he was brilliant at conveying the intensity of unrequited love. "Yeah, well." He pulls a wry face.

Whishaw admits that he gets obsessed by artists, too - Dylan, PJ Harvey, Patricia Highsmith. Does he understand why fans want to know everything about him? "I think I can understand why there's a fascination," he says carefully. "The people I find compelling to watch, well you can't help but have a question about where they come from, so of course you're curious. But I think it's really counter-productive to reveal too much."

He's been to LA a couple of times for work but it left him cold. And you won't find Whishaw falling out of nightclubs at 4am. Life for him is about making "meaningful choices". He admits it was a shock to find acting is a business, not just a profession for romantic outsiders. "I really feel strongly that all of that, the money, is quite irrelevant. Other people can worry about whether it makes money or not, or even if people see it."

Ben Whishaw is appearing in 'Leaves of Glass' at Soho Theatre, London W1 (www.sohotheatre.com; 0870 429 6883) to 26 May