Danny Huston: In the family way

Being part of a Hollywood dynasty isn't easy, but Huston's latest role shows he is more than up to the challenge. Where has he been hiding all these years?

Danny Huston looks a tad bleary. It's the day after the Ireland/Spain match – a drama that is apparently taking a little time to get over. It doesn't help that someone switched on the sun this morning and London is scorched and scowling. "More caffeine would be good," Huston proffers hopefully to the PR as we are introduced. Later, the unexpected arrival of toast and marmalade has him licking his chops happily.

Yet, even hungover and ever-so-slightly sweaty, Huston is an imposing figure. He unravels to well past six feet, broad-shouldered and topped with a shock of willful-looking greying curls. When he smiles a wicked beam, his eyebrows arch, and he becomes nothing less than Jack Nicholson's The Joker – without the make-up, of course.

But it's his voice that really gets you, a malty, bubbling affair made more striking by its owner's confused vowels – sometimes West Coast all the way, other times posh British public school. And like all those who know they are blessed with a fabulous voice, there's nothing rushed about his speech. He is, of course, also blessed with a name to light up the screen of any cineaste's mental archive.

"Yes," he nods. "One mustn't forget, Walter Huston, John Huston and Anjelica Huston. And here I am, coming out from the woodwork."

He's taken his time: Danny Huston turned 40 in May. He's done some acting (Mike Figgis's Timecode and Hotel and Amos Gitai's Eden) and some directing (Mr North, starring a pre-ER Anthony Edwards).

He admits his has been a rather hesitant career: "I completely resisted it for as long as I possibly could," he says, smiling broadly. "I saw my father [John Huston] suffering from the – for want of a better word – bullshit that comes with making a film. He was a very good poker player, he knew how to play the politics of it. He was inside the system, but yet he remained a maverick."

Huston stretches out his arms, adding loud and proud: "To be able to take a film like The African Queen out of the studio lot and into the Belgian Congo with everyone's approval, that's being real clever."

He returns to a softer pitch: "But I'm a bit of a loner. I love to draw and paint and write and not have all these middle men and all the confusion that seems to come with making a film surrounding me."

To avoid such confusion, Huston has turned to the possibilities offered by digital film-making and is hoping to begin shooting a feature later in the year. He's been exploring the medium thus far through acting – on Figgis's experimental projects and Bernard Rose's forthcoming Ivansxtc – trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible.

In Ivansxtc (pronounced "Ivan's ecstasy"), Huston plays the lead. An adaptation of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Rose's version is set in modern-day Hollywood, where Huston's Ivan is a successful agent, dripping in drugs, money and sex, until he finds himself riddled with cancer and discovers his relationships are built on sand.

Huston is a revelation, by turns brash, sexy, manipulative and out of control. He swaggers across the screen as if it were made to measure, bringing a depth and commitment to the role that lifts it way beyond Rose's ugly camerawork and tepid direction.

"My biggest fear was the character being overly sentimental," Huston recalls. "Portraying a man who is dying was a little scary for me, so I wanted him to have a certain bravado." He pauses, before adding: "I remember my father being asked once by a journalist 'To what do you attribute your longevity?' and he said 'Surgery'. That's the bravado I wanted Ivan to have."

Ivansxtc is Huston's biggest role so far – he's on screen almost the entire film – and he admits that he learnt a thing or two: "It's given me a little bit more compassion towards actors," he says, somewhat guiltily. "As a director, things like motivation really annoyed me – "You're paid, that's your motivation. Get on with the job" – but here I was finding that motivation really was rather important to me.

"Also, I found myself calling Bernard up at the end of the day to find out how I was doing; I needed my ego fanning a little bit. I was falling into a stereotype which, as a director, always annoyed the hell out of me." He laughs and pushes his curls about a bit: "You become a little bit of a child, which is very unattractive in a man."

Though he says that his father neither encouraged, nor discouraged him to take up any career, his mother couldn't help reacting when he suggested he might act: "'Oh my God! Don't do that. Stay as a director.' The idea of a vain male actor was pretty horrifying to my mother," Huston grins. "Still, now she's seen my work and I'm not going around looking at my wrinkles, she's decided I'm all right."

Nevertheless, she finds it very difficult to watch Ivansxtc: "'I think psychologically, it's a bit disturbing," explains Huston. "There's this huge death sequence – it takes me something like 10 minutes to die, it's never-ending. It's like, just die for Chrissakes."

He drops his voice and adds: "It's hard because you are connecting with your own mortality. Ever since I can remember, my father was dying, and when he passed away I realised that the world goes on. There's still traffic outside, everything continues – that was hard for me to comprehend. Then there is how the world reacts to your death, and particularly with someone like my father, there are so many stories and memories which, in a way, keep his spirit alive. But that's not him."

He must have talked about his father's death a great deal, but there is no sense of his recounting an oft-told anecdote. Instead, when he speaks of John Huston, the respect and love is palpable.

"During my father's last days," he continues, unprompted. "I would glimpse a moment of fear, or something tender, which was not what he was about at all – in my eyes – so in a way he was letting me down by showing that. But death is an experience you have on your own, no one can truly share it."

With Ivansxtc, Rose may be trying to poke a stick in the eye of Hollywood and its dubious morality, but Huston was there to explore something more fundamental: "My concerns are with the big one: Death." He looks up and shrugs: "That's rather morose. You asked the question."

We change the subject and he tells me, excitedly, that he's expecting his first child. Another Huston to add to the family tree.

"You do feel as though you belong to some kind of dynasty," he nods, as though still faintly surprised he's a part of it. "But I carry my name with a lot of pride. I would hate to do anything that embarrasses the Huston name.

"I've always seen my father as this giant that I'm sort of aiming towards, though I do find that he also provides a nice little shady spot that protects me from the strong sunlight."

He pauses, leans back and lets rip his most devilish grin: "But, if I need to get my foot in the door or get a project going, I use my name shamelessly."

'Ivansxtc' is released on 19 July