Corrie’s Mr Evil:
I’m a big softie in real life
Conjure up an image of Corrie’s nastiest villain Pat Phelan and “quiet and mild-mannered” probably aren’t your first thoughts. But, for actor Connor McIntyre, who plays the callous conman, that’s exactly how he aspires to be.
He knows just how fortunate he was to survive a massive heart attack a few years ago and, these days, is determined to make the most of every day.
“I try not to sweat the small stuff and have less self-induced stress – to have a sense of gratitude about the day” he says. “Life really is relatively short.”
Easier said than done, of course, especially when you’re playing a man who strikes fear into anyone who crosses him on the cobbles. So far he has shattered the Windass family, tried to scam his neighbours, watched as helpless Michael Rodwell lay dying and is now holding Andy Carver hostage in a cellar – which climaxes in tonight’s episodes on ITV. Hardly a stress-free day at the office. But Connor has found inspiration from an unlikely source – a 19th Century French novelist...
“I am reminded of a quote attributed to Gustave Flaubert, I think,” the 57-yearold says, “that says ‘try and live life like a quiet, mild-mannered civil servant and save your fire and your ice for your work’ – or words to that effect.”
Connor clearly has a more zen attitude to life now – hardly surprising knowing how close he came to losing it. He was filming Murder City, in 2003, when he suffered the heart attack. “I should have been gone” he says.
“But, luckily, I was in Manchester just minutes from the Royal Infirmary and the NHS did a great job. I had a stent fitted and here I am, still kicking.
“I have become increasingly philosophical about things... I have had a near-death experience and that gets your priorities sorted. I have stared death in the face. Life is short.”
Connor has nothing but praise for the dedicated doctors and nurses of the NHS and the “remarkable job they do under the most trying of circumstances”.
He adds: “I and millions of other people literally owe them our lives.”
However he has fewer kind words for the Health Secretary. “It is nothing less than shameful that Jeremy Hunt et al appear to be systematically setting the NHS up to fail in order to package it off to privateers and friends for personal profit and political gain,” he says. “I hope the NHS is still alive and kicking long after the Tory Governments of recent times have faded away like bad dreams.”
But Connor knows only too well how precarious his own acting profession can be. Before landing the Corrie role four years ago, he had been a jobbing actor appearing in TV dramas such as Drop Dead Gorgeous and A&E. He was originally only supposed to appear in three episodes of Corrie, but that stretched to six months, before Phelan headed off to Dubai.
Connor, says: “I didn’t know when I left the first time that they were going to bring him back. I don’t take any of those things for granted. I thought it was finished. So I was delighted when I got the call to come back.”
And he has been back with a vengeance, terrorising the residents of Weatherfield and pulling the wool over the eyes of his trusting wife Eileen Grimshaw and long-lost daughter Nicola.
Connor admits he is relishing the opportunity to bring out his mean side.
“It is lovely to play out those darker angels of our nature. The feedback I get most days is that everybody knows a Pat Phelan to some degree or other, someone
who is domineering or bullying. Phelan is an extreme example, but everyone can relate to him.”
His character has become so synonymous with evil that Connor even scares little old ladies when he is out and about in Manchester.
He explains: “The most disturbing time is if I meet somebody, usually elderly, whose memory is not what it was, and they look at me and I see genuine fear on their faces. So I go straight over and reassure them.
“I crack open my widest smile, take my glasses off and say something along the lines of, ‘yes it is him/me, that really horrible bloke off Corrie… but I share the same face with this fella called Connor and he’s really a big, big pussycat’.”
Fame is new to Connor. Before taking up acting in his 30s, he worked as a lifeguard, a boxing coach and a car
Hsalesman. He was born in Liverpool in 1960, just nine days after the first ever episode of Coronation Street was screened. “When people say they grew up watching Coronation Street, I really did. My mum was a huge fan,” he smiles. is parents were both bookies and Connor admits he wasn’t academic. “My mum used to joke that they couldn’t get the police to make me go to school. It wasn’t a great time in the 70s growing up in Liverpool, everybody seemed demoralised by the powers that be.”
He got the acting bug at the age of 30 when he went to stay with his brother in Plymouth and wandered into the Barbican Theatre.
“The actors were rehearsing a play” he recalls. “It was really exciting and I got a really visceral response to that. It was like when you fall in love instantly. It was like I had found the thing I had always been looking for.”
Connor started acting at writers’ workshops before landing his first TV role at the age of 35. At the same time, he rediscovered his love of painting and started a fine-art degree, in which he achieved a first, before completing a Masters degree earlier this year.
He says: “Money was tight. But it was doing something for me, so what does it matter if you are eating beans on toast for a few years? If something strikes you like that, you can’t ignore it.”
When Connor isn’t hard at work on the cobbles, he spends as much time as he can at his painting studio in Plymouth, where he runs a project mentoring up-and-coming artists.
He has also been nominated for a whole host of awards for his portrayal of Phelan, including being up for the National Television Award for best serial drama performance.
He says: “I am very grateful. It is not just recognition for what I bring to the party, but for the show, which I think is long overdue the recognition it deserves.”
And as much as Connor is loving every minute, he knows one day the end has to come for the villainous conman.
“There is no doubt Pat will get his comeuppance. The soap laws dictate that and you come in knowing that as an actor. That is what we enjoy our soaps for. The viewers know eventually he will be the architect of his own destruction.
“What will be will be. When this job ends, if there is no work, I will go back to my painting studio. I am just concentrating on now and doing the best work I can. I love it – it is just great.”