TAM’S GIFT FOR TAPPING DIRECT INTO HIS DARK SIDE Actor can switch from sweet to sinister in a flash
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TAM Dean Burn conjures up a very close approximation of evil when required in TV roles such as gangster McCabe in BBC Scotland’s River City, or as a rapist in Sky drama Fortitude.
And he’s not afraid to reveal a delightful borderline madness either, evidenced on stage by his Mad Hatter.
What’s intriguing about the Leith-born actor is how he so readily accesses this entirely convincing darkness. How can someone, as he did, play out a “hardcore” rape scene in Fortitude, yet just a few hours later find himself telling children about the Gruffalo?
I wonder what sort of trauma has he endured, what form of soul-corroding cesspit he had to crawl out to give him his starting position in the likes of Trainspotting, where he voiced the audiobook.
“I actually had a happy life growing up in Clermiston, this council estate above Edinburgh Zoo,” he recalls over coffee in a Glasgow hotel.
“It was like being in the country. We had woods and fields all around and we could climb the fence into the zoo at night.”
Burn’s father was a joiner whose three sons Tam, Russell and Philip, went on to represent a council house success story. “My ma’ used to love Art Sutter on Radio Scotland and she would call him up on air. One day she got through and Art said, ‘Jean, you have three sons, what do they do?’ She didn’t want to say, ‘One’s an actor, one’s a footballer and the other is a musician.’ She figured no-one would believe her. So what she said was ‘Well, they’re all doing their own thing, Art.’”
Burn laughs: “He was probably thinking we were drug addicts or in prison.”
The most demanding part of early life seems to have been which books to pick at the school prizegiving. Was Clermiston that close to Walton’s Mountain?
“No, not quite,” he says. “Growing up there was great but at 18, I was desperate to get away from home, given us three boys were in the one bedroom. But my ma’ and da’ just wouldn’t move out of the area. It was driving me demented until an actor pal offered a room in a flat.”
Burn wasn’t the cliche child actor, desperate to perform.
“I did the gang shows when in the Cubs, though. And my ma’ loved getting me dressed up to go guising.”
The actor adds, with a shake of the head: “I remember going round the doors wearing a Girl Guide uniform with bloomers on. And she had me in a kilt when I was young singing A Scottish Soldier.
“But I only became interested in acting at Craigmount High. We had a great theatre space and drama teachers in Joyce Heller and Ken Morley [who would go onto become Coronation Street’s Reg Holdsworth].”
Yet Burn’s good grades mitigated against developing his love for acting. “Because I was set to do O levels and Highers I couldn’t do drama anymore. That was it. Gone.”
It didn’t matter too much. The teenager planned to become a journalist, yet fell at the first hurdle. “The closest I got was the shortlist for a traineeship at the Scotsman,” he recalls and adds.
“It’s as well I didn’t get in. I would have become an alcoholic.”
Instead he formed a punk band, The Dirty Reds, and forgot journalism as he simply couldn’t take the rejection, he says, so it seems strange he signed up to be an actor.
He smiles at the irony: “Yes, but as an actor you get chosen, which gives you validation.”
Burn’s thoughts turned to professional acting when he saw an “Actors Wanted” advert in the paper. He wanted to be the Scottish James Dean.
“I didn’t have the hairstyle, though,” he says, smoothing his shiny head. Regardless, Burn took himself off to drama college then worked as an assistant stage manager at Perth Rep, the perfect vehicle for a budding young actor. You would think.
“I know, it sounds odd,” he says, with a wry smile, “but to be honest, I nearly walked away from acting after a few months. We were doing a series of Agatha Christie plays