YOU WORK HARD TO BE LUCKY IN THIS BUSINESS
“Well, it’s getting harder!” he confesses, having spent the past few hours repeating a key fight scene. “We’ve got great stunt guys – I try to do as much as possible – but yeah, there ares huge drops, huge chases, a lot of running...” As for the magic bangle, James, who once said wearing it took some getting used to, has become quite attached. “Now I don’t know if it’s on or it’s not!” he says with a smile. “I took one – they gave me one at the end of last season – so I used it when I was playing golf over in Portrush,” he admits. “I wore it one day, yet it’s going to take more than a lucky bracelet to change that!” he quips of his game. “But it’s become a real part of me, and I shall miss it, actually.” That’s not the only piece of Stan Lee memorabilia he will cherish, however. “One of my treasured possessions is something he sent me last year, a lovely still of one of the posters, ‘To Jimmy from your friend Stan’,” he remembers. “For someone who wasn’t reared on Stan Lee, it was never really my genre, I’ve discovered him through this, which has been lovely,” James says, referring to his newfound fan base. “I’m honestly stopped by people in the street talking about Stan Lee more than almost anything else, about Lucky Man, and bizarre people – Alex Ferguson or somebody – will ask, ‘Have you got the bracelet on?’
“It really appeals to people, such a simple notion. And of course the idea of luck is something that we all live with. At some point in your life you think, ‘If only I could control that’.”
He follows: “I think it’s unlikely that I’ll play another super hero – I’m 53 – but it’s been a real voyage of discovery and I’m delighted.”
In reality, finding the time to do so would be quite something.
Today James has come full circle, for 20 years after landing his breakthrough TV role in the award-winning Cold Feet, he is back filming the show’s eighth series, following a successful reboot – and subsequent seventh series.
“It was good that it was a success!” he says of its 2016 revival, after what had been a 13-year hiatus. “I was resistant to doing it for years, then the good scripts came up, and I’m really excited about what we’re doing with it.
“We are really going to try very much and get back to what it was at its utter best, about those characters and what happens to people at that stage of their lives.”
So what’s next on James’ hit list – will he ever just resign himself to the golf course?
“Well, I say that, but my ex (fellow actor Sonia Forbes-Adam) and my kids all say, ‘You won’t stop!”’ reveals the father-of-two, with a laugh.
“I’m very privileged in that I can take time,” he adds. “I’ve known what I’ve been doing for the next year or so for a number of years now, and that’s an extraordinary privilege.”