Vicar, psychopath, Russian prince, oligarch…

Is there anyone James Norton can't be?

…Is there anyone James Norton can’t be? Jessamy Calkin meets one of the most versatile – and well-adjusted – actors around

The moment James Norton decided he might actually want to be an actor was during his appearance as Gwen Stefani in the school miming competition, when he was 11. Most people chose songs by a boyband, or Coolio, but Norton picked Stefani, because he loved No Doubt (‘My first album, tragically’). It was a boys’ school and the female costume department wasn’t very wellequipped – one pencil skirt and a blonde wig between them, whether you were Cleopatra or Courtney Love – so everyone assuming a female role looked rather similar, with very badly applied lipstick. ‘Really young weird drag queens is what we looked like,’ remembers Norton.

A video exists of this debut. ‘And in the first verse I was clearly terrified. But then I remember feeling the audience and being fuelled by them.’ By the second verse he starts to strut, out of nowhere, and the connection was made. ‘F— yeah!’ thought Norton. ‘This is it!’

Here we are 20 years later and Norton is having the time of his life. In what has become a varied career curriculum – a pop star (Gwen Stefani), a padre (Sidney Chambers in Grantchester), a prince (Andrei in War & Peace) and a psychopath (Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley), not to mention his theatre roles – Norton has managed to escape the sort of typecasting that could have defined him. He is a good-looking, fairly posh, highly accomplished and intelligent actor, who in a short time has become very famous indeed.

When we meet he is rehearsing a role in Amy Herzog’s play Belleville at the Donmar Warehouse in London, and his reputation is set to soar with his new television role – as a young hedge-fund manager in Mcmafia, the BBC’S eight-part exploration of financial corruption and global organised crime. Inspired by Misha Glenny’s book of the same name, the series was written by Hossein Amini (who wrote the 2011 film Drive) and James Watkins, who also directed it. It was shot over eight months in London, Croatia, Moscow and Tel Aviv.

Norton plays Alex Godman, the son of Russian exiles with mafia connections, who has been working to distance himself from his family’s reputation. Glenny’s book is a masterful piece of investigative journalism and has quite a reputation with both law enforcers and gangsters. ‘Actors can be brilliant at what they do but they don’t necessarily engage in the issues or environment beyond their role,’ says Glenny, who acted as an adviser on the series. ‘James gets the character, and the environment and the issues. He has an extraordinary ability, which enables him to make this very subtle 180-degree turn over the eight episodes.’

It’s a Michael Corleone role. When Norton was cast, the director told him that what they were hoping for in Alex Godman was part Sidney, part Tommy – somewhere between the vicar and the psychopath. Norton believes Mcmafia has a valid, topical message, what with the Paradise Papers and the climate of tax evasion and Russian interference. ‘There’s such an appetite for it now; everyone wants to see what state-level corruption looks like. It’s a catalyst for a conversation, and hopefully we can use it to mobilise something – because of the way that financial institutions are structured, it’s impossible to police that grey area where legality ends and criminality begins.’

We meet for breakfast in the Covent Garden Hotel on a cold November morning, before Norton’s rehearsal at the Donmar. It is not long before we get on to the subject of his 92-year-old Aunt Grania (most interviews with Norton mention James Bond and his Aunt Grania), known for her confidence-boosting prowess. He tells me about the time when she looked at him quizzically over dinner and said, ‘I can’t understand why you look so good on the screen James, when you look so bland in real life.’

I don’t like to contradict a 92-year-old, but I beg to differ with Aunt Grania. Norton is much better looking in real life than on television. His face is full of light; so is his voice – and he laughs a lot and is ready to be amused at all times. He seems curious, well balanced and up for anything. I imagine he comes from a very happy family.

‘I do,’ he says. They are, he says, his great leveller. ‘And you do need that constant reminder of who you were before the madness started. I am lucky to have such a normal, grounded family who are really supportive. They enjoy it all through me and I enjoy their enjoyment of it, but they’re never going to be seduced by it. Which means that hopefully I won’t get seduced by it either. If I ever turned up in a convertible my family would just laugh. The person I was at 25 is exactly the same person I am at 32.’

Norton was born in London but grew up in Malton, North Yorkshire. Both his parents worked full-time – unusual, he says, at that time for where they lived. His father was a university lecturer and his mother started off as a nurse. ‘She didn’t come on holiday with us for several years because she was doing a PHD in her spare time. She’s a strong woman and an amazing example to us.’ His younger sister is a doctor.

Norton went to the local primary school and had a thick Yorkshire accent (not dissimilar to that of Tommy Lee Royce) then went to the public school Ampleforth College. ‘I didn’t love school. They were not the happiest five years of my life. I didn’t fit in. I hit puberty quite late, which made quite a big difference. I loved theatre and music, which wasn’t as cool as liking rugby and smoking. Also I really enjoyed the academic side and worked really hard; school set me up in a way because I wasn’t popular so had more time to work.’

He doesn’t come from a religious family, but Ampleforth was a strong Catholic school. ‘It was extraordinary. It’s stunning, set in this big valley which was often bathed in morning mist. And you have prayers three times a day, so it was really quite a magical, mystical place.’ Because he was unhappy at school – he was bullied a bit, but not badly – Norton made friends with the chaplain, Father Peter, who became a sort of therapist. A relationship with faith developed ‘but it was more of a fascination and a comfort than a belief ’.

After school, ‘I sort of let rip. I went off on an eight-month wander around South Asia on my own and I went a bit crazy. I finally felt comfortable in my own skin – there’s so much contention in that small, pressure-cooker environment of school so when I found people I loved and who loved me it was an amazing relief.’

He spent three months teaching in Nepal then went to India. The theatricality of faith in Nepal appealed to him. ‘Every day seems to be some sort of religious festival; it’s so imbued in their culture and their daily lives.’ When he went to Cambridge he read theology, ‘but I’m not religious; I’m intrigued. And I studied mostly Hinduism or Buddhism,

‘If I ever turned up in a convertible my family would just laugh’

not much Christian theology at all, which was really awkward when people would come up to me on the set of Grantchester and say, “You know – from Corinthians, Chapter Two” and I hadn’t a clue what they were on about.’

He got a first from Cambridge, but still managed to fit in a lot of theatre and alcohol while he was there. He had a relationship with a girl who directed him in several theatre productions; he still wears a bracelet she gave him today. It reminds him, he says, of the second time when he suddenly felt he could be an actor. ‘It was probably the moment it turned from a dream into a reality,’ he says. By the time he left university he already had a place at Rada. ‘It’s such a great feeling when someone asks you what you want to do with your life and you can reply “I’m an actor” – rather than, “I want to act.”’ To support himself, he worked as a children’s party entertainer in the holidays.

Norton graduated from Rada six months early, having secured an agent and made a brief appearance in An Education in 2009. His first major theatrical role was in Laura Wade’s play Posh at the Royal Court in 2010, about the Riot Club, a fictionalised version of The Bullingdon Club at Oxford. ‘There were 10 guys in the cast and every evening,

after the play, we’d spend all our wages on booze. It was like a sports team.’

A solid two years of theatre followed. ‘There were endless conversations with my agent about trying to nail a film role – and then suddenly you break through and your schedule changes – especially if you get a series like Grantchester or Happy Valley – and you have no time for theatre.’ He then went four years without doing a play at all – until last year’s Bug at the Soho Theatre, and now Belleville at the Donmar.

Belleville is a punchy play, New York theatre about a young couple who’ve graduated from Yale and decide to move to Paris. Norton plays a doctor; Imogen Poots is his actor wife. They’re living the American dream, and they have a sense of entitlement, and, inevitably, everything falls apart.

He didn’t know Poots before they were cast, but they were soon rehearsing sex scenes together. ‘I had only met her two weeks before. You have to just trust, and let yourself be vulnerable. Of course it has a brilliant side to it – you get to know someone so quickly and intimately, and you build fantastic relationships; similarly with the director. I think the definition of an extrovert is someone whose energy is fuelled by other people, which I think I am – so a rehearsal room is a joy.’

Norton appeared in the TV series Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) and Life in Squares (2015), but it was three roles in fairly quick succession that made him a household name: firstly, as the 1950s cleric Reverend Sidney Chambers in Grantchester (2014-17), which had three series. (This, he says now, is the most fun he has ever had on set, mainly because of his friendship with Robson Green, who plays Inspector Geordie Keating. At one point Green was ordered off set because they were laughing so much.) He also played Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in Andrew Davies’ revered six-part adaptation of War and Peace (2016), and Tommy Lee Royce in Sally Wainwright’s brilliant BBC police drama Happy Valley (2014-16), which won a Bafta, and saved him, he says, from a life sentence of period drama.

Wainwright, the gifted writer of Last Tango in Halifax and Scott & Bailey, had seen Norton on stage in Journey’s End in 2011, but he was still pretty unknown when the call went out to audition for the part of Tommy Lee Royce, the psychopathic killer who becomes Sgt Catherine Cawood’s nemesis in a town in West Yorkshire.

Norton already had the right accent from growing up in Malton. He was sent the script while he was in South Africa doing a ‘rather ropey’ film about Vikings, and he recorded his audition on video. He was very impressed by the screenplay, but didn’t really think he’d get the part. So, he says, he had nothing to lose, and went for it. ‘The character was so rich… my [audition] scene had the most incredible piece of writing, where a man is so sad and damaged that the most loving act he can think of to do for his eight-year-old son is to kill him.’ Not long after, he got a call from his agent to tell him that the part was his. ‘Being offered Tommy changed my life because it’s opened so many doors. It showed that I could play the baddie.’

And he played the baddie memorably. He was horribly convincing – so much so that once when he was in a queue, the girl in front of him turned round and saw him, screamed and ran away.

Last year, he was tipped to be the next James Bond, and became the bookies’ favourite. He gets asked about it constantly. ‘It would come with incredible challenges, but beyond that I haven’t thought about it at length because it’s so speculative and silly. I’m flattered that people would even consider me. But I’m also a huge fan of Daniel Craig, so would want him to do a few more films.’

Norton is permanently busy. He has just filmed the remake of the ’90s classic Flatliners; today he is rehearsing for Belleville and then recording voiceovers for Mcmafia, this evening he is attending a ball in aid of JDRF (Junior Diabetic Research Fund). He has type 1 diabetes, having developed it when he was 22. His mother and his sister are also diabetic. He injects himself several times a day, but has incorporated it into his life and doesn’t let it deter him. ‘So for example, the kedgeree is about to arrive and I’ll have an injection to counter the carbs; it’s just about having a level of awareness about what you’re eating.

‘It’s interesting being on stage or on set because your body is full of adrenalin and that screws up your sugar, especially when I’m on stage for a full hour and a half. I have to anticipate it at the beginning of the show and make sure my sugar levels are going up or are at least stable. In period plays, I’ve had to stitch little pockets in my costume for sugar tablets.’ A few years ago, during a performance of Journey’s End, Norton was shaking a bit, and sweating from the adrenalin because the play was going well, but one of the other actors thought he was hypoing and told the stage manager. ‘Pandemonium broke loose. The next thing I know, they’re improvising and giving me Lucozade, saying, “Cup of tea, sir?” and putting biscuits all over the dugout. So there have been moments where diabetes and theatre have collided.’ Since he started talking about it, he’s realised that he can have a positive influence on young diabetics and demonstrate that it’s a manageable condition.

What else? He lives in Peckham, in a house full of vintage clothes left over from when he used to run a clothes stall in Nunhead, and firmly refuses to talk about his love life, despite what I thought was some rather persuasive questioning on my part. ‘Let’s leave that one vague. Just say that at that point I started tucking into my kedgeree…’

He smiles broadly, disarmingly, but he is steely. Somewhere between a vicar and a psychopath. Mcmafia starts on New Year’s Day at 9pm on BBC One; episode two will air the following day. Belleville is at the Donmar Warehouse until 3 February 2018; donmarwarehouse.com; 020-3282 3808

Happy Valley, which won a Bafta, saved him, he says, from a life sentence of period drama