‘Actors have always been objectified’
With a major new BBC drama starting next week, Robson Green tells Boudicca Fox-leonard about fame, fishing and growing old gracefully
Recently Robson Green was driving through Gosforth, not far from his Northumberland home, when he saw an advertisement for a retirement home. It said: “Flats for the elderly, 55 and over. Warden included.” Suddenly, he imagined himself pulling a cord and a voice asking, “Are you all right Mr Green? Have you had a fall?”
With his 55th birthday next year, the actor and “extreme fisherman” (trademark, The Discovery Channel) is starting to worry about mortality. “My mum’s 83 and lives in a place that’s got the cord. But I don’t want a place with the cord!” he says. And it’s not just the birthday that has made him pause for thought. Green also had surgery last year for a prolapsed disc, an injury he admits was caused by a five-days-aweek gym regime and an attempt to run 1.5miles in nine minutes.
“I had this mantra that if you can get under 11 minutes you can join the army,” he says, mocking his hubris. Of course, anyone who has watched Green catching nurse sharks in Senegal or stingray in the Azores knows that the star is in exceptional shape for his age.
Since a producer first asked him more than 10 years ago if he’d be interested in travelling the world in search of incredible fish for a new TV show (one of Green’s less taxing career decisions), the actor has been to 132 countries and found himself in all manner of dangerous situations, from freezing temperatures in Siberia to a hurricane at sea in Okinawa.
The back injury has slowed down filming, but he still relishes the opportunity to embrace the “huntergatherer thing”. The rest of the time, of course, Green is making TV dramas and, over the years, has starred in some of our most popular series, from
Soldier Soldier and Wire in the Blood to Grantchester.
As chance would have it, his latest drama is all about ageing and society’s preoccupation with stopping it. Age Before Beauty, a new six-part series for BBC One, tells the story of Bel (Polly Walker), an empty-nester who returns to revitalise her family’s struggling beauty salon while also dealing with problems in her marriage. Green plays Teddy, the husband of Bel’s blonde, Botox-needle-wielding sister.
The drama has been written by
Poldark creator Debbie Horsfield and there are superficial similarities with her early Noughties show Cutting It, which was set in a hair salon. But the themes of Age Before Beauty – jealousy, infidelity, body image and selfobsession – are significantly darker.
Does Green, who has some lines on his forehead, condone plastic surgery?
“Some men that shall remain nameless on popular shows on a Saturday night, they look like bits are going to start dropping off,” he says. “Really? You’re fooling no one.”
Simon Cowell was the Svengali behind Green’s successful music career (as one half of Robson and Jerome in the Nineties). Might he have had “work” done? He looks at me in joke-disbelief. “Really? You surprise me. It doesn’t take an Oxford don to work it out.”
Green stayed close to his roots, living in Northumberland. That combination of pit village boy and showbusiness veteran means opinions are delivered with an entertaining forthrightness (although, Cowell, in fact, has been quite open about his cosmetic procedures, including Botox and a non-surgical facelift).
That Green had the confidence to leave the shipyard and become an actor he credits to his parents. His late father was a miner and ballroom dancer, his mother a cleaner and shop worker.
But although the money that came in from 1995’s Unchained Melody set him and Jerome Flynn up financially (Flynn is now best known as Bronn in
Game of Thrones; the pair are still close friends), he describes the experience as: “My personal Vietnam. It wasn’t the greatest of artistic choices.”
If truth be told, Green seems slightly haunted by his years in the spotlight and the scrutiny of his personal life that he has had to endure. “The other day in Newcastle, I was walking along the street and this woman said, ‘You’re a f------ creep’.”
While he doesn’t make clear why she took aim at him thus, it may have had something to do with reports that Green, twice-divorced with an 18-yearold son, started a relationship with a vicar’s wife he met at the gym.
Green says he has been “judged” by the public so often that he now accepts it is just “the industry and the life”. He doesn’t read reviews and doesn’t do Twitter. But the actor admits it is hard to avoid negative press, “because people send me it. Including my mother.” Green rolls his eyes. I’m loathe to bring up his current relationship status, but infidelity in middle age is central to Age
Before Beauty. Betrayal he says, “is shattering to either partner”. But, he adds, “people drift apart and things change because of circumstance. But that’s not an excuse to behave badly, it never is. Happy people stay together in my philosophy.”
Did he draw on his own experiences to play Teddy? He says not, but admits that knowing things are rarely as black and white as they seem helped him to add nuance. Although Teddy emerges as something of a “baddy”, Green’s portrayal is likeable and, even, relatable.
Much like Green himself. In shows like Extreme Fishing and Tales From
the Coast, he has proved to be a natural presenter. His enthusiasm is infectious and even those who have no interest in fishing have been won over by his charm. Nevertheless, his years of catching, killing, cooking and eating a whole encyclopedia’s worth of marine life have attracted criticism.
“I don’t like it when people say I’m cruel. By design we’re meant to eat fish and fish is good for you. Psychiatrists and therapists recommend it for depression, especially the omega-3 oils in mackerel.”
Fishing trips with his son, Taylor, aren’t quite as frequent now that he’s a good-looking 18-year-old with other catch on his mind. However, Green and Age Before Beauty co-star James Murray have bonded over their shared love of fly fishing, taking a trip up to the River Thurso in Scotland.
Green is also close to James Norton, his soon-to-be-departing co-star in
Grantchester. Having been something of a housewives’ choice in his day, how does Green feel about the objectification of younger actors such as Norton and Poldark’s Aidan Turner?
“It’s always been going on,” he says dismissively. “Paul Newman spent lots of time with his cinematographer [looking for the best] light.” Green is simply happy to grow old gracefully. “I can pay the bills doing what
I love, and I’m able to fish; I’ve got a really wonderful life. And if people still see me as a heart-throb, great.”