What’s next for Tolstoy’s bad boy?

Tom Burke won us over as the firebrand Dolokhov in He talks to as he returns to the stage

The best actors can make a small role cast a long shadow. Tom Burke only had a small amount of screen time in the BBC’s recent six-hour adaptation of Tolstoy’s but as Fedor Dolokhov, hard-drinking soldier and committed cad, he waltzed off with every scene he was in.

“He was a gem of a part,” says Burke, now with shorter hair and cleanly shaven, revealing that cleft lip which, in Dolokhov, looked like a permanent snarl. “I wanted to play him as somebody who actually is completely improvising their life. Who doesn’t actually know what they’re going to do next. He sort of sees something like a morsel of food, or an intrigue with a woman, or a jewel, and he thinks, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll have that.”’

Dolokhov’s impetuousness made him dangerous; you couldn’t take your eyes off him. Set against a group of male leads whose characters were essentially wet blankets, Dolokhov was a firebrand. Irresistible on the battlefield and incorrigible off it, he was a proto-Byron on the rampage.

“He’s just a creature of appetite,” says Burke, looking like one himself as he ploughs into his lunch. “I had a long chat with my friend [the actor] Peter Sullivan about Dolokhov. Because he’s often described as being ‘wolfish’ – certainly it was alluded to in the script. But there’s a difference between being wolfish and being a wolf. Dolokhov isn’t somebody who’s doing things for effect. He’s just somebody who’s very impulsive.”

As that suggests, Burke thinks deeply about his work. His Dolokhov wasn’t an accident. Unlike some of the cast, Burke did read before he played the part. “I just think if you don’t read it, you’re missing out on a potential insight.”

He is now rehearsing for a play called and, at the risk of sounding trite, I can’t resist asking him if he is happy himself. “I mean, happiness is a slippery thing,” he says. “What makes you happy one day can make you miserable the next. The only thing that I can say with any degree of commitment is a reason to he happy is… moderate weather. But then even that gets boring and I find myself wanting a storm.”

That Burke likes things unsettled is evident in his work. At 34 he is one of our best young character actors, at a time when many performers would prefer to move straight to Hollywood. You never quite know where he’s going to crop up next – recent years have taken him from a swashbuckling Athos in the BBC’s to a weasly Bentley Drummle in

He was electric as a 1970s eugenicist in the second series of Channel 4’s but just as watchable as a right old charmer in Abi Morgan’s Since training at Rada he has also had a steady stream of theatre work, including a Charleson award for his performance as Adolf in

in 2008 at the Donmar, and rave notices for his lead role in Neil LaBute’s at the Almeida in 2011.

All that this proves is that there is no obvious Tom Burke casting. But there is a Tom Burke look – those deep, dark eyes are very effective for hinting at concealed intentions that may or may not be there. The cleft lip, which he says has only ever been a positive in his life, brings added intrigue. The voice is low, resonant, commanding; a typical Burke character will very often be one you need to watch out for.

his new play, is a companion piece to

with LaBute returning to the same four characters and their uneasy discourse. Burke is the only cast member from the original UK production of the first play (staged at the Almeida in 2011) to have returned to his part.

The newer play is a relationship drama charting the love lives of four friends, suggesting that even though couples break up and friends drift apart, certain feelings never really expire. Greg, Burke’s character, has started up a relationship with Carly – his ex-wife’s best friend and his own former nemesis. “He finds himself in the middle of a s---storm and it’s very much about procrastination and people pleasing, I think.”

This is all a world away from the part that Burke is best known for among the younger audience – as Athos in Although it was never a show that was going to sweep the Baftas, Burke remains