BOND AMBITION
A working-class boy bullied at school for his love of theatre, Bodyguard star and Golden Globe winner Richard Madden is firm favourite to be the next 007...
BACKSTAGE at the Beverly Hilton hotel, Richard Madden was in shock. Minutes earlier he had been awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV drama series and the 32-year-old was still trying take it all in. ‘My Dad said to me, “You should write a speech” and I said “Ach, I’m not going to bother”,’ Madden told a TV crew in his brisk Renfrewshire accent, grin as wide as the Clyde.
‘He said “No, you should write a speech”. So I said “All right, all right. But I won’t need this”. I’m glad I did.’
It is probably not the first time that Madden’s parents Richard, a firefighter, and Pat, a classroom assistant, have been proved right when it comes to their son’s career.
Indeed, they were so convinced he would scoop the prize for his role in Bodyguard – making him one of only a handful of Scottish actors alongside Ewan McGregor and Sean Connery to have won a Golden Globe – they flew to Los Angeles to be with him at the awards ceremony.
Thank goodness, then, that Madden remembered to include them in his acceptance speech, telling them in front of a room full of Hollywood A-listers: ‘Mum and Dad, who flew all the way from Scotland, I wouldn’t be here without you.’
If there seems something endearingly down to earth about Madden bringing his parents to the Golden Globes and seating them next to stars such as Julianne Moore and Idris Elba (his glamorous actress girlfriend Ellie Bamber was nowhere in sight), then it is very much the Madden way.
Despite being the hottest thing to come out of Scotland since, well, Ewan McGregor, he still rings his mum before he auditions for roles, playfully bats away suggestions that he is a sex symbol (a quick trawl of the internet says otherwise) and seems refreshingly untouched by the enormous fame his roles in Bodyguard and Game of Thrones have brought him.
‘You have to be in the right place at the right time, which is very hard to do, but he worked hard,’ his proud father, Richard Snr, 65, said.
Now, with Hollywood at his feet and casting directors clamouring for meetings, the question being asked repeatedly of this floppy lad from Elderslie is, could he become the next James Bond?
HIS former drama school professor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Professor Hugh Hodgart, certainly thinks so. ‘What did surprise me is that Bodyguard became very popular in the States so that maybe gave that more of a shove than we might have expected,’ he said.
‘He’s going to go on and on and do really interesting work. I look forward to seeing what he’s up to next. I’m quite sure he’s got a whole load of options he will be looking at just now. Future Bond? Why not.’
His father, meanwhile, is suitably effacing. ‘I’m quite sure he does want that to be on his CV one day but he’s not making a song and dance about it,’ he said.
‘Whether it is James Bond or any other big role, Richard has got ideas about things he’d like to do. Richard doesn’t specifically say, “This is my goal”.’
That might be true, but he did say in November that he was flattered to hear his name being mentioned.
‘I don’t want to curse anything by saying anything,’ Madden said nervously. ‘I think that’s the curse of that. If you talk about anything, you’ll curse it.’
Well, quite. If there’s one part that is more hotly contested than any other in Hollywood, it is 007. One naughty TV presenter in the US attempted to wheedle more out of him, enquiring ‘what he had discussed’ when he sat down with Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, who gets the final say in casting the role, to which a flustered Madden declared he had done no such thing.
Yet the rumours persist that he has overtaken Idris Elba, at one point the number one favourite for the part, on the casting list, and is a shoo-in for the part.
One source said: ‘It’s seriously looking like he [Madden] is going to get the job. Not only is he on top of Barbara’s list, but she is preparing to offer the role.’
Gosh. If that turns out to be the case then Madden will have big shoes to fill, and plenty of them.
Never mind the most recent Bond, the dashing Daniel Craig, who was a consistent box office hit and helped to revive the franchise, Madden has an even bigger problem to contend with: the inevitable comparisons with Sean Connery.
On paper, the two have much in common. Both workingclass Scottish boys, their early lives were decidedly unstarry.
Connery was the son of a factory worker and a cleaner from Edinburgh, while Madden describes his parents as ‘old hippies’ who found the fact that he chose acting ‘completely bizarre’, given there were no other creative types in the family.
Indeed, growing up as a ‘theatre kid’ in Elderslie of all places, and attending Castlehead High School in nearby Paisley, was far from easy.
‘It was a difficult place to be,’ he said. ‘There’s not a huge industry there any more. It was rough. My high school was really rough. Growing up was just constant humiliation really.
‘I went to youth theatre to try to get a bit more confidence in myself. In hindsight, maybe not the best move to try to fit into a rough, very masculine school to say: “Now I do song and dance! Yeah, exactly. I got bullied”.’
His first part, at the age of 11, was in an adaptation of Iain Banks’s novel Complicity. He played a victim of rape. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it made the bullying worse.
‘When you’re 11 or 12 years old, kids don’t differentiate that that’s not real,’ he said. ‘That’s how you start off high school. So humiliation came from that really, and it rolled on from that too.’
It didn’t help that as a teenager,
Madden was also a little, well, portly.
‘I was just eating too much,’ he says. ‘[On sets] you’re given f***ing food all day. Three meals a day, stacked. When you’re 12 you’re like, yeah! And I didn’t have many friends as I was on set working with adults. I had a 38-inch waist. I mean, Christ alive.
‘I didn’t wear denim until I was 19 because my mum couldn’t take jeans up.’
Indeed he recently posted a picture of himself as a teenager, chubby cheeks and all, on social media, yet another mark of a man who refuses to take himself – or his heartthrob image – too seriously.
But while he may have been bullied he was also dedicated and talented, and by the time he arrived at the Royal Conservatoire to study drama, he felt he’d found his calling.
‘I remember him as someone who was determined, focused and driven and that’s clearly done very well for him,’ said Professor Hodgart, director of drama, dance, production and film at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
‘Like a lot of our students these days he was coming with quite a bit of experience already as a young actor and therefore he clearly had a vision for where he wanted to go.’
After the Conservatoire and much like Connery, Madden started out in theatre, with roles in various Glasgow rep companies including one with the Citizens Theatre. It did so well it transferred to London, where he was spotted by a team from Shakespeare’s Globe who cast him as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet.
From there a string of TV roles followed, and in 2011 he was given the role of Robb Stark in Game of Thrones, the epic US fantasy, which brought him to mainstream attention on both sides of the Atlantic.
Then came Prince Charming in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, the part of Mellors the gardener in Jed Mercurio’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and finally Bodyguard, also by Mercurio, which has firmly propelled him into the stratosphere.
While he remains relatively private about his personal life, his girlfriends have always been suitably glamorous. For four years he was in a relationship with actress Jenna Coleman, star of Victoria and The Cry, although the two split in 2015.
SINCE then he’s been seen with model Suki Waterhouse, Bradley Cooper’s ex-girlfriend, and TV presenter Laura Whatmore, and is currently dating Ellie Bamber, 21, although he has said little about their relationship except that he is ‘very happy with someone’.
In person Madden often comes across as shy and self-deprecating, with an endearing nervousness about his own abilities that must seem an anathema in Hollywood, where titanic self-confidence is built into the DNA. ‘I’ll keep doing the things I don’t know if I’m good enough to do,’ he said once, although that confidence must surely have been boosted by the big shiny gold trophy now on his mantelpiece.
His parents confirm he has always been a hard worker, as does his former teacher.
‘It’s these other qualities that can often make a difference out in the world. Are you determined, open, generous, collaborative, do you turn up on time?’ said Professor Hodgart.
‘These are the things that make the difference. People like to work with the people they like to work with.
‘Many of our most successful graduates have those attributes.’
Then there are the qualities that have made him decidedly un-Hollywood. In the US, his broad Elderslie accent has raised eyebrows, as well as a few swoons from women partial to a Scottish brogue.
During the filming of thriller Bastille Day with Idris Elba, where he played an American, he kept up his accent off-camera purely so his colleagues on set could understand him.
‘Even [iPhone’s] Siri doesn’t understand me!’ he says. ‘She doesn’t get a word I say. I’m like, “What time’s the next train?” And Siri’s like: ‘Calling: ex-girlfriend”.’
His next role will however, see him play a Scot. Rocketman, due for release in May of this year, is a biopic of Elton John in which Madden plays John Reid, Elton’s former manager and former partner.
Future projects however have yet to be announced, once more fuelling the fire that he is being lined up as Scotland’s second James Bond.
A few weeks ago Madden was on the Ellen show, one of the biggest talk show platforms in the US, where he admitted there was one person in particular who doesn’t like his nude scenes.
‘I’ve made a few mistakes in my time, which are neglecting to tell my mother there’s going to be a sex scene. Then I get a kind of hysterical phone call saying “You must tell me and your father, I was watching it at the time with my cup of tea and I nearly spilled it”.’
As the actor’s star continues to rise, they might want to consider a few more coasters in the family home back in Elderslie.