COMPSTON: ‘HOME PUTS ME ON EDGE’
IT is the town where he was born and bred. But Martin Compston has confessed that returning home to Greenock puts him ‘on edge’ when he is out with his son.
The Line of Duty actor, 38, said he fears being filmed by fans and can’t ‘switch off completely’ in the Renfrewshire town like he does at his Las Vegas second home.
Compston divides his time between his home town and that of his actress wife Tianna Flynn. Their son is three.
He told Weekend Magazine: ‘I love the anonymity I have over there [Vegas]. My son is such a brilliant age right now, he’s so playful: he wants to be dinosaurs or tigers and I love reading him stories so he shouts at me to do the voices.
‘I can do all that at a park in Vegas and people don’t care. I can switch off completely. But when I’m here, I’m worried about somebody filming it on their phone and posting those intimate moments somewhere. You’re always on edge.’
He and his wife, who married in 2016, are fiercely protective of their son’s privacy.
The actor has previously said he finds it ‘weird’ that fans send him videos online of him playing with his son in public.
Speaking earlier this year on the Table Manners podcast, he said: ‘It’ll be like, “I saw you and your kid at the park, didn’t want to bother you but here’s a picture”. And you’re like... it’s weird.’
Compston has played Detective Inspector Steve Arnott in Jed Mercurio’s BBC series Line of Duty since 2012.
He recently won plaudits for his role in the moving BBC Scottish drama Mayflies, which deals with assisted dying, describing it as ‘the most emotionally challenging job I’ve ever done’.
His next role sees him working on a remote oil rig that becomes engulfed in a mysterious fog in supernatural Amazon Prime thriller The Rig.
He said he was left shaken after coming close to getting badly burnt during an on-set stunt.