Steady Eddie

Eddie Marsan talks to Janet Christie about his new film Deadpool2 and escaping his East End roots

Eddie Marsan has no romantic notions about his East End upbringing, telling Janet Christie he’s defined by character not class. The actor talks about his new film Deadpool 2, hit US series Ray Donovan and how he struggles to get decent parts on British TV. Portraits by Debra Hurford Brown

Eddie Marsan is one of those “ehhhh, oh yeah him, he was absolutely brilliant in...” guys. Mention him to anyone, then prompt them

with Vera Drake, Gangs of New York, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Still Life, The World’s End, Filth,

Ray Donovan, Entebbe, and many more over a 20 year career, and the response is always the same. We love Marsan.

He’s a character actor with many faces, multiple personae, possessed of a mercurial quality that makes you want to keep on watching. He’s one of those actors who can nail the complexities, from vulnerable to violent, everyman to eccentric one-off and everything in between, which is why he’s worked with some of the best directors in the business, from Scorsese to Spielberg to Woody Allen to Mike Leigh three times

(Vera Drake, Happy-go-lucky and A Running Jump).

It’s also why he’s never short of work, with Deadpool 2, Mowgli (Andy Serkis’s live-action fantasy in which he plays Vihaan the wolf ), the true crime White Boy Rick with Matthew Mcconaughey, Emperor alongside

Adrien Brody, and Entebbe all out this year, with more of Showtime’s hit crime drama Ray Donovan in the pipeline. Last year saw him in Atomic

Blonde with James Mcavoy and Charlize Theron, Their Finest, The Limehouse Golem and Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House.

“Yeah, I think I’m a workaholic,” he says, on a rare break back at home in West London. “I work like crazy and don’t really have a social life. I work, then come home to the wife and kids.”

He has four, ranging in ages from seven to 13 with Janine Schneider-