Sam Riley: ‘My dad put £100 on me to be the next James Bond’

Sam Riley was born in West Yorkshire in 1980. His acting breakthrough was as Joy Division’s lead singer, Ian Curtis, in the 2007 film Control. He has gone on to play Sal Paradise in Walter Salles’s 2012 adaptation of On the Road, Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock and Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Before Control, he was the lead singer of Leeds band 10,000 Things, who released one album then split in 2005. He met his wife, the Romanian-German actress Alexandra Maria Lara, while filming Control (she played Curtis’s lover Annik Honoré). They moved to Berlin, married in 2009 and have one son, Ben. Riley is about to co-star in Mint, Charlotte Regan’s surreal eight-part Glasgow gangster drama, on BBC One from 20 April .

You’ve been busy lately – Islands last year, Ben Wheatley’s Bulk, Mint – and you’ve been filming Black Doves season two and Berlin Noir. Why the sudden acceleration?

I was a bit reluctant, but now that I’m older I’m enjoying it a lot more. I’m known in the UK for [playing] chain-smoking tortured souls – except for Ben Wheatley, who usually hires me to play bastards – but in Germany I’m doing slapstick and playing an idiot, which I do very well. I’ve just done an Amazon series with my wife where I’m playing a useless secret agent, a Johnny English type, which I love. My grandfather, who isn’t with us any more, was always disappointed that I only did grim material, but the Germans are filling that gap.

What drew you to Mint, playing the least gangster-like gangster I’ve seen?

He’s a great character. It’s hard to say anything about him that isn’t a spoiler, but the thing that drew me was [writer-director] Charlotte Regan. Mint is unusual and made rarer by Charlotte being a talented young working-class woman, and the production company allowing her free rein. It’s her second big job but she’s been making music videos since she was 15 and worked as a paparazzo because no one suspected a young woman with a camera. She managed to get some snaps of a Bond set because no one realised who she was.

You’ve said in the past that you’re obsessive about James Bond…

I grew up, like most British guys my age, when Christmas was a Bond film. I have a younger brother with Down’s syndrome who is still obsessed. If I work with people who’ve been in Bond movies – and I’ve actually worked with a lot of Bond girls, including Honor Blackman, which is pretty strange – I get their autographs. I’ve only ever met one Bond: Pierce Brosnan. It was at the Berlin film festival. I was promoting a schnitzel western: an Austrian cowboy film [The Dark Valley]. I went to get his autograph and said: “I just wanted to tell you that I think you are…” And he finished: “one of the biggest c***s you’ve ever met”. I was completely dumbstruck. I never got the autograph.

You were once tipped for Bond.

Someone had put money on me. I was immediately suspicious and rang my dad. He’d put £100 on me to be the next James Bond and £50 to be one in the future. The whole story in the Express had come from my dad.

You seem to play men who are slightly uncomfortable in their own skin, which isn’t Bond. Is that something you choose?

Or something I bring to it. I think it’s a mix. Control was such a perfect fit – like seeing a magic trick for the first time. Producers wanted the same thing again but I wasn’t comfortable. The last few years I’m more relaxed.

You were 26 when you did Control, which is young to be typecast.

It is. I’d been in a band – all the old interviews used to mention that I’d had the worst NME review ever. The experience of having a major record deal and being disappointed by the outcome was overwhelming. When Harvey Weinstein bought the film, took me over to Los Angeles and tried to shape my future, I backpedalled. They wanted to make me seem likable, which would’ve been nice, actually, in retrospect. But I’d been there once with music so I thought, I’m going to try to do this my way.

Was that when you met Warren Beatty?

Fuck, I’d forgotten I’d said that. I went to his house and he said: “Don’t ever act on screen with your partner where you’re in love. No one will watch it.” I don’t know what film he experienced that on, but Alexandra and I have avoided it. We’ve never been offered a love story after Control but we’ve played rivals. I love working with her.

So you didn’t make it as a rock star or a Hollywood star and you don’t seem that bothered.

When I was at school I wanted nothing other than being famous. I wanted to die at 26, either a legendary rock star or movie star. But when Control came out, being famous was suddenly quite a different prospect. I was terrified of becoming tabloid fodder and people realising what I was like. I dodged a bullet, to be honest. I’m 46, I’m having a really good run, which my parents are very happy about.

I noticed that it was when you stopped wrestling with stardom that you became teetotal. Is there a link?

There’s a definite link between that and me feeling as good and happy and comfortable in my own skin as I am now. Definitely.

Are you a Berliner now?

Yes. It’s been 20 years, which is longer than I lived anywhere else. I never felt at home in Leeds. Weirdly, being in a place where I’m very obviously an outsider as an English person I feel more relaxed. When I come back here I’m speaking my mother language and I enjoy it, but it’s not home.

Has Brexit made it worse?

Yes, and I find it sad. I still have my British passport, and this fabulous residency card, but I’m going to have to become a German citizen because the queue getting into Berlin airport is absolutely horrific. There should be a queue just for the people who voted for Brexit.

Thanks Sam, hopefully speak again when you get your Oscar nomination.

Yeah, my dad’s put a bet on that as well. We’ll be cashing in.

Mint is on BBC One on Monday 20 April, 9pm

Photograph by Grayson Lauffenburger