Born in Battersea, London, in 1957, Timothy Spall got the acting bug in school after playing the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Training at Rada, his breakout role was the bumbling electrician Barry on ITV’s Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He then became a regular collaborator with the director Mike Leigh – Spall won the Cannes best actor award for playing JMW Turner in their 2014 biopic. He recently took home a Bafta for BBC drama The Sixth Commandment. Now he stars in Kate Winslet’s directorial debut, Goodbye June. Married for 44 years to wife Shane, Spall has two daughters and a son, the actor Rafe, and lives in south London.
Goodbye June is a Christmas film about a family coming to terms with an ailing matriarch [Helen Mirren]. You play Bernie, her husband. What’s he like?
He’s an extraordinary mixture of frippery and ludicrousness, but with a deep, tragic soul. He’s been cast into the role of a cop-out by himself and his family, but we see another side of him as the film develops. We do with every character, and that’s the beauty of the film.
This is Kate Winslet’s directorial debut. How was it?
I’m so pleased to report, honestly, that this film was one of the most satisfying jobs of my career. She’s a natural. The atmosphere she created on set was so enjoyable. The last time I worked with her she was 20, on [Kenneth Branagh’s 1996] Hamlet, when she was already very open, truthful, funny and intelligent. I remember seeing her next to Julie Christie [as Gertrude], and thinking, wow, these are our heavyweights!
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You sing in the film, which you’ve done before inLucky Break and Topsy-Turvy. Do you harbour musical ambitions?
Ha! I don’t regard myself as a singer. But I like that confessional moment in the film, from a man who can only express how he feels about his situation through a song.
Are you a big fan of music?
I am. It gets me going and presses my buttons. I used to keep up with music, but I’m now guilty of becoming an old codger who’s stuck in a certain time. I heard something the other day, and I was all, “Oi, that’s a rehash of the Cocteau Twins!” Their album Heaven or Las Vegas makes me weep. Elizabeth Fraser and Jeff Buckley singing All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun – now there are two geniuses at work.
Your only school qualifications were A grades in O-level and A-level art, and you’ve exhibited your paintings. Could you have been an artist over an actor?
Only once, when I went to a Max Ernst exhibition, I was so knocked out I thought, my God, maybe I should have been a surrealist. But I think I was pretty much a born actor. Yesterday, I saw someone with an expression and a way of walking that slightly contradicted each other, and I found myself doing the same, wanting to look and feel like him. I’m 68 now, and I’ve felt like that since I was 15. I’d die unless I express it.
You were at sixth-form college with John Lydon and Sid Vicious. What were they like?
I was in a few A-level English classes with John. He had a Rod Stewart haircut, which was bizarre, but what he was saying was so astute and original. I only saw Sid in the refectory, in his leather jacket and sunglasses, with that hair, just looking down at everybody with such disdain. I loved it! They were adopting personas, of course, but it was extraordinary to live in a time when glam rock had become over-bloated, and these characters suddenly came along, going: “We’re crap, but we’re brilliant crap.”
You went to Rada from a working-class background. Do you worry that acting is becoming the preserve of the posh?
It does worry me that it will be shut off as an option for people who aspire to it. But I’m not an inverted snob about this. You cannot succeed as an actor unless you can really do it, wherever you’re from.
For this year’s VE Day 80th anniversary celebrations, you read the speeches of Churchill, who you played in The King’s Speech, to crowds by Big Ben. How did you prepare?
I thought of my family. My uncle Billy, my dad’s older brother, died in the last few months of the war in Italy, at only 26, and I had my granddad’s medal in my pocket. He was a tiny man, barely 5ft 3, and a runner in the trenches in the first world war, delivering messages because there was no radio communication. The snipers couldn’t see him! I always bore people with this, but that’s where the term “runner” comes from on film sets.
You play Polonius in Riz Ahmed’s upcoming film adaptation of Hamlet, set in a south-London South Asian community. Do you prefer playing heroes or villains?
I like it when the area between them is grey. If I do play people who are meant to be undesirable, like [Holocaust denier] David Irving in Denial, it’s always my great pleasure to try to find out where that comes from. In Hamlet, I play Polonius as this white, Wasp-y consiglieri for a wealthy South Asian family, which was brilliant, as is Riz.
I recently saw your son, Rafe, on TV, talking about being proud of you. How does that make you feel?
He makes me cry when he does that. I’m very proud of him and my girls. I made him cry when I won the Bafta. He’d been on a flight and found out when they landed, and he burst into tears.
You were given a week to live in 1996 when you were diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. How does experience shape your life today?
The great thing now about life is that I really know I’m living it. I do still get caught up in the petty things, but I’ve got a benchmark against which I can say to myself: “For Christ’s sake, wind your neck in, you twat.”
What do you like most about acting?
Being educated by my profession. It’s given me an understanding of so much history and society in a deep intellectual and emotional way. I also love being involved in a world trying to make sense of things in ways that are entertaining and accessible. Film and television are relatively new art forms, only 100 years old. We’re still discovering their power.
Goodbye June is in cinemas now and on Netflix on 24 December
Photograph by Andy Hall for The Observer