ROY THE ROVER; When Roy Marsden walked out on his family he had no idea he'd be embracing the lonely, single life mirrored by his most famous TV role, he tells Thomas Quinn.
A CERTAIN JUSTICETuesday ITV 9.00pm
For the past 15 years he has been playing PD James's solitary detective Adam Dalgliesh. And some of that character's lonely existence seems to have rubbed off on Roy Marsden in real life.
While introspective sleuth Dalgliesh was obsessed by work and felt unable to commit in matters of the heart, the actor playing him seemed the picture of a happy family man. But that image was shattered in 1992.
Unexpectedly, Marsden divorced his second wife, actress Polly Hemingway, and left the South London home they lived in with sons Billy, 12, and Joe, 17. It was later revealed that Roy had had an affair. But, since then, he has remained single, seeking to fill his days by throwing himself into his work.
Home for Roy is now a converted warehouse studio flat in Hackney, close to the part of London's East End where he grew up. And although he remains close to his sons and friendly with his ex-wife, he is at one remove from his old family life - rather like the TV detective he plays.
No one is more aware of the similarities between himself and Dalgliesh than Roy himself. "Dalgliesh spends his whole life focused on his work and then there's me, living on my own, wrapped up in work," he laughs.
"I was like too many men who are unable to commit themselves properly. A woman asks, `How do you feel, darling?' and he says, `I don't know'. So many men find it difficult to talk. I wasn't good at relationships because I wasn't very honest. It's taken a long journey into middle age to learn to be able to talk about my emotions. You adjust and learn to live your life without guilt and without problems."
Of his relationship with Polly, Roy insists that time has been a healer and that the family structure, though fragmented, is still a sound one.
"She's perfectly happy, we're very close. Polly has always been tremendously social and fun to be with. I adore her. We spend a huge amount of time together because of the boys."
Roy, 57, looks younger when not in character as Dalgliesh - even without the wig that covers his bald head for the role. This is partly because Roy has established a rigorous fitness regime which takes up any spare time. Early each morning he goes roller-blading in Victoria Park, East London, followed by a work-out.
"A couple of years ago I looked at this naked, dying rhinoceros, and from that moment on I started going to a gym," he recalls. As a result, Roy has shed two stones.
Ironically, in the latest Dalgliesh mystery, A Certain Justice, shown on Tuesday, he's made up to appear even heavier and less active than before. "I don't do as many active things as Dalgliesh as I have in the past," he admits. "The most energetic thing I do is get in and out of a car - and I look like Robbie Coltrane while I'm doing it."
Marsden's relationship with Dalgliesh is a love/hate one. He refers to his screen counterpart as "Doris" and wishes he'd lighten up, smile, anything but be so serious all the time. "As I've got older I think I've got further away from Dalgliesh," he says of the role he has lived with for a decade and a half now - a longer run than John Thaw's Morse or Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes. "He is a very introspective lonely human being."
But as long as PD James writes more thrillers about his character, he's happy to bring him to life on television.
"It's an easy job, really," he shrugs. "Every 18 months or so I do a couple of months filming one. It's not like what John Thaw did on Morse - he spent months slogging at it for years. He had to get away from it in the end, whereas I've been able to do other things. The hardest thing about doing this character is putting the make-up on. And if I'd known in the beginning just how long the character would have gone on for I wouldn't have bothered with the wig and moustache. I'd just have had him looking like me. That would have been even easier."
This year's helping of Dalgliesh is no routine mystery. For the first time our detective fails to get his man. The murderer is found, Dalgliesh works his way through the labyrinthine plot with masterly ease, but the legal system, in which this killing is set, fails to see justice done. But then, in a world that has seen the OJ Simpson trial, watched the Louise Woodward case unfold, and witnessed the drama over the senseless death of Stephen Lawrence, it's no surprise that even a fictional detective can sometimes find himself helpless.
"It's the first time we've ever had a killer get away with his crime," says Roy. "PD James has always been very moral about the idea that crime doesn't pay, so the killer always gets caught or dies. But this time the killer gets away with it. It is a fact of life. Every day you see examples of how people in power get away with things.
"It is a complex and intriguing story. It highlights the whole question of are they guilty if they've committed the crime, or are they guilty if they're proven in court to have committed the crime - and what's the difference?
"Courtroom dramas are always fascinating," he adds, "but especially in magistrates courts, where justice differs greatly."
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| Title Annotation: | Features |
|---|---|
| Author: | Quinn, Thomas |
| Publication: | The Mirror (London, England) |
| Date: | Jul 11, 1998 |
| Words: | 928 |
| Previous Article: | SOAP SCENES. |
| Next Article: | TASTING WINE & BEER. |
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