Rufus Sewell Finds His 50s Fitting Him Quite Well, Thank You

Now that you're in your 50s, is the physical stuff harder?

I haven't had many big demands made on me over the last few years. I try to keep fit. I never was fit when I was younger. I had the great advantage of being a deeply unhealthy younger man. I was a big smoker, drinker — always had a potbelly, always a little bit out of shape. So now, even though Father Time has got his tendrils on me, I'm actually in a better version of 50s than I ever was 20s or 30s.

What made you give up smoking and drinking?

My dad died in his 50s when I was 10. There was a point when I was smoking and drinking but also working out. Every mile I ran, I would call a beer token. So me and my brother would go running, and then we'd go to the pub and buy a packet of cigarettes. I used to think it would even itself out. And then as I got a little older and I had my son [Billy, 22, with ex-wife/producer Amy Gardner; he also has a daughter, Lola, 11, with ex-girlfriend Ami Komai] ... I started to see my potential mortality from his perspective rather than my own. And that adjusted things. So in the last 25 years, I got more and more healthy. You never know what's going to happen, but I do what I can — except limbering up.

Sewall portraying Prince Andrew in "Scoop."

PETER MOUNTAIN/NETFLIX

You played Prince Andrew in the Netflix film Scoop — that was quite a switch for you. We're used to seeing you charming and affable.

What I find interesting is that what people are used to seeing me as, is me not cast to my strengths. I've managed to find a way to act in the kind of roles that people think I look like I should be able to play. But the fact is, when I left drama school, I was a comedy character actor who'd never acted without at least a limp, hunchback, Latvian accent, eye patch, whatever. As soon as I left drama school, I was supposed to play young men. I did not know what to do. So for me, playing Prince Andrew, I know that's a very specific character, but something that involved [a] kind of transformation that felt like, OK, well, this is what I know what to do.

Did you have acting role models?

My inspiration came from all over the place. When I was younger, the actors that really inspired me would pop up playing a really wide variety of statuses and roles and accents and body types. I loved Ian Holm and John Hurt and [Laurence] Olivier and [Marlon] Brando, but I also loved [Northern Irish character actor] Colin Blakely. I loved all kinds of people who you would regard as really brilliant but useful actors who could play a duke or a butler or a robber or an undertaker, but still have a kind of humanity to them. And my very favorite actor when I was very, very young was Anthony Hopkins. So the people that really inspired me were true actors, in that there was nothing that they would not try. They do radio, they do television, they do theater, they do film — those were always my favorite actors.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Trust your instincts. Everything that makes you not quite the solid leading man is what's best about you. It took me a long time to find the weirdness in straight characters that I played. Because as I said, when I came out of drama school ... I found myself confronted with playing people who were supposed to be attractive, or like just young men or whatever. And I realized that what made me stiff and self-conscious was not the fact that they were supposed to be normal; it was my fear of what that meant. I could have made them as weird as I liked. Don't listen to other people's descriptions of what you see. Make your own descriptions.

Do you have any regrets — any roles you missed or chances you didn't take?

I don't know. There's a fashion now for saying, "I have no regrets." I say bulls--- to that. I have hundreds of little regrets. None that I would share with you — I like to keep my counsel. But the great thing to remember, if you are an actor that totes up your demerits and the things you should have got that you didn't, is to always remember the mistakes that were you. Not to be punishing yourself, but to realize that it's 50-50. For every opportunity that I missed that I could pin on someone else, there's opportunities that I got and fumbled. There's things that were me. The more you can actually look at your life and work out [what] was your fault, the better going forward.