AFTER ripping out George Clooney's fingernails in a memorable scene in Syriana, Mark Strong reckons he might be getting a reputation as torturer-for-hire for the Hollywood A-list. "They're soon going to be asking for 'that guy'," he laughs, launching into an American accent: "'I wanna be menaced by that British guy. Who is that guy?'"
The 45-year-old British actor's latest role, after all, is as the head of the Jordanian secret service in Ridley Scott's new film Body of Lies, which means he's ostensibly responsible for Leonardo DiCaprio's character enduring a similarly excruciatin
g experience to Clooney's in Syriana. "I think that character obviously led to the possibility of doing this one," explains Strong.
It was a left-field casting decision, certainly – a British-born, London-raised son of an Austrian au pair and an Italian immigrant playing an Arabic character. "The Syriana role (an American-educated Lebanese Muslim] was quite unusual anyway, and because it was such a violent character, I don't think they could find anybody that would be willing to represent Arabs in that way," he says. "The fact that it has happened again suggests that something to do with my Mediterranean background perhaps lends itself to these parts."
Which isn't to suggest that his Body of Lies character, Hani, is a one-note Middle Eastern bad guy. Slick and entertaining though the film is, it's part of a new breed of politically engaged blockbuster designed to reflect the complexity of the "War on Terror". With Russell Crowe playing a Washington-based CIA agent who runs life-or-death operations in between dropping his kids off at school, and DiCaprio's character arc muddied by having his nominal hero (a CIA field agent) get innocent people killed, it's debatable whether Hani can even be classified as a villain in the traditional sense.
"That's what David (Ignatious, former Washington Post political columnist and author of the novel on which Body of Lies is based] tried to impress upon me," says Strong. "It doesn't help the debate to paint everything in black and white terms. But it's ironic that this guy, who is very menacing and who has certainly done some terrible things, is also curiously likeable."
Strong's ability to tap into that quality may be one reason why his film career is suddenly going stratospheric. Though long familiar to British television viewers since starring in Our Friends in the North opposite Daniel Craig (they're still close, he reveals: "He's godfather to my little boy, so I see him a lot"), in recent years he's been carving out quite a niche for himself as a movie bad guy. Having gone memorably bonkers in Danny Boyle's Sunshine, expanded his evil repertoire for younger audiences in cult fantasy hit Stardust and recently added some soul to Guy Ritchie's comeback film, Rocknrolla, the parts are getting bigger and more prominent too.
In addition to Body of Lies, he has three other films awaiting release – Young Victoria, Good and Endgame – and is currently filming two of next year's most hotly anticipated films: Stardust director Matthew Vaughn's "insanely violent" adaptation of Mark Millar's comic book, Kick-Ass (where Strong will be menacing Nicolas Cage), and Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, opposite Robert Downey Jnr. "He's a total old school villain," says Strong of his Holmes character, Lord Blackwood. "He dabbles in the occult and looks incredibly mean. There's nothing redemptive about him. He's pure evil."
Needless to say, there's nothing evil about Strong in real life. Friendly, funny and chatty, he seems about as threatening as a kitten. But stick him in a wig (balding in real life, he sticks with a close-cropped back-and-sides) and point a movie camera at him and he can convince equally as serious psycho or a comedic criminal mastermind. Ask him why everything suddenly seems to be taking off film-wise, though, and he's not really sure. Having fallen into acting after realising what he didn't want to do (fluent in German, he spent a year studying law in Munich, hated it, returned to London and applied to drama school on a whim), he hasn't followed a deliberate path. He started off doing theatre, spending eight years treading the boards, then roughly the same again working in television. The film work has evolved naturally. "I haven't been putting myself out there more," he says. "I just think more people have been coming to me and asking me to do things.
"I did a couple of films and it just so happened that Syriana and Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (he played Bill Sykes's henchman, Toby Crackit] came out around the same time. It always creates a bit of a kerfuffle if you're in a couple of things at once. It shows you have versatility, so people notice you."
He's not kidding. After seeing those two films, the Coen brothers came close to casting Strong as the ultimate force of evil, Anton Chigurh, in their Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. "I went over to New York, they sat me down, ran through the garage scene twice and, after an hour, I was out of the room," recalls Strong, sounding as if he still can't believe it happened. "I thought they'd be seeing everyone, but I found out later it was between me and Javier (Bardem]."
He didn't get it, but he's philosophical about losing out. Married with two young sons, he knows that while he couldn't have turned the job down, he didn't necessarily want to spend five months in New Mexico away from his family, either. "That's when the job becomes difficult. I've been lucky so far. A lot of the films I've done are London-based. But I know at some point I'm going to have to be away more."
Indeed, he initially rejected Body of Lies because it was going to coincide with the birth of his second child. "I was at the first one, so I couldn't miss the second one. How would I explain it to him?" laughs Strong. "It was my wife who read the script and said, 'Are you crazy? You've got do this.' So the day after the birth of my boy, I was sitting around a table in Rabat, Morocco with Ridley, Leo and Russell, my bags next to me having just got off the plane, thinking, 'Life is strange.' Literally 18 hours before that my wife had been giving birth."
Did he even get a chance to celebrate? "Oh, the minute they found out I'd just had a baby boy we went out for a drink and that was that, Russell was mixing cocktails behind the bar. I was filming the next day. It was the only scene I did with Russell in the film. I turned up bleary eyed, he was fine."
Strong will be joining Scott and Crowe once again on Nottingham, Scott's much-touted re-imagining of the Robin Hood story (it's being told from the Sheriff of Nottingham's point of view). "I'm essentially playing the Guy of Gisbourne character," reveals Strong. "The script is still really fluid, so I don't know much more about it – but I do know he's the bad guy."
• Body of Lies is released on 21 November.
