Role as sleuth lets Sewell play the seducer

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This article was published 14/07/2011 (5538 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PASADENA, Calif. — For actor Rufus Sewell it’s not the carefully orchestrated steps in life that make you shine. It’s all the missteps.

“Everything I do that’s a strongly held belief is based on having learnt from doing the opposite,” he says in his slightly breathy British tone.

“It’s how I’ve learned my craft is by getting things wrong. I think it’s very valuable to get things wrong if you can learn what you don’t want to do again.”

Ever since he braved the stage as a porter in Macbeth, Sewell has explored the consequences of his choices.

“I get more obstinate as I get older. I’ve just learned what makes me unhappy, and it’s always my fault in the end,” he says, seated in a deserted bar in the late afternoon, the sun spilling a slanted shaft on the flowered carpet.

“There’s always some point you can trace it back to when you said ‘yes’ when you should’ve said ‘no,’ when you’re aware dimly of all the facts, but you choose not to look at them. In my experience there’s always that place I can point it embarrassingly back to, a point when I should’ve done something else — and for some reason didn’t.”

His credits — projects like Dark City, Eleventh Hour, The Pillars of the Earth, The Tourist, A Knight’s Tale contradict his premise.

So does his latest endeavor, the role of the smooth but determined Italian detective in the Masterpiece Mystery! production of Zen, premiering July 17.

In Zen, Sewell exploits his dark, brooding looks as both seducer and sleuth. “The worst times are always immediately after I’ve made a leap in my work,” he says, his hazel eyes pinpointed by the sunlight.

“I haven’t worked since Zen and that was months ago. That’s kind of self-imposed. But not that self-imposed. I’m a fussy beggar, but not all that fussy. There’s plenty of things out there that I would’ve done if they’d come my way, but I think I have to turn the ship around in harbor and that’s never going to be a nimble move. I periodically have, every couple of years, and that is because every time I do a particular type of role, for some reason, people think that’s the kind of role I ought to do,” he says with a shake of his head.

“Well, the expression of that role is me having done it. And I didn’t want to do something else. So I’m sort of moving from one typecast to another.”

In spite of all his concerns about being typecast, Sewell says he’s not so sure he actually likes acting. “You only need to like it once — when you decide what you’re going to do for a living,” he says.

“And after that it’s a job, isn’t it? I like it but because I’m determined to like it. That’s why I sometimes have to sit and wait. Because if I only did the stuff I was offered, I would not like it… If I want to keep this job the thing that I always wanted to do, I have to be a lot more tenacious, dogged and stubborn and that means sometimes forcibly being unemployed until something good comes along.”

— MCT News Service