It’s just after lunchtime and Robert Carlyle, OBE, award-winning actor, Method heavyweight and terrifying screen presence, is crouched down on the floor of a hotel wardrobe. The 46-year-old Glaswegian actor is promoting his latest movie, the high-octane zombie chiller 28 Weeks Later. He has opted to reside in the wardrobe not as a zany actorly prank or self-conscious affectation, but simply because he wants the Times photograph to be the best possible picture taken on the day, at whatever cost to his own comfort and personal dignity.

This is typical Carlyle. He is the actors’ actor, a perfectionist of unerring dedication to every aspect of his craft. On screen he makes impeccable choices and meticulous characters out of every role, from a gay seducer in Priest to an ex-terrorist in The Mighty Celt. He has, according to Danny Boyle, the producer of 28 Weeks Later, “Never given a bad performance, no matter what film he’s in. He brings excellence and intensity to everything he does.”

And Boyle should know. He directed Carlyle in the Nineties classic Trainspotting and propelled him to stardom as the mustachioed psychopath Francis Begbie. And while others from the Trainspotting cast drifted into relative anonymity (see Jonny Lee Miller), or were blasted into the glare of Hollywood banality (see Obi-Ewan-McGregor), Carlyle emerged with his credibility intact and his instincts as a breathtaking Method actor truly honed.

“I hate that term, Method,” he says, sitting on the couch this time and nursing a peppermint tea – he’s recovering from the previous night’s 28 Weeks Later premiere party. “It’s definitely been given to me over the years, but I don’t know if it’s true. My belief is that every actor’s got their own method, and as long as it works that’s OK.”

Background

• 28 Weeks Later

• Basically, there's no hope

• I spy with my rabid eye...

• 28 Days Later review

A wee bit of Method to his madness

He played a psycho in Trainspotting. Now he’s a zombie. Robert Carlyle is a seriously crazy guy

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Carlyle, diffident in person and polite to a fault, is being slightly disingenuous. Those who worked with him on 28 Weeks Later will tell a story of arch-perfectionism in action. The movie, a bold and beguiling sequel to the sleeper horror hit 28 Days Later, depicts a zombie-plagued London and features Carlyle as a loving father transformed into a vengeful and cannibalistic psychopath. Here, during his climactic “transformation” scene, Carlyle banged his head so hard and so often against a toughened glass window that he suffered splitting headaches for days afterwards.

Elsewhere, completely lost in his zombie character, he threw himself into a hospital trolley and sent his co-star Catherine McCormack crashing painfully to the ground. “Oh man, I f***ing lost it that day,” he admits, head hung shamefully in hands. “And Catherine hurt her leg, and I love Catherine, so it was terrible. It was a big moment.” He pauses, searching for some rational explanation. “I suppose it was about believability. So I just thought, ‘F*** it, if this is the situation, I’m gonna go nuts’.”

Carlyle’s whole career, he says, has been about believability. And certainly, when I first met him, in 1999 on the set of the period romp Plunkett & Macleane, he was a portrait of the obsessional actor, immersed in 18th-century apothecary studies as part of his own detailed character research. He was also so excited about the prospect of playing Renard the nerve-damaged Bond villain in The World is not Enough that he was already investigating neurological disorders and brain diseases and how to replicate their symptoms with credibility.

At the time, however, he seemed haunted by the long shadow cast by Trainspotting. The movie had become an instant cult classic, and was the harbinger of an entire new cultural era. Begbie, with his rough threats and thuggish charisma, became an iconic figure, and the normally modest and retiring Carlyle would hear Begbie’s signature line barked back to him by fans. “Tha’ wee lassie got glassed,” he says, in perfect Begbie mode. “And nae c*** leaves here till I find oot what c*** did it!”

He shrugs. “I know that’s going to be on my tombstone.”

Carlyle’s response to the Trainspotting hoopla was to drop off the media radar and ignore all press speculation about his career and his private life. The son of a painter and decorator (his mother left home when he was still a toddler), he had a profoundly close relationship with his father, who died last year. However, while Carlyle’s father was staunchly Labour the actor is supporting the Scottish Nationalist Party in today’s elections.

Carlyle was raised in Glasgow’s then-gritty West End, became hooked on drama after a chance reading of The Crucible on his 19th birthday, and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy for Music and Drama. But he hated the institution and its demands for students to speak in Standard English. “There was no way I was gonna go back to the pub and to my mates saying, ‘Pant of bittah please’.”

After standout roles in Cracker on TV and Michael Winterbottom’s Go Now, he was snapped up by Boyle for Trainspotting. Now free from the whirlwind Britflick hype, he looks back on that movie and era with pride. “It’s been a wee jewel in my crown,” he says. “It was the right time, the right place, the right mood, everything.”

He’s less press-shy now too. Older and wiser, married to the make-up artist Anastasia Shirley, and with three young children, he’s more comfortable with his star status. He’s even parlayed his profile into a production company, Four Way, with Irvine Welsh, who wrote Trainspotting. Their first feature project is The Meat Trade, written by Welsh, about two murderous organ thieves haunting modern-day Edinburgh. Carlyle will star, opposite Colin Firth. “It’s black humour at its absolute blackest,” he says, eyes beaming. “But it’s brilliantly written, and very funny too.”

He says that he’d like to direct, someday, the story of the Scottish boxing hero Benny Lynch, but otherwise he’s pleased with his career progress, bouncing from blockbusters such as Eragon and 28 Weeks Laterto personal projects such as The Meat Trade. And there are still many directors on his hit list. “People like Jim Jarmusch or Spike Jonze make the kind of American cinema that really interests me,” he says. “And working with them has, so far, been the only thing I haven’t been able to do. But other than that I’m perfectly happy with where I am.”

Nor is he worried about being typecast as a screen psycho. Unlike previous career strategies, where he has pointedly announced a moratorium on playing killers and hardmen, it seems that Carlyle has finally learned to embrace his inner Begbie. “I get sent a lot of head-case scripts,” he explains. “But I always try to look for a bit of light in there. Maybe a bit of tenderness. Because, in the movies, I always love the baddie. And I want to do it right.” 28 Weeks Later is released on May 11

Three faces of Robert Carlyle

Trainspotting (1996)
Carlyle’s Scottish psychopath Begbie steals the film with his portrayal of a man afflicted with infinite rage. A brilliant contemporary dance soundtrack evokes the Britain of the mid-Nineties.

The Full Monty (1997)
A huge hit, this bittersweet tale of six unemployed steel workers in Sheffield who form a male striptease act proved that Carlyle could excel within the family-friendly mainstream.

The World is Not Enough (1999)
Directed by Michael Apted and starring Pierce Brosnan, this was one of the weakest films in the James Bond series. But even so Carlyle turned in a memorable performance as Reynard, driven mad by a bullet lodged in his brain.

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