A Russian drama teacher once told Eddie Marsan: “There are no evil people. There are just unhappy people in search of happiness.” The words clearly stuck, for the 39-year-old character actor from Bethnal Green has emerged as the go-to man for leftfield supporting roles, and can engender the most unexpected levels of sympathy from even the most odious of characters.

He’s currently the best thing in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, playing a demented driving instructor who immerses himself in conspiracy theories and racial hatred in order to escape from his own loneliness. Similarly, he was astoundingly vulnerable as the Cockney barfly turned murderer, opposite Timothy Spall, in Pierrepoint. And his Hollywood career seems to be remarkably surefooted: he has played an American preacher in 21 Grams, a Cajun drug dealer in Miami Vice and an Austrian theatre impresario in The Illusionist. Next he plays the evil nemesis of Will Smith in this summer’s comic-book blockbuster, Hancock.

Modesty, however, even more than acting, is Marsan’s strongest suit. The son of a lorry driver and a teacher’s assistant, he dismisses any notion that he is currently a “property” in Hollywood. “It’s just that it’s a very small world over there,” he explains, nursing a glass of spring water in a swanky Soho hotel. He is a solid presence today, clean shaven and confident, and not half as “weaselly” as he sometimes appears on screen.

“When I did 21 Grams, the director Alejandro [González Iñárritu] was sharing an editing suite with Michael Mann, who then asked me to do Miami Vice. Once you work for one, they’ll bring you to another.” He does concede, however, that a modicum of professionalism can pay dividends. “They have to deal with big stars – the money,” he says. “So they want someone like me, who comes in and just does the job. And they can concentrate on the money.”

He says that even as a child he was fascinated by character actors in movies. He’d watch On the Waterfront and ignore Brando but be inspired by his co-star Rod Steiger. At that stage, as the youngest Marsan, with three older sisters, he didn’t know what it meant. It was only after finishing his printer’s apprenticeship and drifting by the London set of the 1980s clubbing movie Empire State that things suddenly changed. “I saw the actors, and I don’t know why, but I remember thinking: ‘I could do that!’ ”

Drama school followed, as did five years of penury, acting above “every pub in London”. When paid jobs eventually started to roll in, from the National and the Bush theatre, he thought: “I’ve cracked it now. I’m earning a living as an actor, and it’s never going to end!” And, in a way, he was right. He graduated to television and to movies, in many cases playing what he calls, “the out-of-focus best friend”. In these parts, he explains, even your best work is rarely seen. “A lot of my career is me doing a big monologue on set and thinking at the time: ‘Wow, that went well!’ Then you watch the film and I begin to talk and then it just cuts to Colin Farrell going ‘Hmmm’ and nodding!”

He says, however, that even that’s changing, and that the size and status of the parts he’s getting now (he’s just played Orson Welles’s producer for the Richard Linklater movie Orson Welles and Me) suggest a shift in the traditional “movie star-character actor” dynamic. “Maybe it’s the effect of independent movies, or a new kind of cynicism, but we’re seeing a lot more characters who are the people that we are, rather than those we’d wish to be,” he says. “I don’t think we buy into John Wayne any more. Which means more work for people like me.”

In the meantime, this father of two (with a third on the way), who has been married to a German make-up artist for ten years, says that he’s tempted to move to LA, but wouldn’t have the heart to uproot his children. He has plans to direct, having been inspired by his contact with heavyweights such as Mann and Leigh. But for now, acting is still the No 1 obsession – the pleasure of which seems to increase with every role. “I don’t mean this to sound conceited,” he says, allowing himself the first back-pat of the day, “but I love the feeling of finally knowing how to do it, and do it well. Bobby Moore said that one of the pleasures of football was doing something well. And I love that.”

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