Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man star Tim Roth is happy playing villains
Tim Roth is happy to play antagonists as such roles keep him in employment as an actor.
Tim Roth is comfortable playing villains on screen.
The 64-year-old actor features in the new movie Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man as fascist traitor John Beckett and is happy to play antagonists if it keeps him in work.
Tim told the Radio Times magazine: "If you play a bad guy, people connect with it and you get offered a lot of them. But I don't mind at all.
"When people ask, 'What drives you as an actor?' I say, 'Fear of unemployment, mate.' Which is very British. There's the jobs you do to make sure the roof stays on and all that.
"And then there are the ones that you do for yourself and sometimes they fly under the radar, but that's fine with me."
Roth explained that he set out to play Beckett "as a geography teacher" as he wanted to highlight the "sly" nature of fascism in the Netflix movie continuation of the hit British TV series.
The Reservoir Dogs star said: "The first thing that came to my mind was playing him as a geography teacher; someone quite gentle. If you play him as the bad guy then it alerts people that you're trying to influence.
"So, he presents himself as a very reasonable guy with a good idea who just needs some help getting it done. I thought it was the appropriate approach as fascism is sly.
"It's a monstrous thing that's cleverly brought about and, quite often, you don't realise you're in the midst of it."
Tim agrees with Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight's view that the fascist elements in the World War II-set film are still relevant today.
The Rob Roy actor said: "Yes, it seems all the more appropriate now. There are also echoes of my childhood in London, when it was the National Front.
"I went to school in Brixton and was in Students Against the Nazis. I got beaten up a lot. Their doppelgangers now are the same.
"Last time I was in England, I walked through a Tommy Robinson demonstration. It seemed familiar from the stories my dad told me about the Second World War."
Tim also claims that his Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man co-star Barry Keoghan, 33, is a more accomplished actor than he was at the same age.
The star, who was just 21 when he appeared in the TV film Made in Britain, said: "Well, he's further along than I was then. I didn't know what was going on – I'd never been in front of a camera before I was on the set for Made in Britain.
"At the time, most of the actors I was coming across came from the posh world and I was nervous about them and my lack of education or university.
"Accent was a big thing back then. Now it's not. I did little plays for television, one with Emma Thompson and, later on, with Stephen Fry. And I learnt that my prejudices were not accurate.
"That's what you do, you learn that stuff along the way."
