A late-developing sex god


*Squee* :wub: :wub: :wub:

Julian Rhind-Tutt found stardom as the gorgeous Dr Mac in 'Green Wing', and he sticks with medicine for his new stage role. He talks to Jasper Rees

Julian Rhind-Tutt is one of those actors who can hardly believe his luck. Or lack of it, as the case may be. In Green Wing, he played Dr "Mac" Macartney, the halo-maned surgeon after whom ladies lusted, on screen and off. "It wasn't really till the second series," he says, "that anyone realised this character was going to be attractive. He is very popular with girls who are under 17 and over 50. It's the ones in the middle I couldn't appeal to."

Rhind-Tutt: 'Be careful what your first part is because you'll probably play it for the next five years'
Rhind-Tutt is being discovered, somewhat later than is usual for a tall, good-looking actor, in his late thirties. Nearly 10 years ago, he gave up on a perfectly serviceable career in theatre "to be paid more money and have somebody hold an umbrella over your head while you mumble a few lines into a camera", only to watch his name loiter some way down the closing credits.

In Notting Hill (1999), the director Roger Michell cast him as the Time Out hack standing next to Hugh Grant as he pursues Julia Roberts. His small part in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) gave him an inside perspective on "the extraordinarily destructive Hollywood process. Over six months," he says, "I was able to watch this very exciting script be completely sucked dry of all life and turned into this two-dimensional movie that had very little literary merit."

A starring role in Hippies (1999), a Channel 4 sitcom from the creators of Father Ted also starring Simon Pegg and Sally Phillips, should have been his launchpad to stardom. Instead, "it was a great metaphor for my entire career. On countless occasions I seem to have collaborated with the most talented and brilliant people on the one outstanding failures of their careers."

He will be trusting that his appearance in Landscape with Weapon, a new play from Joe Penhall, will not go the same way. This is the second collaboration at the National between Penhall and director Roger Michell. On their first, 2000's Blue/Orange, Rhind-Tutt was in contention for the plum part of a young psychiatrist opposite Bill Nighy's older colleague, only for Michell to baulk at the physical congruence between the two actors.

"This is something I've had a lot - that I'm very similar in my movements and energy and general person to Bill Nighy. " In this play, therefore, he will have sighed with relief that the part of his brother is taken by the somewhat less lanky Tom Hollander. Rhind-Tutt plays a dental practitioner who offers Botox treatments on the side, which, according to Penhall's premise would put him on the back foot in any argument about professional ethics if his brother weren't operating on altogether dodgier moral terrain of smart-weaponry design.

"Like Blue/Orange, it's a chamber piece that explores the moral dilemmas of the characters as they discuss them and also the history of those relationships underneath." By way of preparation, he went so far as to discuss the ethical dimensions of his character with his own dentist.

"He nodded sagely as if Botox was something that will become a natural extension of the tooth-whitening experience. Although it is a work of fiction, none of the more extreme things discussed in it are beyond the realms of possibility."

Rhind-Tutt is canny casting. In Blue/Orange and his 1994 play Some Voices, Penhall proved an acute student of strained male relationships, while one of the pleasures of Green Wing was Rhind-Tutt's sparring with Stephen Mangan, who played Guy "Swiss Love God" Secretan. Together they conjured up a ying-and-yang portrait of blokey bonding in which friendship is expressed in mutual antagonism.

"Steve is a brilliant and powerful improviser and I was one of the few people who was able to answer him back and so they ended up saying these two guys would work together. They started off with the idea that maybe one guy was going to suffer from evil vices like jealousy and ambition and hatred and the other guy would be generally charismatic and charming and make the good moral choices."

Mac's nice-guy worldview was expressed by Rhind-Tutt in a performance of detailed understatement. For anyone who caught him in his early theatre appearances, it marked quite a gear shift. For much of his twenties, he played what he calls "posh stupid people", notably at the National, where he was the younger brother of the Prince Regent in Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III (then later in Nicholas Hytner's retitled film) and, in a brilliant turn, played a stuttering carrot-topped fop in The Way of the World. It was partly to escape playing upper-class twits that he decamped to the screen.

"When people ask me for advice on starting out," he explains, "I usually say, 'Be careful what your first part is because you'll probably play it for the next five years.' "

He's not sure if his surname, the result of a marriage of a Rhind and a Tutt among his forebears, was a contributing factor to his typecasting. "You get 'Julian' added on to it and Robert's your very rich uncle. I actually grew up near Heathrow airport. But what can you do?"

He must have had raw talent, because a school production starring him as Hamlet went to the Edinburgh Festival. "I was probably appalling, but I remember trying my best. Some of the cast are now working as estate agents in Pinner. Part of the reason I get some jobs now is I'm one of the few that's still here with my hand up."

Self-deprecation seems to be the Rhind-Tutt schtick, no doubt developed over 15 years of not being offered lead roles after leaving drama school. "That's a f***er, isn't it?" he says when it is mentioned. Was it frustrating? "There may have been frustration, but what I did early on was adopt a policy of making sure that every job I do has something new or exciting. It might be a different genre, it might be getting paid lots more money or working with someone I've always wanted to work with. What I was determined to do was not end up where I began. I will bail out before that happens."

Hence, in antithesis to the delectable Mac, he played a slippery Lothario in the BBC adaptation of Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club (2005).

Hence too his recent appearance in Venus, in which Roger Michell cast him as the son of the lead character. "The point was not to be in the film for my two lines. It was to meet Peter O'Toole and act with him for two hours, which was a remarkable, amazing experience."

Those struggling to recall Rhind-Tutt's performance need not castigate themselves. "I was tragically dispensed to the cutting-room floor."

Wow

Hmmm he got that bit wrong :rolleyes:

Aw he's always saying how lucky he is...

and he got the bit about the under 17s and over 50s tragically wrong...if only he knew :) and that is a LOVELY picture ahhh

:lol: Maybe im easily amused bu that seemed very funny. In some respects perhaps hes right about the young fanbase but thats more to do with the audience of green wing than the type of women he appeals to. Appreciating the picture!

I would love to see Julian be in something with Bill Nighy :)

Ohh im confused..were his scenes cut from Venus...if they were i hope there in the deleted scenes cos i wanted to get it anyway cos i love Peter O'tool!!

Yeah they were :(
I hope they are too! :P

Ohh thats a shame!! Hoefully my mum will get it cos i really want to see it anyway..and if he's in the deleted scene's i'll share the information with you!!

My parents gave me the paper with this in yesterday, and I squeed quite a bit - he's so lovely! Although they did get the age range he appeals to wrong.
Emma, where did you get the picture for this? Because in the paper I have, it's different.

yeah the picture in the paper was different (but i dont mind seeing the one emma posted again!)
aww he's so lovely.