The leading man next door

You join us midway through a boozy afternoon in the convivial company of Jimmy Nesbitt: everyman acting geezer-hero, staple of British telly drama, occasional big screen presence, sometime tabloid fall guy, and a 43-year-old award-winning father-of-two who still can't believe his luck. Yes, he may have worked with acclaimed directors such as Allen, Danny Boyle, Michael Winterbottom and Paul Greengrass (on Bloody Sunday, easily Nesbitt's most compelling, rounded performance), but any minute now someone's going to find him out and dispatch him to a career-killing rabbit hutch where the water isn't even mineral, it's tap.

"I do constantly feel terrified," he admits. He is smiling as he says it but there is steely feeling behind the grin. "It drives my wife frigging batty. I don't want to be scared - I'm trying to find a contentment. And I am content, I love the work. But I've always got something in me niggling "

That he's not good enough? Nesbitt pauses and thinks about this. "No, I think I'm jealous of other people. And there is a bit of me that always thinks, This is it, that's it, it's over'. Like when the Golden Globes didn't happen "

Earlier this year, Nesbitt was nominated in the Best Actor (Mini-Series) category for his performance in the BBC yarn Jekyll, an update of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic. But Nesbitt, and old drama-school mate Jason Isaacs (nominated for The State Within), lost out to Jim Broadbent (for Longford).

"And my wife was saying to me, You've been nominated for a Golden Globe. Great!' But when I lost I was walking round like there had been a death in the family," Nesbitt continues. But he admits it could have been worse: "When Jason and I found out we were both nominated, we were thrilled for each other. But I have to say, if one of us had won, it would have been " He tails off, smiles and shakes his head at the thought of the grin-and-bear-it envy that would have enveloped him.

What a tonic Nesbitt is. Actors, especially successful household names, aren't supposed to admit to feeling jealous of their peers and their mates; they aren't meant to hold their hands up to their insecurities. Yet Nesbitt does it all the time.

Maybe this blokeish candour helps explain why Nesbitt is such a good actor - and such a well-loved one. "So much of my acting is about elements of me," he agrees. Maybe it's the very ordinary neuroses that are out and open and real, there for all to see. He has long been itchily fretful about his hair loss and (more soberly) he can't help but mention, unprompted, the tabloid-trumpeted allegations of infidelities that caused such pain at home. Maybe it's the booze we're busily consuming this afternoon in a London private members' club (two pints, two bottles of white, two large glasses of another white - hey, he started it).

Whatever. As The Sun put it in a story (perhaps bizarrely), anointing Justin Timberlake as America's answer to James Nesbitt: girls want to sleep with him, guys want to have a beer with him.

Actress Michelle Ryan - Nesbitt's co-star in Jekyll - describes him as "a real joker, but brilliant. He just makes you feel relaxed. There's no ego there."

Or, as Nesbitt recalls: "Michelle is also quite playful. She's no dummy, she knows she has an effect. Because I'm a terrible old flirt. The older I get, I have moments of dread that my rather playful flirtation has now turned into lech." Again, who says this kind of stuff in interviews?

This spring, Jimmy Nesbitt will be all over the telly, starting with BBC One's The Passion, a historical religious drama running on consecutive nights, climaxing on Easter Sunday. It's set during Passover week in Jerusalem, when thousands of Jewish pilgrims test the mettle of the occupying Roman forces, overseen by Pontius Pilate. The Roman prefect must also contend with the imminent arrival on a donkey of a Galilean preacher by the name of Jesus.

Nesbitt was filming in Belfast when his agent called with the offer of the part of Pilate. At first he wasn't keen. But his agent pointed out that The Passion was being produced by Nigel Stafford-Clarke, who had made the BBC's Bleak House, which Nesbitt had loved. The writer was Frank Deasy, who won an Emmy for his work on Prime Suspect. And it co-starred Denis Lawson, with whom Nesbitt had hit it off when they made Jekyll.

Nesbitt, very much a team player and someone who talks about writers, producers and directors he loves more than he does actors (perhaps that envy thing again?), was sold. He headed out to Morocco, where the lavish drama - which is a co-production between the BBC and HBO, the UK-US broadcasting partnership that brought us Rome - was being filmed.

"It was a bit of a kick in the bollocks initially," he says. I think he means it was a culture shock. "The wife and kids came out to Marrakech for a few days first. Then I did a four-hour epic, extraordinary, moving drive across the Atlas Mountains. That was quite helpful in terms of contextualising the whole thing."

The set, he recalls with some awe, "was magnificent. During the trial scene we had 3000 extras." And personally, he viewed The Passion as a great opportunity "to play Pilate as Irish. At this time, with peace in Ireland, to show a major political figure from the past - I don't quite play him as Ian Paisley, but he's certainly a strong, hard warrior".

Nesbitt grew up in the County Antrim countryside. It was a Protestant area, "but very country, and not hardline, not ghettoised. Certainly Paisley voters and DUP voters. It was a Protestant upbringing - I played in flute bands. But my dad also sent me and my three sisters to the convent to learn piano, to have some sense of balance."

His father was headmaster of the two-room village school, at which Nesbitt was one of the 34 children enrolled; his three older sisters would eventually follow their father into teaching. When he was 11, the family moved to Coleraine, where Nesbitt attended Coleraine Academical Institution. "A massive school - suddenly there I was, one of 1200 pupils." He was seen as a bit of a country bumpkin, "but I was into sport and I was also a bit of an eejit and I was also quite clever, so I ticked most of the boxes. I got on OK."

Football was "everything" - he is a card-carrying Manchester United fan - but he began singing in festivals, and his father "dragged him" to the theatre. He remembers seeing the film of The Winslow Boy with Robert Donat (Nesbitt would later star in a theatrical production of the story) and felt a light go on.

"Looking back, it was quite an isolated existence. I was by myself a lot of the time. And I think I used to lie quite a lot as a kid, which was probably a good start to acting," he says with a chuckle. Eventually these seeds of theatricality and let's-pretend blossomed: young Jimmy Nesbitt would abandon his French degree at the University of Ulster and, in 1985, relocate to London to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

"I remember the first day in the college canteen and hearing the girls in my year talking. One of them had just come on her period - and they were talking openly about it. I was just a wee Ulster Presbyterian boy and was absolutely horrified by this."

For a long time, Nesbitt purposefully avoided roles that touched on the political history of his homeland. "I was not only sheltered from the Troubles in my childhood, I sheltered myself from learning about the history of my country. I wasn't interested. I don't want that to be the story of my country, so I'll adopt my own story - the beautiful place that it is, the craic I have with my mates." Of all his performances, he is most proud of his portrayal of Adam in the Manchester-set Cold Feet, because it depicted "an Irish character who had no political baggage".

He turned that stance on its head with Bloody Sunday. "I thought it was time to step up to the plate a wee bit," he recalls. "Maybe by inviting myself into this world, maybe that will assuage some of my guilt about the duality of my existence. Maybe I subconsciously thought it was time to expose myself a bit there." By "guilt" about his double life, I suspect the ever-self-critical Nesbitt is referring to both his career - the array of "cheeky chappy" roles he has taken - and to his wayward behaviour off-camera. He admits that the success Cold Feet brought him - and his fondness for the sauce - spun him out.

Cue red-top allegations of "romps" with other women, including an actress and an Irish beauty queen.

"Yeah, I don't think I was prepared for it at all. As much as I thought I can handle all this, the reality was I was being a moron." As he often does, he refers back to his childhood - perhaps a move stemming from his sessions with a therapist. "People always say, you must have been spoiled by three older sisters'. I always say, Well, spoiled is just a euphemism for being loved'. But actually, I think it brings a fair amount of pressure. I was adored - you then go through the rest of your life wanting to recreate that. That brings pressure. It's quite a hard act to follow, three sisters and an adoring mother."

He says with a dry chuckle that "all the old tabloid stuff was quite interesting for my sisters, they didn't know whether to chastise me or" He tails off, the pain and regret casting a shadow over his normally bright and open face.

All that, though, is largely behind him. His marriage is still going strong. He still likes a drink, he freely admits, but mostly he lives a quiet home life in a nice part of south London with wife Sonia, a former actress, and their daughters Peggy, nine, and Mary, five. Is he ambitious?

"Deeply. Much more than I would admit. Maybe going back to that sisters thing again, maybe there will always be a thing in me about wanting to be loved to that level that I was as a child. And maybe the form that takes is trying to have the respect of everyone - because I do things like Bloody Sunday, then I'll do a commercial," says the familiar face of Yellow Pages. "I'm a bit of an eejit that way. I'll gain the respect of peers then I'll do something where they go, What the f***?' No," he concludes, "I'm fiercely ambitious."

But for now, Nesbitt is taking it easy. As well as The Passion, he has completed filming Midnight Man (on STV in April), in which he plays a disgraced journalist embroiled in a conspiracy after he is framed for the murder of his estranged wife. He is currently helping to try and secure the commissioning of a drama called Hound Dog, based on a "dark and filthy" novel about an Elvis impersonator. There is a possible plum job in the theatre world, and he is waiting to find out if Murphy's Law, his (up until now) recurring cop drama, will be recommissioned.

"There are a few other things out there but, for the first time in 10 years, I don't know what I'm doing. The kids are very happy," he beams. "And I'm off to play golf for eight days in California. I'm playing a round with Larry David."

But as soon as he is back from the golf course, his work ethic will kick in: "I'm an Ulster Presbyterian who's always had an element of that; I'm a provider. It drives me scatty and it drives my wife scatty, and I can't get rid of that. But I like the work. It's probably taken me a long time to say: I f***ing love the work. I love it. I love the whole thing about getting the part and reading the part and finding the part and going on set.

"Especially if you're playing the leading man. I think there is a responsibility if you're playing, say, Murphy - you have to make sure everyone's enjoying themselves on set. Where that comes from, I don't know. Because that's quite different from the boy that grew up with three older sisters."

Actually, Jimmy Nesbitt - the leading-man-next-door who's in touch with his inner child, and his inner demons - does know where that comes from.

"It's finally being afforded the opportunity of having that kind of responsibility," he says with that infectious, beaming smile. "And I love everything about it."

The Passion is on BBC One on March 16; Midnight Man will be broadcast on STV next month