It comes so naturally

keeping rather good company these days

''One way or another, I've spent a lot of time in breeches and boots lately,'' says Jonny Lee Miller, seen breeched up in Plunkett & Macleane last year and Mansfield Park this year. ''I'm pretty sick of hanging round in frilly shirts. It makes you long to get back into your jeans! Love, Honour, and Obey came at

the right time.''

Love, Honour, and Obey is a comedy about a group of North London gangsters with a passion for karaoke and gangster action. Lee Miller plays a dead-end courier who manages to pull a string or two and get into the toughest gang north of the Thames. He also gets to sing an old Tony Christie number from the sixties, In the Avenues and Alleyways.

The film, directed by Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis, who last year brought us Final Cut, stars much of Britain's current Hot Lot (Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, Denise van Outen, and Rhys Ifans) as well as Lee Miller's fellow members of Natural Nylon - Sadie Frost, Jude Law, Sean Pertwee - a London-based production company started by Ewan McGregor and Law, Frost, Pertwee, and Lee Miller. (The company recently produced David Cronenberg's eXistenZ and Nora, the Nora Carbunkle and James Joyce story starring McGregor and Susan Lynch, to be released in May.)

''Being part of Natural Nylon is a great way to have an influence on the films that get out there,'' he says. ''I love films and it gives me an input. You're always looking for good scripts and when they're not always forthcoming you go mad. The whole point of being an actor is to get satisfaction out of a role - unless you're just vain about celebrity. You're always looking for the one thing that will surprise you.

''If you're serious about what you're doing, you've got to keep your head and follow your instinct. Maybe you won't reach the same dizzy heights as others, but you will get something back. I'd go anywhere to work, so long as

it's worth it.

''We were all sitting around having these ideas and then Jude decided to do something about it. We all support each other and there's room for everyone when it comes to getting the right film roles. We have lots of projects going on and some of us are

in them.''

Miller, 27, real name Jonathan Miller (''I couldn't have Jonathan Miller as a professional name as there's already the TV personality, psychiatrist, and opera producer Dr Jonathan Miller, so I decided to go for the country and western feel of Jonny Lee''), is an extremely polite bloke with a classic profile and a collection of tattoos from all over the world.

''I have a rat and a snake on my arm,'' he says, flashing me a provocative glimpse of the snake. ''I guess it says a lot about me but I was young and crazy at the time I had them done! They can be a problem on screen but at the time the tattoos seemed more important. Once you get one, it's kind

of addictive.''

To interview, Lee Miller is diffident to the point of shyness. He has great looks (a real classic profile), gorgeous, deep-hazel eyes (often hidden behind a pair of specs), and a quiet charm, but is shaking with nerves not passion. His co-star from the

eighteenth-century highwayman jolly, Plunkett and Macleane, Bobby Carlyle, calls him Jonny Leave Me Alone - in jest, of course - because he is so hard to get hold of. (Somebody must have his number, though, as he's been out with Kate Moss and Natalie Appleton.)

Clearly not happy to be grilled, he's almost apologetic to be so unforthcoming, but underneath, something is simmering away,

just waiting.

Miller comes from a theatrical family. Born in London, he comments that his childhood was spent either in TV studios or in theatres. His grandfather on his mother's side was the late Bernard Lee, who played M in the old James Bond films and who made more than 100 movies. His great-grandfather was a variety performer. His father and mother are in film production. His love of acting was first fuelled while at school - the Tiffin School in Kingston-Upon-Thames - under the expert guidance of drama teacher Frank Whately, brother of actor Kevin Whately.

''I've had an agent since I was a kid and started acting at nine in BBC dramas with parts for

nine-year-olds. I left school at 17 to act full time, although I had thought that I'd wait a couple of years and then go to drama school, but I got bit parts in series and I haven't got there yet.''

The series spanned from

EastEnders to Prime Suspect 3. Then, in 1955, came Hackers, in which he played an American rollerblading hacker whose internet skills were light years ahead of his time, and Trainspotting, as the startling platinum-haired junkie, Sick Boy.

Since then, he has veered from becoming another Brit Pack boyo and opted for a lower profile, a quieter career, appearing in only a handful of films - good films. Like Regeneration, the extraordinary story of four men during the First World War, in which he was widely-praised as Billy Prior, an officer rendered mute from unendurable experiences on the front lines. Any thought of him as a lightweight evaporated.

He has done his time for the Brit Pack, working abroad in America, in Afterglow, as Julie Christie's younger man (''she is intimidating, because she is still so beautiful''), and a prequel mini-series to Lonesome Dove called Dead Man's Walk. A real western made in Texas, he plays an 1840s cowboy.

The American part of his life started when he was making Hackers in New York. There he met and later married his co-star, actress Angelina Jolie, the wild, beautiful daughter of Jon Voight.

The tales that came out of that union - they divorced in February last year, but remain friends - were not the sort of stuff that suits the Lee Miller low profile. We love the one about the blushing bride, clad in black rubber trousers and a white shirt, using her blood to scrawl Miller's name on to her shirt. We quite like the one that she got her first tattoo with Jonny and is now also fairly covered with them.

''I was lucky enough to go to America and do what I'd always wanted to do since I was little; work with interesting directors on good films. I really enjoyed

living in Los Angeles and New York. There's a great underbelly and a lot of good culture there. But I've also found there is a lot of excellent work back home

in Britain.''

Lee Miller lives in Primrose Hill, where all good Brit Packers - and most of Natural Nylon - live. He likes skydiving and boxing,

and admits to running being

his only addiction. He can be

seen running on Primrose Hill

and, while making Mansfield Park, ran eight miles a day in Northampton while in training

for the London Marathon, where

he ran for Whizz-Kidz, a

charity that specialises in kitting children out with tailor-made wheelchairs.

''I try to run when I'm shooting, for at least an hour every morning before filming starts. When you're filming on location, you usually get one day off a week, on which I will generally do a big run, about 20 or 22 miles. Running clears my head completely. You get as much aggression out of you as you do when boxing. Once I have my rhythm going, something just clicks and I get a real buzz of energy from it.''

See him next, back in Scotland, in Glasgow where he shot Trainspotting and Regeneration, playing local newspaper

journalist in the film of Iain Banks's novel, Complicity, directed by Gavin Millar. ''It's a dark psychological thriller, an intriguing story of murder and conspiracy. My character is one of those journos who like to set the world right, but gets framed in one of his own stories.

''It was great to be in Glasgow again. It is such a beautiful place to live. For the same price as just an ordinary place in London you can live like a king in Glasgow and the countryaside is just a few miles away. The place really does feel like my second home now.''

l Love, Honour and Obey opens tomorrow