Tell Bob Hoskins to get real and he'll get right to it.

The journeyman British actor plays pop star Bobby Darin's stepbrother Charlie in Beyond the Sea, the new Darin biopic directed by and starring Kevin Spacey.

Charlie is just one of many real people Hoskins has brought to screens big and small in his 33-year career. He's tackled everyone from Mussolini to Churchill to Khrushchev, acing every imitation. He's also a dab hand at creating memorable fictional characters, such as gumshoe Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and struggling ex-criminal George in Mona Lisa.

He sat down for a chat about his work in Beyond the Sea in an interview during the Toronto International Film Festival.

Q. You're old enough to have remembered Bobby Darin. Any chance you saw him in concert?

A. I'm 61, and I remember his music very well. I never saw him, though. I was a big fan.

Q. Was he big in Britain? A lot of American stars are bigger there than in the U.S.

A. Probably he was. Obviously, his cabaret act was bigger in the States. But I think his music and records sold very well in England.

Q. What did you know of him as an artist?

A. I knew his music, but I didn't know anything about his life. Kevin and I went to dinner and he told me the whole story. He gave me a DVD of his last performance on TV. It was eight months before he died. It was extraordinary. It was brilliant. But it was even more extraordinary when you see that Charlie was standing in the wings with a bottle of oxygen to keep him standing. And he was doing this (Hoskins waves his hands in time) not to keep time but simply to get some blood into his fingers.

He had an extraordinary life. He wasn't supposed to live beyond (age) 15.

Q. Did you have to do much research to play Charlie?

A. No, I didn't do anything. I didn't do any research at all. I just reacted.

In the beginning, I didn't think that Kevin would be able to do it. I didn't believe him. He said, "I'm going to do the dancing, the singing, I'm going to direct it." And I said, "Yeah, you are, right!" And he said, "I am, I'm telling you I'm going to do it!"

And I thought that anyone who is willing to stick their neck that far out, I'm going with them. I'll have some of that. And when we got there, he was doing it. I couldn't believe it. I was so proud of him.

You know that line in the thing where they say, "He may be an arsehole, but he's our arsehole?" We all felt like that. And that was all I played, really, just my feelings for him.

Q. You're often put in a supporting role. How does that compare to the lead?

A. The difference is, if you're playing the lead, you're the first one there in the morning and the last one to leave at night. You work your ass off for everybody, right? And if the film is rubbish, you get the blame.

When you're playing a bit (part), you're the last one to turn up in the morning, you're the first one to go home, you get all the days off, you get a short (work) time, and if the film is rubbish, you don't get blamed for it!

Q. It sounds like you have a preference.

A. Absolutely! When you're getting older, the cameo becomes very important.

Q. You've had an amazing range of roles in your career. It seems like you're game for anything. Is there anything you've ever turned down, thinking you couldn't do it?

A. Oh yeah. But I only turn down characters when they don't fit into my life. And I don't go looking for parts. The only one I've thought I could really do was (former Russian leader) Gorbachev. I was on an interview program with him once, and they turned to him and said, "Bob could play you. He could really play you."

And he went, "Yes, Yes." But as we were walking out, and without an interpreter, he turned to me and said, "Wait until I'm dead!"

Q. Have you ever done a western yet? That's just about the only genre you haven't tried.

A. No, and I'd love to do a western. I have done just about everything, including cartoons like Super Mario Bros., which was a disaster.

Q. That movie is interesting, though, because it was just about the first one made from a video game.

A. It could have been brilliant, but it wasn't.

Q. And then there's Roger Rabbit, which mixed animation with live action. The special effects in it are still impressive.

A. Roger Rabbit was the last real cartoon, because it took so long to make. Once the computers came in, forget it.

Q. What's it like to work with a star who is also the film's director?

A. It's great. Usually, two actors get together, they work out the scene, and it's great. And then the director comes along and says, "I want this, I want that," and you've got to fit in with it. That sort of mars it a bit. But with this, we did what we worked out.

Q. Your American accent is quite good. Have you been working on it?

A. Thank you. I grew up with a load of American films. But it's part of the job, isn't it? It's an accent; you just do it.

Q. Your schedule for the next little while seems very busy. Including Beyond the Sea, you've got five films coming out in 2005.

A. That's right. I've got Stay, in which I play a blind psychiatrist who gains back his sight and winds up walking around New York with no shoes on. When I asked the director what it was about, he said, "Well, it's a state of mind." Right.

And Unleashed, I don't know what that is. I probably made it under a different title and they changed the title.

Son of the Mask nearly killed me. Jim Carrey isn't in it; it's Alan Cumming. I've got the script. I play Odin, the god. And my voice is coming out of other people's mouths! I thought, "They're gonna pay me a fortune for a voiceover! This is brilliant!" Then I had to fly to Australia and put all this shit on and this helmet with three-foot wings on it. It nearly killed me. It was murder.

Mrs. Henderson Presents, I'm working on that now. It's about the Windmill Theatre in London, you ever hear of it? It was open during the war and it kept open all during the air raids. It was a nude show, the first one in England. And it was owned by this lady from the Punjab, played by Judi Dench.

Q. How do you keep pace?

A. For me, it's fun. And it's also a job. It's the way I earn my living; it's not my life. It's great work, brilliant work. My life didn't really start until I was an actor.

Q. Do people in Britain all want to buy you a pint?

A. No! They want me to buy them a pint!