Bob Hoskins is forty-three years old, 5ft 6in tall and weighs fifteen stone. Large, rosy pointed ears stand out from his powerful head, and he wears his remaining hair as short as wood-grain, like a Roman praetor. He has the broad blunt hands of a mole, and gives frequent thoughtful tugs to his nose. When he is acting rage, which he does superlatively well, nearly all the white shows round his gum-drop eyes, and his mouth folds and unfolds into the most menacing snarl ever captured on celluloid. Anyone who has seen The Long Good Friday will remember that final terrifying shot of Hoskins as the captured gangster sitting in the back of a limousine, his face working in silent fury, his mouth contorted to the shape of a belt buckle lined with bared white teeth. Even as soft-hearted George in Mona Lisa, he is still quite combustible and gives mincingly convincing displays of groin-kicking, face-smashing and head-butting. But how far does the real Bob Hoskins conform to this image of extreme physicality?

Do you play any sport?

Sport bores the life out of me. I'm the least competitive person you've ever met. The only game I have quite enjoyed is chess.

Do you take any form of exercise?

I go to Alan Talbot's gym in the East End. Have done for years. I find I have to change shape to play different parts, so I go to Alan and tell him the shape I want to be. For the character of Stanley in Sweet Liberty, I had to be quite dapper, neurotic, a bit of a mother's boy; so I told Alan I wanted less shoulders, more belly and a bigger bum. I ended up looking like Tweedledum, which is what was needed. Right after Stanley I had to play George. George is very solid and muscular, just out of prison; less belly and more shoulders than Stanley, but he couldn't look sleek. I only had two weeks to get George looking right, so I worked out all morning every day. Alan talked me through it. We're like a pair of old gossips.

Did you mind when you started to go bald?

No. It started happening when I was thirty-two. I've always had short hair. I don't like hair getting in the way, so when it started to go, it was a bit of a godsend really ... Obviously I'd love a headful of curly black hair. 'Course I would! But there's loads of us about, the baldies. Hundreds and thousands of us. It's funny but when you go into any group, you find the baldies do always gravitate towards each other. You're never alone with a bald head.

Do you lose your temper easily?

Very rarely. I make a lot of noise now and again, shouting and all that. But I'm not an aggressive type.

Have you ever been involved in a fight in real life?

You're joking! Every kid's had a fight. Yeah! But I wouldn't call myself a violent person. I don't like it. Fortunately people don't pick on me when they're looking for a fight. That's the benefit of being short; there's no kudos involved in fighting with a shorty. My advice is, if any trouble looks like starting - run. The idea that two adult intelligent people would stand there battering together like a pair of rams is ridiculous.

So you've never been in a proper grown-up punch-up?

... Well. Yes. Of course. Erm. Ah, oh yes, about - ooh! - six years ago. One of those things that happen while you're driving. This bloke got out and I got out. There was all that shouting and screaming. We started a fight. Fortunately he was in exactly the same shape I was. We lasted five seconds. Neither of us landed a punch. We were both sitting on the floor out of breath. Then we wound up down the pub. That was that. The only fight I've had for years and years.

Are you brave?

Knocking someone out isn't brave. That's just destructive. I think it takes real bravery for ordinary people now to bring up kids, with unemployment as it is and with the line this government is taking. That takes real bravery...

Bob Hoskins has played more than his fair share of megalomaniacs, tyrants and villains. His roles have included Richard III, the fiendish Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi, Iago, Napoleon, Mussolini, East End gangster Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday, devious Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Ronnie Kray in England, England by Snoo Wilson and Kevin Coyne, and mobster Owney Madden in Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club. But Hoskins is vexed by those who assume he always plays villains.

You have played a number of villainous roles in your time. Why do you think th---

No I haven't! Not really! Not when you look at all the other parts I've played too. All right, Iago was a bit of a villain. In fact he was one of the living dead. Jonathan Miller gave me the accurate psychological framework to start from, and I played Iago as the case history of a psychopath.

But what about all- the others? What about Arthur Parker in Pennies from Heaven? Arthur is Everyman; that part had every self-contradictory human quality in it. Or Morrie Mendellsohn in The Dunera Boys? You wouldn't call him a bad man! And Amie Cole in Flickers! He might be a spiv and a megalomaniac, but he's also a man of vision and tenderness. And what about old Sheppey (the lead in Anthony Page's BBC production of a play by Somerset Maugham)? People said that play was rubbish but I thought it was wonderful. The amazing thing about Sheppey is that he has a deep love of humanity which he's never been able to show until he suddenly wins a fortune on the horses.

Now that you've made your fortune, do you try, like Sheppey, to use some of it to help other people?

That's my business. It's a very private thing; I've no reason to do it except for me. And that's that.

To return to the villains: I understand that your portrayal of gangster Harold Shand was so convincing that the Kray brothers sent fan mail.

When I did The Long Good Friday, I went down the clubs to meet the chaps, and said, "Teach me how to be a gangster."

Which clubs?

Leave off. Anyway, afterwards they gave me an Omega watch. "As a present of appreciation," they said. It was a bizarre thing; it worked on sound, but it didn't work on me. In the end I gave it to Sammy, my driver, because it worked on him.

I would have thought you would enjoy the baroque London settings and dangerous language of Steven Berkoff s plays. Do you admire his work?

I know Steve well. He's brilliant. This country doesn't make enough of him. If he were living in France or the USA, they'd praise him to the skies. But here, he's having to play bit parts to get the dough together to do his next production. Pathetic! I would like to produce something with Steve where both our imaginations were at work. We work in very different ways. But I'd like to make a film with Steve where I put myself in the reverse situation, so that I was directing him.

Tell me about your Shakespearean career.

I started off understudying minor roles in rep at Stoke-on-Trent. My first part was Peter, the nurse's servant in Romeo and Juliet. The audience thought I was hilarious because I was the wrong shape for Shakespeare. I looked like an Elizabethan pillar-box. But it was when I played Richard III in rep at Hull that it all first made a real impression on me. I sat down to read it in one of those Complete Works. I couldn't put it down when I'd finished Richard III, I just kept on reading. Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, I read about six of the major works straight off. The language! But when I went to see it in the theatre I was disappointed. Shakespeare gets murdered in performance. I've liked very few of the productions I've seen. I liked the Theatre of Odessa's Richard III at the Round House. They gave it everything, basking in their own language so there was none of that over-respectfulness you get in English productions. A certain English reserve has grown since Shakespeare's day which takes away from the passion in his plays. I don't mean demon-king ranting; I mean passion, the genuine article. If an actor didn't come up with the genuine article for the people who went to the theatre in Shakespeare's day, he'd get an orange chucked in his chops.

Have you ever thought of playing Caliban?

No! But there is a part in The Tempest I would love to play. Ariel. He's great. A street urchin. A very petulant creature. We always treat magic as airy-fairy pantomime stuff; but I've come across real magic quite a lot in my life. I would treat magic as a force to be reckoned with. And I would play Ariel as a sort of Tottenham Court Road car salesman because he's always doing deals. He says to Prospero, "Look! I done you a favour, you said I could go now. How much more have I gotta do?" But nobody ever would cast me as Ariel; it would cost them a fortune to swing me up on a line.

Is there any other role you are ambitious to play?

They're planning to make the ultimate film of The Wind in the Willows. And they've offered me Mole. I am desperate to play Mole. I played Alfred the Horse once in Toad of Toad Hall, but this time I've got to be Mole...

Bob Hoskins did not begin acting until he was twenty-six. He is taciturn about the decade between leaving school and the start of his acting career because he thinks it has been done to death in other interviews. The curious may like to know that during this time he worked as a window-cleaner, seaman, steeplejack, trainee accountant, circus acrobat, fire-eater, Covent Garden porter and commercial artist. His first marriage ended in divorce. He now lives in Islington with his second wife, Linda, and their two small children. The key to his acting appears to lie, after all, in the way he taps the extremes of pain and happiness he has felt in his own life; for he is an emotional man, very far from the role of tough "heavy" with which he has so often been identified and to which his manner and physical characteristics are so well suited.

Has there been any particular turning-point in your career?

I've been lucky. The business accepted me right from the start and I've never been out of work. But as soon as I met Linda and had a centre, I knew where I was going. And suddenly, whoosh! I took off! I've done all my best work since then.

What do you do when you're not working?

I love being at home and playing with the kids. It's the first real home I've had and it takes a lot to winkle me out of it. It's great, cooking and getting in the grub and all that. I do the shopping locally. I like being pan of the manor. We both do the cooking.

What were you like as a little boy?

Put it like this. My mum and dad were going to have a big family till they had me. I was the first one. And I was the only one. After me, they said, "Stop". That's the sort of little boy I was. I was very merry, into everything, thought everything was hilarious. I frightened the life out of them.

And as a teenager?

I was a bit of a worry for them. I was an anarchic hedonist looking for the good life. When I became an actor my mum was really glad I'd settled down to a steady job. Because everyone said I'd wind up on the gallows.

Do you like animals?

I adore animals. I like them round me. Whenever I've had some sort of home, I've always had a dog. But I like all animals. Yes, even snakes. In Tony Richardson's production of Anthony and Cleopatra, I played the feller at the end who brings on the asps. They were using real live grass snakes, and they were just keeping them in a glass jar. And they were dying! I said to myself, "I'm going to kidnap the snakes." So I stuffed them into my inside pockets. I was living in Kent in those days. I was on the last train home, and I'd fallen asleep. Then there was this terrible screaming and I woke up and saw a feller in the luggage rack, eyes bulging out of his head. Because the snakes were poking their heads out of my pockets. When I got home I found the best piece of ground for grass snakes. And they slithered off.

And that was on the night of the last performance?

No, no. After that I replaced them with rubber snakes. There were a few complaints, but so what?

Have you always been able to make people laugh?

I found things funny even as a little lad. My parents were always very humorous too, full of gags and stories. They used to take me to the Finsbury Park Empire when I was five or six, and I saw all the great comics there - Max Miller, Jimmy James, Mrs Shufflewick. Then later, I did some clowning and acrobatics in a circus. Yes, London humour has something to do with it, but there's no real difference between that and humour in Liverpool or Glasgow or Newcastle. They're all tough cities, and their humour can be very fast and funny.

How do you cry to order on screen?

With a lot of pain and a very good cameramen. I've got no techniques for crying. I just tear myself to bits to do it. And it hurts. Now, Gielgud's got this amazing knack of crying. He can tell a joke and cry at the same time. He's got a control over himself that I wish I had. I wasn't trained, though, so I work through my guts. I sit in a comer and think hard about the pain of the character and maybe relate it to some pain in my own life.

When acting opposite women, you show a great puzzled intensity, as though, by staring hard enough at their faces, you will understand them. Are you aware of this? And do you get on well with women?

I have always learned far more from women than men. Especially about acting. Because women have had to keep their mouths shut for thousands and thousands of years. Women can express a private moment without saying a word, and acting is about expressing the private moments. Women have far more practice and insight into that than men will ever have.

I'm only typecast as a tough because I'm quite good at it, because I don't actually play the tough. Since I already look like I could punch a hole in brick wall I have instant tough credibility; so I go the other way and show affection and all the soft emotions, which are there in every man as well as woman. I play the tender side of the tough.