James Purefoy
"I have a very strange, eclectic career," says the 37-year-old, who says he's reached the stage where he can speak to his bank manager "without fear". In autumn he is a jouster with a secret in A Knight's Tale, a modern take on chivalry; now he's playing Loveless in The Relapse, a Restoration comedy, at London's National theatre: "the greatest debaucher that Europe ever knew; slightly depressing, when you apply a modern perspective to it. He should be down the Priory saying, 'Hello, my name is Loveless, and I'm a sexaholic." Last year Purefoy was in Ben Elton's Maybe Baby and played Tom Bertram in 1999's Mansfield Park. He's one of three actors talked of as the next Bond. "There's something intriguing about somebody who's that cold, that alone," he says. "I think the big mistake with Bond is to try and make him sensitive and nice." Next year there's Resident Evil, based on the PlayStation game, starring Milla Jovovich: he's a cowardly commando sent to fight an evil mutated virus. "It's a zombie movie. I can't disguise it as any other thing," he shrugs. "But having said that, it's going to be a very frightening zombie movie. I had a horrendous nightmare about it the other night - lots of blood, lots of carnage." What he isn't is typecast, "Ideally in this industry you occupy one piece of ground so they know what to do with you, get offered one role after another - but then you end up dying of boredom." A fate entirely unlikely for Purefoy.