BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Lauren LeVernier, we're taking our summer break, so until we're back on air, we're showcasing

a few programs from our archive, as usual the music's been shortened for right reasons.

This week's guest is the actor, Stephen Graham, I cast him away in 2019.

My cast away this week is Stephen Graham, one of the hardest working British actors in

the business. He caught the acting bug early. He was born in Kirby near Liverpool and

he cut his teeth at the city's star making every man theatre. He's worked since his teens,

and it was his standout performance in Shane Meadows This Is England in 2006 that first

won him wide critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Since then, he's found success

on the big screen and the small. Earlier this year, millions of TV viewers were gripped by his

portrayal of a brutal undercover cop in the BBC drama Line of Duty. He's known for the powerful

humanity and naturalism he brings to his roles, oh and for being absolutely terrifying.

He's taken up cudgles for Martin Scorsese numerous times, first in gangs of New York,

then as a brilliantly unhinged alcapone in HBO's boardwalk empire, and most recently as a mobster,

Tony Provinzano in The Irishman. He says, hopefully I'm nothing like the characters I play,

but with most of them I tried to bring a bit of humanity and a bit of humility to them,

to make them interesting, not just to play them as one-dimensional angry people. Stephen Graham

welcomed a desert island discs. Thank you, long. That was a really nice little intro today.

Yeah, great. Happy, happy. That was lovely. Thank you very much.

So you're known to audiences for the emotional breadth of your performances and in the business

for your flexibility of improvised with director Shane Meadows, you take the meticulous approach

to something like Line of Duty and everything in between. What's your favourite way of working?

...