After several years playing the title role in The Phantom of the Opera in the West End, 31-year-old Ramin Karimloo returns as the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel, Love Never Dies, which opens at the Adelphi theatre, London, on Tuesday. Here the Iranian-born Canadian actor describes how it happened.
When did you first see The Phantom of the Opera?
I was about 12 years old on a school trip in Toronto and hated the idea of seeing an opera. Before the show I was asked to volunteer on stage. I was handed a mic and had to say: "I'm the Phantom of the Opera." I was thinking: "Don't cry, because the boys are here." A seed was planted. I said to friends: "I want to be the Phantom."
Do you think the role was your destiny?
Yes, but I never trained – I couldn't afford singing lessons back then. I read as many books as I could on acting. One day I saw an audition for a cruise and started singing on that. Then I moved to Oxford in 2002. I was working in a factory making the inside of hand dryers, thinking: "How am I going to get to the West End from here?" I went to the message board in Pineapple Dance Studios, closed my eyes and took the number of a singing teacher that my finger landed on. That teacher found me an agent and five years later I was the Phantom.
Tell me about the new show
It's a great story with a lavish set and costumes which are almost Tim Burton-esque. After being hunted for murder, the Phantom has fled Paris for Coney Island, New York. It's a very attractive place for him, full of funfairs and freak shows, where people lose their inhibitions. He's accepted there, so he changes a lot and becomes Coney Island's mastermind. But without Christine, he's not happy – her voice is key to his music.
The show has received some negative feedback online from people who have seen previews. How does that feel?
The only thing I know is what I see on stage. We see the audience giving us standing ovations each night; seeing that reaction after every performance is thrilling.
What are the Phantom's fans like?
There are the obsessives and the scary ones. But I do get some interesting fan mail. When I first played the Phantom I decided to make him young, and studied Asperger's syndrome as a slight back-story because I saw some documentaries on unexplained geniuses and Asperger's came up. I kept that totally to myself, but then I got two letters from fans mentioning certain mannerisms of my Phantom, saying they really connected with him and that they had Asperger's. That was a big validation. I felt: "Wow, this is affecting people like it affected me."