Philip Glenister: Drugs, shoplifting and why he loves cuddling babies

By Daily Mail Reporter

updated]

Philip Glenister, aka Ashes To Ashes macho man Gene Hunt, has a few confessions to make...

Philip Glenister is sitting opposite me on a sofa in a fashionable London hotel, chatting away, 19 to the dozen, about falling in love. Hang on, let me run through that again… straighttalking, no-nonsense, DCI Gene Hunt-playing Phil Glenister is talking about love, lust and a broken heart?

'I'm sure everyone's had their heart broken,' he says. 'I did, but that was a long time ago. In your early 20s you think, "This is the one. My true love." But that's just b******s really. That's the beauty of getting older. You learn that being in love is a very surface emotion – being in lust, as I call it. It doesn't last.

I'm more comfortable acting on TV than in the theatre. You have to reveal more of yourself on stage. The beauty of Gene is the not knowing. I'm sure everybody keeps bits of themselves hidden'

Learning to love somebody is a much deeper thing, and that creates longevity. The problem is, in this day and age, people meet too young, cop off, think, "This is the one", move in together, have an argument and think, "Oh, they're not the one. It's all over."'

Philip is, of course, the actor who appears as the gloriously politically incorrect DCI Gene Hunt in Life On Mars and its spin-off, Ashes To Ashes. Gene is an instinctive cop who sees things in black and white, but still remains complex and mysterious. Which is pretty much the way Philip likes to be.

'It's why I'm more comfortable acting on TV than in the theatre,' he says. 'You have to reveal more of yourself on stage. It's why I love playing Gene. We've discussed whether we should show more of Gene the man; his home life. But, I think it's important for him to retain a bit of mystery. The beauty of Gene is the not knowing. I'm sure everybody keeps bits of themselves hidden.'

Only today, Philip's fessing up with the candour of a con turning Queen's evidence: drugs as a teenager, shoplifting, the lot – oh, and the love thing. Philip, you see, is actually a big softie. He says he is besotted with his actress wife, Beth Goddard, and he can't stop cuddling their daughters, Millie, seven, and, Charlotte, four. They met at his former flatmate and fellow actor Jamie Glover's party in 1997, and married in 2006. So, was it lust at first sight? Did he know she was 'the one'?

'No, I don't think so,' he says. 'There was definitely a little spark, though. When we met, we'd both recently come out of relationships, and we spent the whole evening chatting. She chain-smoked a whole pack of Camel cigarettes.

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Philip with his wife, Beth, and their children

When we said goodbye, I'll always remember her walking down the steps and saying, "I hope to see you again." I said, "Yes, that would be nice." There was something there, but, as usual, I did f*** all about it. It wasn't until Jamie said, "You've got an admirer", that I invited her out to dinner.' So it was more of a learning-to-love thing, then?

'I was at an age, and Beth was too, where you think, "Where am I going?" I was in my early 30s. I'd experienced more than my fair share of London's nightlife, and it was time to move on. My friends were beginning to settle down. It seemed like a natural progression – the way things should be. It was just the right time.'

So why did he wait so long to marry? 'Millie had been badgering us because she wanted to be a princess. It just seemed the right thing to do. Beth had wanted to start a family, and when it happened I suddenly thought, "Jesus, this is real life".

Children change you. You have this overwhelming feeling of responsibility, of love – they're everything. They're yours. You know when you're cuddling them, cradling them, and you can smell their hair. I love that.'

The real Philip is very different to the hard characters he is best known for on TV. He says he learnt to adapt, learnt to talk tough, during his days at the local comprehensive school, close to his parents' home in Harrow, north-west London.

The brother of Hustle actor Robert Glenister and son of TV director John – whose successes included Z Cars, Softly Softly and the BBC's revered 1970s drama, The Six Wives Of Henry VIII – he says he was 'out of my comfort zone' at school.

'I can't say they were the happiest days of my life, but they weren't the unhappiest,' he says. 'My home life was very suburban – not at all showbizzy. We lived in a road that was a community, and my mum and dad's closest friends were people they'd grown up with at school.

By the Seventies, my dad was Mr Costume Drama, but home wasn't at all like the Hampstead set. He was away quite a lot because of his job. I remember he'd come home, the telly would be on and he'd sit down and work on his script on a big wooden board he'd prop on the chair, sipping a beer. He was very passionate about his job.

'At school I was easily misled, but that's childhood. I remember I used to shoplift tins of Airfix paint and football badges. Once we went to Debenhams and I was with some bloke who decided to go the whole hog and take scarfs, the lot.

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Philip and his Ashes to Ashes co-star Keeley Hawes

He got nicked. I remember standing outside the shop, saying to him. "Don't mention that I'm with you." Then this security guard arrived. He asked, "What else did you take?" To which my friend replied, "I didn't take anything, did I Phil?" I think we got let off in the end.

Things were a bit more relaxed in those days. I wouldn't encourage my children to shoplift, but it was more of a dare, a case of wondering, "Can I get away with this?" than any serious criminality.

In truth, though, Philip wasn't much of a risk-taker. It stood him in good stead, growing up, as he did, at a time when the punk movement was sweeping the suburbs. 'There were drugs around,' he says.

'I had friends who did a lot of LSD, which I never got involved in. Anything hallucinatory was an absolute no-no, because you're no longer in control. But I saw friends go over the top. Somebody I was at school with, and another person I used to got to the pub with in Pinner, both died – one from a drugs overdose, and the other thought he could fly while he was on holiday in Spain and ended up in an early grave. That's enough to put you off.

Philip left school with four O-levels before 'flunking out' of sixth-form college. For a while he drifted from job to job, working as a dogsbody for an art company, then training as a draftsman, but 'I was kind of bored'.

Then, one day, he saw an advert in The London Evening Standard newspaper for an office boy for the brilliant musical impresario Robert Stigwood's entertainment company, and got the job.

'Starting to work for Stiggy was the beginning of everything,' he says. 'He was a tax exile, so I only met him once. He showed me plans of boats he'd bought from the Greek oil tycoon Onassis at the Dorchester Hotel. It was a whole different world.

'It was more the people I got to meet through working there that made the difference. I'd drop letters off at theatre producer Bill Kenwright's office. I met Frankie Howerd, the Bee Gees… We're talking about big names. I'd grown up watching Steptoe And Son, and one day I found myself talking to Alan Simpson, who'd co-written it. It meant quite a lot that, even though I was so lowly, they didn't regard me as just a little s**t.'

Hang on, what about his dad, Mr Costume Drama? Couldn't he have given him a leg up? 'He was opposed to nepotism,' he says. 'I'm quite grateful, and so is Robert, that we both did it on our own – although the name didn't do any harm.'

Philip's father never, in truth, encouraged him towards the profession. When he first got a taste for acting in his early 20s while appearing in amateur dramatic productions, his father said, 'You're not going to do this for a living, are you? Two actors in the family would be a bit much.'

It was, in fact, his brother's former wife, actress Amanda Redman, who encouraged Philip to apply for London's Central School Of Speech And Drama at 23. 'Amanda, Robert and my parents came to see me doing amateur dramatics, and Amanda said, "You could do this. You've got the talent, but you need to think about it now." I knew very little about drama school, and I'd never done Shakespeare before. Amanda tutored me and, between her and Robert, they got me up to scratch. I applied and got in.'

Philip flourished at drama school, but was never great at Shakespeare. He preferred the 'modern stuff'; gritty characters – like DCI Gene Hunt. 'I'm an instinctive actor,' he says. 'I just see the part and play it. I'm more interested in what isn't said – the silences.'

Roles in acclaimed TV dramas Clocking Off and State Of Play followed, before Gene Hunt made him a bona fide megastar. He has recently completed the second series of Ashes To Ashes, with a third planned for filming in September. And then? He shrugs.

'I haven't got anything planned,' he says. Does he care? He shrugs. 'No, but I'll let you know in three weeks. It upsets the balance of the home if I'm out at work the whole time. and then suddenly I'm not. I think, from Beth's point of view, it's "he's in the way".

'That's understandable. You have your routine and suddenly that gets broken. So I go out and do my thing. I love playing golf. The phone gets switched off. It's my time. I think, 'B******s, I've earned it because I've worked my backside off for six months.'

Philip's back in bloke mode. The interview is at an end, but there's just time to ask him if he sees himself growing old with Beth? 'Yeah,' he says, a softie to the last.