Magnolia - interview
Ralph Ineson plays Paul
In Magnolia, Ralph Ineson plays Paul, a painter and decorator recently out of prison and desperate to drum up some new business to keep afloat the company he has set up with fellow ex-cons Terry and Dino.
But Ralph admits that A to Z decorators wouldn't be his first choice if he was looking to have some work done.
"I wouldn't like to employ them as decorators but I'd like to go out for a drink with them - they're a good bunch of lads. I'd trust Paul and probably Terry to do a half-decent job but Dino is the one who just constantly messes up, splashing paint everywhere.
"He's not smoking crack anymore but I think he's still smoking weed so he's not exactly the greatest worker: I might not let him in the house," he laughs.
But despite Paul's recent time in prison, Ralph insists he is a good guy who wants to do right by the friends he made inside.
"He's very much about looking after his mates," he explains. "Prison is hanging over him. He shouldn't have been inside and while he was there he was looked after by Terry and Dino. He feels he wouldn't have survived it without them so he feels a debt of gratitude.
"Terry has problems with violence and Dino has problems with drugs so they're your more usual clients of Her Majesty, while Paul's the sensible one.
"He's a painter and decorator by trade so when he gets out he sets up this firm and employs Dino and Terry, with varying degrees of success.
"But however bad it's got, however frustrated he is with them, there's just this core thing that he's got to make amends for what he's done and for the way they helped him get through it.
"Paul's wife Sheila (played by Dawn Steele) thinks Terry and Dino are holding him back and doesn't see why she and Paul should suffer because of them, so that leads to a few disagreements."
And Ralph says he identifies with Paul's sensible streak: "Out of all my mates, I was the one the adults would call mature when I was a kid. I think you're born fairly sensible with a decent amount of willpower, or you're born a bit dafter.
"I'm not saying I'm not daft every now and again, but I do identify with Paul's urge to play the dad role with them a bit and the way he looks after them and takes on certain things."
In fact, as a keen DIY enthusiast himself, Ralph has even more in common with his character, as he has often found himself up a ladder with a paintbrush in hand.
"I'm a bit of a dab hand at decorating - I like to get busy," he says. "Each house we've moved into, I've tended to do lots of work myself."
His skills stretch beyond simple painting and decorating and he is currently embroiled in a major project re-doing his garden, building decking and laying cobbles.
But he admits that practice definitely makes perfect and that things haven't always gone smoothly in the past, most memorably when he tried to mend a hole in the ceiling of his first place.
"I thought I'd done a really good job but over the course of the evening it just started very slowly sinking down. I kept looking up at it, thinking, 'I'm sure there's a shadow there that wasn't there before,' and eventually the whole thing just got lower and lower until eventually it just fell out onto the floor."
Ralph originally trained as a teacher but got into professional acting courtesy of Robson Green when he appeared in the York Mystery Plays, stories from the Bible which have been performed in York since the Middle Ages.
"They use the people of York as the cast and they used to have one professional actor who plays Christ," he explains.
"The year I did it (1992), it was Robson Green and we just got on really well. I'd just started teaching and wasn't particularly enjoying it and he said he thought I was good enough to do acting as a career.
"He suggested I met a few people who were coming up to see him in the plays so I met some casting directors and agents and just got a couple of really lucky breaks. I'd always done bits and bobs but hadn't contemplated it as a career. Before that, I hadn't really thought it was something I could make money out of - it just seemed like a hobby."
Ralph has worked solidly for the last 12 years in productions such as Playing the Field, Touching Evil and, more recently, Suburban Shootout.
But he is probably best known for his first comedy role as the obnoxious Finchy in The Office.
He says: "It just gave people something very specific to identify me with. Everyone says comedy is really hard but with The Office the naturalism was everything so it didn't feel like doing comedy, it just felt like doing a really horrible offensive character who thought he was funny.
"He's got a presence because David Brent is constantly waiting to see him. The excitement that Finchy induces in Brent is almost sexual, and he's talked about so much before he arrives that he gets a great build-up. Beside Finchy, Brent just seems confused and misguided so he makes Finchy look good."
Ralph believes the series' success is down to the fact that everyone can recognise the characters.
"In every walk of life, the same kind of characters are identifiable, even in the playground. My son is seven and when I'm not filming I teach PE at his school and you can look round his class of primary school kids and see all the office characters," he laughs.
He credits The Office with opening a lot of doors for him careerwise, including paving the way for his role as Zack, Shelley's therapist, in Coronation Street.
If he has one regret, it's that he wishes he'd landed the role a year earlier, before his grandmother died.
"Coronation Street was always my nana's favourite show and she'd always wanted me to be in it. She also used to get really angry with me because I used to play a lot of drug dealers, gangsters and suspicious characters.
"So a cognitive behavioural therapist who was helping the gorgeous Shelley - who everyone loved - was the perfect character."
Having watched Coronation Street nearly all his life, he says the experience of appearing in it was surreal.
"I had my first scene with Betty and kept having to tell myself to remember my cues and not stare," he remembers.
Ralph is currently filming a second series of Surburban Shootout.
Magnolia is written by Dave Spikey (Phoenix Nights) and is a Red Production for BBC ONE.
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