The film Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels made Nick Moran a household name. Seven years on, the actor turned playwright talks to Sarah Freeman.
In 1998 a low-budget film, by an unknown director called Guy Ritchie became an overnight success and made instant stars of a group of jobbing actors.
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels took £11m at the box office in just three months and was single-handedly credited with reviving a flagging British film industry.
Its stars, Vinnie Jones, Jason Statham and Nick Moran, lapped up the attention, emba
rking on the usual chat show circuit as their images were plastered across magazines, billboards and student bedrooms.
When the media interest eventually dried up, Ritchie became more famous as Madonna's other half, Jones tried to make it in LA, gossip columnists became more concerned about Statham's troubled relationship with Kelly Brook than his films and Moran and his famous cheekbones seemed to disappear off the radar: while continuing to star in films, he never quite became the A-lister that had been predicted.
"Tom Courtenay will always be Billy Liar, Peter O'Toole will always be Lawrence of Arabia, it's not the same league, but if I'm only remembered as that bloke from that popular British film then I'll be happy," says 35-year-old Moran in his trademark cockney drawl.
"Of course it would be nice if I'd had as much attention for the other films I've done, but you know, I live in hope."
The waiting may just be over. His first play, Telstar, which comes to York tomorrow, took Moran eight years to write, but judging by the early reviews it looks like time well spent.
A look back at Joe Meek, who went from nobody to international star overnight, who recorded Telstar, the first British single to reach number one in the United States, but who also battled with drug addition, killed his landlady and ultimately ended his own life.
"The middle class part of the media like to think I'm extremely thick," says Moran. "Of course, I hope the fact I've written a play will make people question the preconceptions they have of me, but I also think it stands up on its own.
"It all started when I was an under-employed actor and caught in a rainstorm outside 104 Holloway Road. I noticed a blue plaque outside dedicated to Joe Meek and as I started to find out more about him, it just seemed the perfect material for a play.
"Of course there's the music, but it's more about heartbreak and loneliness. Here was a man who was messing about in a little attic room and suddenly wrote a song which became one of the biggest sellers of all time.
"He was a creative genius, but he was also belligerent, had a massive amphetamine addiction and five years after Telstar he ended up shooting his landlady in the head before turning the gun on himself.
"It's been a long time in the making, but we got it to a point where it was absolutely top notch, to a point where Joe Meek could have been my specialist subject in Mastermind."
The show stars Con O'Neill as Meek, Linda Robson (Birds of a Feather) as the landlady and, perhaps more surprisingly, Adam Rickitt best known as the pretty boy of soap operas for his role as Coronation Street's Nick Tilsley.
Moran, who chose not to direct Telstar, leaving it in the hands of Paul Jepson, admits the decision to cast Rickitt was in part due to pressure from venues to secure a household name, but insists that he's not just a convenient pin-up with which to plug the play.
"I'd seen him in another play and he knew what he was doing," says Moran. "It wasn't planned, but it was inspired casting.
"I'm happy if people come to the show thinking he'll be rubbish and when they leave they've been proved wrong.
"I'm just so pleased at how it has turned out. Initially I was going to direct it, but when the New Vic suggested getting someone else in, I was like, 'OK, why not'. I knew that if I directed it, some of the media would just think it was the Nick Moran show, that I was being self-indulgent.
"But me and Paul have worked well together – he's posh and tall, I'm short and common. It's like a golf club. He's the captain and I'm the vice-captain."
Trying to stop Moran talking about Telstar is difficult. He's clearly excited about the tour and willing to tell anyone willing to listen, but what of his plans for the next 12 months?
"I was only in Britain nine weeks last year, my plants have died and the only serious relationship I've got is with the woman from the credit card company," he says. "I've got an offer to go to Hollywood, it's either that or watching Telstar in Darlington. I know it should be an easy decision, but honestly LA is so bland, it's like Milton Keynes with a film industry."
Telstar, York Grand Opera House, February 8-12, 01904 671818.
