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'We do things that most blokes would love – shoot guns and drive fast cars'
I'M greeted at the front door of Dean Andrews' house by a couple of excitable dogs, called Pepsi and Boo.
These diminutive, if noisy, canines, a Yorkshire Terrier and a Yorkshire Terrier crossed with a Shih Tzu, aren't the kind of animals you might readily associate with the man who plays tough, uncompromising cop Ray Carling in the BBC's hit TV show Ashes to Ashes. But then Andrews isn't someone who's easy to pigeonhole.
His path to becoming a successful film and TV actor via the clubs and casinos of northern England, cruise ships and Ken Loach, isn't exactly a conventional one. There's no RADA training on his CV, no apprenticeship with the RSC and no famous relatives to give him a leg-up in a notoriously fickle industry.
The Rotherham-born actor is proud of his working class roots and passionate about his little corner of South Yorkshire, overlooking the lush, Pennine hills. That is why he was happy to help when asked to take part in next month's Jane Tomlinson Leeds 10K.
The charity race set up in her memory is helping to support "George's Appeal", a campaign recently launched by the children's medical research charity Sparks - a partner charity of Jane's Appeal which is working to raise 2m for research into childhood cancer.
"I never met Jane Tomlinson, but being a Yorkshire lad I followed all the stuff that she did, all the bike rides and fundraising, she was a truly inspirational character."
Andrews was in his mid-30s before becoming an actor, but he had spent most of his adult life before that as a jobbing singer and entertainer.
"My dad was a singer on the club scene and my mum was a really good singer, too. My sister could sing, I could sing, we could all sing and I got my first wage as a singer."
He found that this first payment of 42 was more than he was paid working for a local car dealership. So from the age of 15, when he left school, he carved a little niche for himself doing Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin covers. "I love to entertain people so it was a very natural thing for me to do," he says.
But it must have been pretty difficult being a song and dance man growing up in a gritty South Yorkshire town?
"Not at all. I've always been a working-class lad and singing in the clubs was pretty cool really, because you got the girls and I had a nicer car than my mates at the time," he says. "I suppose if I'd been doing ballet lessons then I might have got a bit of stick,
but if anyone had tried to have a go I would have decked them," he jokes.
He spent more than 15 years working on cruise ships and doing the "summer season" in northern seaside resorts such as Skegness and then in 2000 he got the unlikeliest of breaks.
"I'd never acted before, then Ken Loach came to Sheffield. He likes using ordinary people in his films and always has done. He goes to entertainment agencies to find them and if he believes singers and comedians have a natural talent for telling a story, he'll use them."
Andrews was among those who auditioned for Loach's film The Navigators, which tells the story of a group of Sheffield rail workers. He landed one of the lead roles. "It was a massive deal because of Ken Loach, because his reputation opens a lot of doors for you afterwards. If you say, 'I've just done a chocolate advert,' nobody's bothered, but if you say, 'I've just done a Ken Loach film,' people are interested in you all of a sudden."
The critically-acclaimed film pushed Andrews into the limelight and he has nothing but reverence for the man who helped put him there. "He's a genius but he's also the most lovely man, the most humble man and the most giving man. For somebody to pick a lad from Rotherham and send him to film festivals in Toronto and Madrid was incredible. It was all dream stuff to me, really.
"The first time I walked in to the Baftas there was Joan Collins, Michael Parkinson and Sir Michael Gambon, and I thought, 'I can't be in a tuxedo sitting here with these people, surely to goodness?' But it was Ken Loach who gave me that opportunity, and I will always be grateful."
After The Navigators, the work came flooding in. He appeared in The Street and alongside Brenda Blethyn and Alun Armstrong in the ITV sex therapy mini-series Between the Sheets. Then in 2006, he was offered the part of Det Sgt Ray Carling in a new BBC crime drama with a twist called Life on Mars.
For those unfamiliar with the plot, it told the story of DCI
Sam Tyler (John Simm) of the Greater Manchester Police, who after being hit by a car finds himself back in the year 1973. There, he works under DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) a "politically incorrect chauvinist" who isn't bothered about breaking the rules if it means getting the job done. The show proved a big hit with viewers who basked in the 1970s nostalgia, and it spawned a spin-off, Ashes to Ashes, set a decade later.
"When I first got the scripts I thought they were a bit wacky,
to be honest, because I'm not really into stuff I can't believe. But once I saw the first cut of the programme then I thought, 'Yeah, this is something special'."
The 46 year-old's character is an old-school police officer who is very much a cop of his time – hard-nosed, sexist and someone who will act first and ask questions later. "I don't really see it as acting, I just play an extension of myself, whatever that extension may be, whether it's a copper or a builder or a miner. It's a natural performance, rather than an acting performance," he says.
"We've had a lovely cast on both series which is a relief because you can get people who are high-maintenance showbiz types, but there's been none of that. Obviously a couple of us have been there from the beginning, but John Simm was great and so is Keeley Hawes in Ashes to Ashes."
Apart from the long hours and being away from his wife and two daughters, it was a lot of fun, he says. "We get to do things that most blokes would love the chance to do – shoot guns and drive fast cars. It's not the toughest way to make a living."
But have we seen the last of Det Sgt Carling and DCI Gene Hunt? "There certainly hasn't been a third series commissioned, but I do believe it's in the writers' and the producers' minds that they would like to tell the full story of how it all happened and why certain people are where they are. So I think they would like one more series, but we'll have to wait and see."
As for his own career, he's taking nothing for granted. "Once Ashes to Ashes goes out the window, people will probably forget who I am. But that's how it is, because as a working actor I don't know where the next job's coming from."
Jane Tomlinson's Leeds 10k run takes place on June 21. For more information or to enter visit www.runforall.com
Sparks, Sport Aiding Medical Research for Kids, is a charity dedicated to funding research into childhood diseases. To date, it has committed well over 11million to medical research projects across a wide range of conditions affecting babies and young children, including childhood cancers, meningitis, spina bifida, muscular dystrophy, infant brain damage, club foot and premature birth. www.sparks.org.uk
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