The Big Interview: Mark Umbers

For a man about to turn 40, Mark Umbers doesn’t seem too concerned. Well, why would he?
Mark Umbers and below with co-star Jenna RussellMark Umbers and below with co-star Jenna Russell
Mark Umbers and below with co-star Jenna Russell

Once dubbed the Most Beautiful Man in the Western World, age does not seem to have dimmed his classical good looks and even if there is the odd wrinkle he hopes it might help him secure a few more meatier roles

“For male actors getting older means you get more interesting parts to play,” says Umbers.

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The attention his looks have received over the years has always baffled the Harrogate-born actor who is currently previewing in the West End with Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. “I really don’t understand it. When I was younger, I was never set apart because of my looks, and in my head I look like Woody Allen. The only thing that set me apart was my brain.”

I’m not sure what mirror he’s been looking in lately, or that followers of the two Facebook fan sites set up after his appearance in the BBC series Mistresses would agree. He was inundated with messages from adoring fans after playing hunky surgeon Dan Tate, who had a doomed relationship with GP Katie Roden played by Sarah Parish.

“I found it all a bit embarrassing; I just don’t look at myself like that. I’d forgotten how many people watch television. It was pretty overwhelming for a while, but it was pretty short-lived,” says the naturally shy Umbers, who has always tried his best to keep away from the celebrity side of show business, it seems with some success.

He was educated at Malsis School, in North Yorkshire. The school was renowned for its sporting success but Umbers found himself gravitating towards music and drama. He studied Latin and Greek at Oxford University, where he also appeared in several student Shakespeare productions.

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“I loved the classics, but I always knew that I wanted to be an actor,” says Umbers. “But I didn’t want to go to drama school after I’d graduated. My course was four years long and I’d had enough of being a student.”

After graduating, he worked as a proofreader for a London law firm, squeezing in auditions whenever he could. His big break came when he was offered the role of a spear carrier by Trevor Nunn.

“I spent two or three years at The National (Theatre). I suppose it was my drama school.”

He worked his way up to performing in such stage classics as Pygmalion and The Merchant of Venice, before taking a leading role in Nunn’s production of My Fair Lady, which transferred to the West End.

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From there he appeared in The Vortex alongside Francesca Annis, who encouraged him to start auditioning for film roles. He followed her advice and not long afterwards he was partnering one of Hollywood’s most sought-after young actresses, Scarlett Johansson, in the film A Good Woman. Many predicted this would be a springboard to Hollywood heartthrob status. The fact it wasn’t is not something that seems to worry him in the slightest.

“There’s a terrible pressure on you to become a celebrity these days if you want to further your career. That has never really interested me. I’m not a famous actor and that’s fine by me if the work keeps coming in. I am very lucky to have had the parts I’ve had without being in the limelight. To be a celebrity you have to court the paps (paparazzi) and that isn’t something I am interested in at all.”

For Umbers it is the character that is all important. He likes roles he can get his teeth into and he has successfully avoided the pigeon hole some other attractive, middle and upper class actors have ended up in.

“I’m not very good at playing myself,” he admits. He also successfully manages to morph between plays, musicals, film and television – a skill he thanks his old mentor for.

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“He (Nunn) was very influential on me because he made no distinction between a musical and a play, and thrives on the notion that he can do Shakespeare one night and a big Broadway show the best with the same cast who all approach it in the same way.”

He quotes his career highlight as The Glass Menagerie.

“I just never thought I would be doing Tennessee Williams on Shaftesbury Avenue, and with Jessica Lange as well. It was such a beautiful play. I’d never come across that sort of writing before and I absolutely loved it.”

At the moment Umbers is in previews of his critically acclaimed lead role as Franklin in Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along which won Best Musical in the London Critics Theatre Awards 2012 while it was at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Merrily opens to the public at the 
Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End on May 1, with Umbers appearing alongside Jenna Russell and Damian Humbley.

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“You wouldn’t have thought there 
would be a lot of pressure having done it before, but it feels like there is. We are in 
a new theatre and it feels very different,” he says.

He is very unassuming about the plaudits won by the production, which charts the turbulent relationship between three friends, Franklin, Charley and Mary over three decades.

“It is lovely to hear about the accolades but it is strange when you are in the middle of something. It is difficult to see it from the outside looking in. It is very exciting, but we don’t have time to stop and think about it.”

One of the main challenges of Merrily is that the musical travels back in time, starting in 1980 and tells the story of Broadway composer Franklin who is 
now a film producer in Hollywood and has sold out. The story traces him and his two best friends back to the 1950s when they were idealistic young things.

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“We have to rehearse as it’s written,” says Umbers, “because that’s the way the audience see it, but its a very odd experience.”

Sondheim himself has been over to see rehearsals of Merrily, and in Umbers’s view he is a legend. He still doesn’t quite know where his own desire to be a thespian came from. His father and grandfather were both in the brewing business and while he may have moved away to London, with his parents still in Yorkshire, he retains a strong connection to the county. It’s the countryside he misses the most and while a couple of urban fox cubs are currently causing him a headache in the garden of his London pad, he longs to live on a farm surrounded by animals.

However, acting isn’t a profession conducive to long-term planning. Merrily runs for 12 weeks and after that Umbers has no idea what he will be doing.

“I never have any plans, I just sort of wait and see. I do worry sometimes that this could be my last job, but I think most actors feel that way at one time or another.”

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If the acting does dry up, which it shows no signs of doing, he does have another string to his bow. “I love writing screenplays for my own pleasure,” he says. “I’ve adapted all sorts of plays, including Shakespeare. I love writing and it is a way of relaxing to me.”

If he has any regrets he says is that he wasn’t more confident in his own abilities when he started out as an actor.

“I was rather too diffident when I started out. I knew I could do it but I had real confidence issues. If I could change anything it would be that.” That might go someway to explaining why he shuns the limelight. One fan recently Tweeted that he should take over from Daniel Craig as James Bond. I’m not too sure who that would go down with a man keen to keep his head well and truly below the celebrity radar.

Mark Umbers appears in Merrily We Roll Along at the Harold Pinter Theatre, Panton Street, London from May 1 to July 27. For more information or to book tickets call the box office on 0844 871 7622 or visit www.merrilywestend.com.