lewd, vigorous gesticulation]. Then it got
so obscene that in the middle of this rage,
we burst into laughter. It was wonderful.”
Well, I’m rather sorry that wasn’t me.
“I’m glad it wasn’t,” Norton says.
But James Norton is not zooming me to
discuss road rage. He’s not even zooming me
to discuss the acting for which he’s become
yet more celebrated in the five years since
I observed him exiting a sandwich chain in
central London, after which he starred in
Netflix’s Black Mirror, Greta Gerwig’s Little
Women, the glossy thriller McMafia, and
completely stole the show as Stephen Ward
in BBC’s The Trial of Christine Keeler last
year. Next he’ll star as John in Nowhere
Special, a quiet, devastating film about
a Belfast window cleaner dying from an
unspecified disease, trying to find a home for
his three-year-old son; then as Hugo Swan, an
amoral, pansexual, aristocratic nightclub
owner in Joss Whedon’s The Nevers (HBO).
It takes me two goes to watch Nowhere
Special because it’s that sad – and Norton is
that good. Un-mawkish, tattooed, tender, with
a flawless accent. Norton is just one of those
privately/Oxbridge-educated men who upends
all my most chippy efforts to blanket-condemn
his privilege, the injustice of a system designed
to enable the success of his class. Because
he is also an outrageously talented actor, of
spectacular range. He deserves every break,
plaudit and award he lands.
But no, we are not here to discuss Norton’s
art. Rather, we’re talking about a side hustle
project he’s just completed with the British
fashion brand Belstaff, a collaboration on a
couple of smart, status jackets.
“Oh yes,” Norton says. “OK, so I was
diverging. I cycle everywhere. It’s a lifeline
for me in London, coming from the country.”
Norton, 35, was born in the capital but raised
in North Yorkshire. “I hope I don’t sound
overly pious, but having a sense of the
whole city, being able to kind of navigate,
psychologically for me made it convenient.
And I had this Belstaff jacket for years. I’d
worn it more than any other coat, because
for cycling it’s got four pockets and a zip –
everything you need. Like a proper old friend.
“I’m not particularly used to this kind of
thing, the endorsement thing. Sadly, I’m not
getting knocked on by the big, sexy brands. A
couple of things came along and we decided
not to do them.” What? Who? “I could never
divulge. But then this actually really did sort
of fit, because, well, I’d had this Belstaff jacket
for years.” So Norton said yes, and Belstaff’s
people had him bring his existing jacket, along
with another he especially loved (“A vintage
suede bomber, which I bought in Cape Town
from this guy”) to its design studio. They
deconstructed what it was he especially
valued in a jacket and then designed twohe first time I cross paths with the
actor James Norton, he is getting
onto a serious-looking pushbike
outside a London West End
branch of Pret A Manger, heavily
branded baguette in one hand,
cycle helmet in the other. It
is 2016. Norton is starring as
Andrei in the BBC’s acclaimed
adaptation of War and Peace,
having broken through to the broader public
consciousness as psychopathic rapist-
murderer Tommy Lee Royce in 2014’s Sally
Wainwright series Happy Valley, and also,
almost simultaneously as Sidney Chambers,
a formative iteration of popular culture’s
now established sexy priest archetype, in
ITV’s Grantchester. Obviously, given the
opportunity to study this rapidly ascending
star off screen, in the wild, on a casual mission
to acquire his lunch, I do.
I study him hard.
“Oh... Oh...” Norton says, when I admit
to this incident of – Shall we call it “low-level
stalking”? – over Zoom some five years
later (mid-February 2021). “How was I? Was
I behaving myself? Or was I...?” He tails off,
looks concerned. He is fantastically handsome- meticulously cheekboned, floppily fringed –
fantastically posh, fantastically keen to please.
You just looked like a man with a sandwich,
really, I say.
“Oh, good. Because I’ve had some fierce
run-ins, you know? In London, when you’re a
pedestrian, you hate cyclists, and when you’re a
cyclist, you hate the drivers. And occasionally
I’m midway through this, like, fired-up shouting
match, and I’m terrified someone like you
might see and go, ‘I’ll remember that. This
guy’s actually a psychopath.’ ”
Really?
“Yes. I had one where this woman cut me
up, and I was so angry. Because obviously the
adrenaline’s pumping, and you forget...”
That you’re rather famous?
“That you’re a human being. Forget
you’re civilised. You just become white rage.
So I stopped in the middle of the road, and
she was behind me and I was convinced
she was in the wrong. I didn’t move. I sat
there on the bike – ‘I’m not f***ing moving’ - didn’t turn round. She’s there, honking
her horn... I eventually do turn round, and
she’s going, ‘F you, f you,’ like this [he
gesticulates vigorously into his laptop] and
I’m doing this behind me, going, ‘F*** you’
[he gesticulates equally vigorously, but
according to a different format], doing a
wanker sign for some reason, quite Nineties.
But because of the way my bike was positioned,
it looked like I was kind of doing a wanking
sign like, near my arse? Obscene! Then she
started doing the same, and she kind of got
up and started doing this [an escalation of
Psychopathic murderer: as Tommy Lee Royce in
Happy Valley, 2014Society osteopath: playing Stephen Ward alongside
Sophie Cookson in The Trial of Christine KeelerBelfast window cleaner:
playing single dad John,
alongside Daniel Lamont
as his son, Michael, in
Nowhere SpecialThe Times Magazine 23From hot vicar to oligarch’s son: Norton starring
as Sidney Chambers in ITV’s Grantchester and,
right, playing Alex Godman in McMafia (BBC)
CAPITAL PICTURES, BBC, ITV