The Times Magazine 25new styles accordingly. The results are the
Norton Commuter and the Norton Rydale,
and Norton the Actor is happy to lend his
name to both. He’s especially pleased that
Belstaff’s overarching ethos directs against
“the whole false economy of buying lots of
clothes – instead, trying to buy one piece
and repair it, and that was very much in line
with my love of vintage. I have genuinely been
interested in – not fashion; I’m not very good
at knowing brands or what’s cool – but I do
love clothes.”
It transpires that, until recently, Norton
ran a market stall: “This very silly, quite fun
sideline, selling men’s vintage clothing on a
weekend. We called it ‘Bangers on Hangers’- worst name in the world. Every time I went
to a different country, filming in places like
Russia and Eastern Europe, I went to flea
markets, and there were all these amazing
period coats and old clothes, which were being
sold for nothing, and so what I used to do is
fill up a bag, pay for an extra couple of bags
coming back through, you know, back to the
UK, probably breaking all sorts of customs
laws, and sell them for a marked-up price.”
An increasingly successful actor who
also flogs old clothes at the weekend?
How entrepreneurial.
“Entrepreneurial? I wish! It lost more
money than it took. Although I do love a
good deal. Friends would always take the piss
out of me, because part of the joy of wearing
an old coat I’d found in some flea market
would always be like, ‘Guess how much it was?
It was £2!’ ” Not, he adds, that lockdown has
elevated his sense of style very much. “I’ve
been wearing these a lot,” he says, raising one
plastic slider-clad foot up, for my inspection.
“Not good,” he says.
Unlike many of his posh actor peers, James
Norton is not from any kind of acting dynasty.
Both his mother, Lavinia, and his father,
Hugh, were teachers. His sister, Jessica, is
now a doctor. Norton got his first taste of the
stage aged four, when he took on the role of
Joseph in a school Nativity play; at which
point, according to my research, his ambition
to act took root. “No, that’s not true. I was just
precocious enough to put my hand up when
the teacher was casting it. The weird thing,
also the reassuring thing, about it is that I just
loved it from really, really early on.”
Why?
“Difficult to say. I could be self-deprecating,
talk about, ‘Oh, I just craved the attention,’
but it wasn’t that. I did it on my own. I would
come home, write little plays, stand behind the
curtains, get dressed up. My parents would be
given a seat with a little programme on. Every
holiday I did youth theatre. When I was 16,
I did work experience at the local theatre, the
Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough.”
When did he realise he was good?
“I don’t think I actually thought I could
possibly do this for a career, for a living,
until I was at university [Cambridge, where
he studied theology]. When I was in my first
year; this girl, Libby Penn, she was a director,
someone dropped out of her show to play
the lead in Volpone. I was friends with her.
I remember her saying, ‘Do you want to have
a go?’ and I was like, ‘OK, I’ll try.’ I auditioned,
and she cast me. I think she gave me the
confidence to even consider that I had enough
blind ambition, but also enough sort of...
something there to carry me through. She
encouraged me to apply to drama school, and
then it was sort of done. Once you’re at drama
school, you know, there’s no turning back.”
Apparently not. The Internet Movie
Database lists Norton’s first role as “student”
in An Education, the 2009 adaptation of
journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir, starring
Carey Mulligan, and then charts a confident,measured rise up the credit ranks, showing
little evidence of a career that ever threatened
to teeter off or stall. If he had to find ways
to subsidise his earnings at first – “I worked
as a children’s party organiser for years” – his
breakthrough performance in Happy Valley
as Tommy Lee Royce, a monstrous mess of
a man, as devastatingly good-looking as he is
cruel, would put an end to that.
I wonder how hard it was for Norton
to first come to the public’s attention as an
evil villain. He surprises me, says he liked
it, enjoyed “playing with the dark side”;
especially delighted in the world not yet
realising he was posh. “My agent had people
calling up saying, ‘We’ve got this role, but it’s
quite well-spoken... Don’t think he’s going to
be right for it.’ Didn’t know I was posh.” As for
being perceived as frightening by the public- he liked that too. “There’s something quite
satisfying. Having spent so much of my life,
constantly being told, you know, [that] I was
overly polite, overly apologetic, very English...
“I remember being at a festival and
dancing, it was late-late, and this girl in front
of me turned round. She looked at me, she
clearly thought in her probably quite addled
mind, in that moment [that I was Royce], she
sort of yelled and screamed at me. She was
probably tripping balls. I think it was Secret
Garden Party. Or Wilderness, maybe. I love
a festival. It’s such a cliché. I’m a bit old for it
now. But some of the reactions weren’t [what
you’d expect]. A lot of it was damning, but a
lot of it was sort of relishing it as well. Kind of
‘Take me to your cellar’-type stuff.”
On which: how is Norton dealing with pin-up
status? As accomplished as he is in his craft,
it’d be disingenuous to pretend he doesn’t owe
some of his success to his looks. While I know
that not everyone celebrates them – he has, in
past interviews, made reference to his “great-
aunt Grania”, who “sat opposite me at lunch,
looked at me in a puzzled way and said,
‘I don’t understand how you can look so good
on telly because you are so bland in real life’ ” - I am not about to deny them. I don’t think
he should, either. Norton becomes very literal,
objects to my question on the grounds that
few pin-uppable spreads of his face and body
are in circulation (“I don’t think there are
many Happy Valley posters out there”).
So I rephrase the question: what’s it like
having lots and lots of people fancy you?
“Uh. There’s only a certain amount of
understanding. If you do fundamentally
understand it, and accept it, then you’re
going to go mad, because it starts to define
you and then you’re into dangerous territory.
I don’t court it. I mean, at school, I promise
you, if you asked anyone who knew me...
I was the complete antithesis of a pin-up. I
was never attractive as a young man. I know
that for a fact.”
‘SOME FANS THINK THEY
HAVE LICENCE TO KIND
OF GRAB AND SQUEEZE...
IT’S A BIT WEIRD’
With sister Jessica, mum, Lavinia, and dad, Hugh, 2015Norton and girlfriend Imogen Poots in 2018GETTY IMAGES