Another Summer of Discontent

Summer is the season of loneliness.

Now, in my mid-Fifties, it’s not often I feel the loneliness that blighted the greater part of my life.

In my 20s, 30s and early (although less so, later) 40s, I used to look at friends with partners and children and fantasise about their perfect lives, while I sat in trains, planes and bars alone, thinking that I had missed out.
  
That all stopped when I hit 50. On the last day of my 40s, I decided to treat myself to a trip to Los Angeles, a city I had visited and loved 30 years previous. I continue to spend most of my time there, loving the work ethic and relishing the TV and film industry that pervades every corner.
  
But, every summer, my heart sinks. Summer is me at 13, when my grandfather died in Wales. I remember the sun and smell of freshly cut grass outside and welcoming its freshness after leaving the dark wood and shadows of his bedroom, sticky Lucozade rings on the bedside table like the patterns my Spirograph made at home.
  
Summer is 1989, the last one I spent with my dad, who died in January 1990: him trying to force Mum to put the spare butter pats from their Plowman’s lunches into her handbag and her refusing because they would melt.
  
Summer is the memory of my childhood holidays in Cornwall as a family: jars of pebbled sweets, whose smooth grey and white surfaces made each one a jewel.

Summer is hacking into the cliffs at Southerndown, near where we lived, and alighting upon a tiny insect, stored for centuries, its legs spread-eagled forever in time.

Summer is late night hot doughnuts and milk at Butlin’s Pwllheli, the joy of watching the wet batter emerge solid and sugary like a life transformed.

Summer is that terrible day in Los Angeles four years ago on August 4th, when I heard that my dear friend and mentor, Blake Snyder, had died.
  
What is it about summer that brings memories to the fore? What is it about those memories that, last night, had me consumed with a loneliness I have not felt for some years, as I sat by myself watching other holiday-makers locked into their own August world?
  
Everyone is away with somebody else. Friends, partners, husbands and wives, children – I feel like the cripple in the Pied Piper of Hamelin, left behind because the Piper has led everyone into the secret holiday mountain -  except me.

Away on work, I sat in the Marbella Club listening to the Hammond style organ playing “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” It had that incessant beat beat beat that these instruments bring to all songs, and, as usual, accompanied by a very mediocre singer who delivers every note at exactly the same pitch.

On the dance floor, a lone couple smooched, separating only when the organ and singer launched into Abba.

Were they in love? Were they high on Sangria? How long had they been together? Had they only just met?

I wanted to know their story, but whatever it was, it made me feel infinitely sad. Suddenly, I wanted to be in a cheap summer dress with bleached blonde hair, being held by a man from whom I would, in all likelihood in daytime, run away from.
  
I tried to think of the disastrous men I have been involved with during summers past (all the names have been changed). Tony, with whom I sat on a table outside a Primrose Hill café and he told me he was falling for me in a big way – and phoned the next day to say he had come out in a facial rash and it was all over.

David, who told me on a hot summer’s day in Paris that I was the brightest, funniest, most wonderful woman he had ever met – but he just didn’t fancy me.

Alan, who enjoyed the five star hotel I paid for one summer in the south of France – and then ran off with Bonnie the nurse from Boston.
  
When I moved to Paris in 2001, I recall sitting on a café terrace in St Michel, alongside the Seine, reading a book, drinking a glass of Rose but feeling sorry for myself, when I rang a friend and she told me who they had round for lunch.
  
In my mind’s eye, I saw a huge ballroom, couples dancing, happy children running round in gingham, dinner plates piled high with every luxury – and then, in the background, I heard: “Look, if you don’t shut up, we’re going home right now!” followed by loud screams.

“I would give ANYTHING to be sitting by the Seine with a book and a glass of wine,” said my friend.
  
I have never been someone who thinks the grass is greener on the other side; I love the side I am on.

In fact, most of the time, I don’t know how anyone can bear not to be me.
  
But there is just something about summer that brings out that little bit of wasteland in me when I recall summers past.

And then, I remember Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and these words: “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date”.

For me, it can never be too short.

I comfort myself in the knowledge that it will soon be autumn and, as Keats said: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

Oh, yes.

      

The Angel Gabriel

For months, I have been waiting.

Months of longing, tears and frustration. Months of checking the TV schedules in magazines and throwing them across the room when it failed yet again to materialise.

Then, a few weeks ago, the TV announced that it would be returning on June 16^th.

  

I stayed in. Waited again. More longing in my heart and loins. Then, I discovered that the return date was July 16^th. I was a whole month early. More tears.

  

But this week, it returned. Suits. The brilliant, fantastically produced, stunningly written, Suits. Even repeating the word thrills me. Suits.

  

Gabriel Macht in a suit. A handsome, sexy man playing handsome, sexy lawyer Harvey Specter. In a suit.

  

And all would have been well with the world, had I not been in the UK. I would never have booked that flight, had I known the television trauma I was about to endure: awake at 5am in my UK bed, unable to sleep, knowing what I was missing thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.

  

My flight schedule meant that when I returned to the US on Wednesday, I would have had two episodes to watch. Delayed gratification is good, I reasoned. But I have had to change my flight again, as I have the chance to interview Eva Longoria in Spain at the beginning of August.

It was a tough call – the world’s most beautiful woman versus the world’s most beautiful man. Eva won out (mega close call, but I was being paid to interview, not to drool). By the time I return to the US, there will be five episodes of Suits to catch up on. I just hope that the delayed gratification doesn’t kill me before I get my hands on the remote.

  

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love Suits, which is also perfectly cast, with not a glimmer of a weak link in the chain. Macht is, quite simply, superb. When I recently bumped into E L James, author of 50 Shades of Grey, I begged her to get Macht cast in the lead role of Christian Grey.

He really would be perfect. Please, please, please. He’d be great. On and on and on I went. Alas for her, flying at 35,000 feet, she had no escape route. I just pray it lodged somewhere.

  

Specter’s sidekick, Mike Ross, played by Patrick J. Adams, is the maverick turned good guy to Specter’s mean and bad.

And Rick Hoffman’s Louis Litt is a character with barely one redeeming feature, and whose attempts to be a better person are always doomed to failure as a result of his weaknesses – namely, paranoia and insecurity. But it is those weaknesses with which the audience identifies, and that is why we still like him.

The USA Network is my favourite station  - my other big worry at the moment is the date of the season premiere of White Collar; I am very worried about what is happening to Peter in jail. Maybe that, too, has already returned, and, when I finally get back to the US, I will be able to spend an entire week in my dressing gown, catching up.

In the meantime, Twitter people, stop giving the game away in Tweets before the rest of us have had chance to view. I may not be a fan of delayed gratification, but at the moment it’s the only thing keeping me going.

Well, that and the fact that I’m going to meet Eva Longoria.

  

    

     

Give Me a Richard Branson Lounge and I'm Happy

There was a major crisis at LAX, and the man causing it was going nowhere fast.

   

Virgin Atlantic, which has a spectacular lounge at Heathrow for Upper Class passengers travelling to LA, has always had to make do with Air New Zealand’s less than spectacular offering when travelling LA to London.

   

It is, however, managed by the wonderful manager Thierry, who beats everyone else hands down when it comes to airline customer care. It’s not his fault that ANZ catering has heard of nothing other than butternut squash soup, nor that their idea of a salad looks like the staple diet of an anorexic rabbit; he looks after the people – often making valuable introductions and forming friendships between passengers that, in my case, certainly, have continued for years.

   

But inferior as the ANZ lounge is to Virgin’s (quite why Virgin does not have one at LAX has never been fully explained to me), it is still the best of a bad bunch. So, imagine my surprise when, last week, I looked down at my Welcome card and saw that the “new” venue for Virgin passengers is now Air France.

   

The man in front of me was having none of it. He demanded to speak with Virgin. He demanded to speak with ANZ. They, alas, were having none of him. So I snuck up the stairs, went to the ANZ lounge, told them of my immense distress at this tragic turn of events, and hey presto, I was suddenly sitting all nice and cosy before another bowl of butternut squash soup. For all I know, Mr Angry is still at the check-in desk, shouting for Sir Richard himself.

   

It was harder to come back to the UK this time, as I confess to being very LA Loved Up. Having lived in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica – the former like the Rigor Mortis Saloon before the Grim reaper calls your name; the latter, beautiful sunsets but might as well be Wales for all of its proximity to any action – I decided to move. To West Hollywood. And I love it.

   

I am The Only Straight in the Village. Well, pretty much so, and I feel incredibly safe. It’s a lot more lively at night, and several UK friends are within walking distance of my rather gorgeous apartment, which is not only a darn sight more upmarket than my Beverly Hills one (honestly – someone should really give those landlords a lesson in the meaning of “high spec”) but a darn sight cheaper.

   

So, it was hard to leave it, although obviously, I am pleased to be seeing friends and family. My first stop was Denise Welch’s wedding in Portugal (I was almost The Only Straight in the Wedding, too); after Cardiff and London, I am off to Marbella to interview Eva Longoria – and I am literally palpitating with excitement over that. I might invite her round for tea when we are both back in LA, although I suspect Danish pastries are not high on her list of afternoon treats.

   

And so to the UK weather. Dear Lord. Are the Brits ever satisfied? The last few times I’ve returned home, they banged on endlessly about how long the winter was, how cold they were, how they would never see sun again. And now, here they are in the middle of a heat-wave, and it’s oh dear, will this awful sunshine never end, blah blah blah.

   

And now there’s a whole new breed, who love the sun, but don’t like people who don’t; so while one group moans about the weather, the other people are moaning about the people moaning about the weather: the Second Degree Moaners.

   

So far, I’ve spent just half an hour in the pub garden with them, as I am sitting indoors catching up on all the US TV I crave when I leave LA.

   

I’ve had to change my flight to fit in my interview with Eva (it’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it) and at least I’ll have the Virgin lounge on this leg of the journey on my way back. This time, though, it’s a one-way ticket. That Air France lounge will just have to wait. 

Come on, Sir Richard, get building! Your passengers need you. 

More than that, they need your lounges.

Overdosing on Zimmerman, Judge Alex and CNN

Is it possible to overdose on Judge Alex? Is it possible to overdose on court TV in general? Do I really need to know the minutiae of Florida law, when I live in California? Am I really a closet criminal/juror/lawyer? Am I just finding more reasons for avoiding the work I should actually be doing?

  

These, and many questions like them, have been occupying me this week as I have sat down to watch the minute by minute coverage of the George Zimmerman trial. For those not in the know, he is on trial for the murder (Second Degree) of 17 year old, unarmed Trayvon Martin, whom he claims he shot in self-defence – or defense, as I now have to write it (along with color, favor etc. . . . but that’s another story). 

So far, so relatively straightforward. But here’s the crux: Zimmerman is white Hispanic, Trayvon was black. And the black community is up in arms over what they perceive to be a racist killing.

    

Actually, up in arms is putting it very mildly. They have taken to Twitter declaring that Zimmerman will be raped and/or killed if he goes to jail, and certainly killed if he “walks” and tries to resume normal life.

   

I am gripped. I am gripped by everything. 

Why George has put on so much weight (he hasn’t just eaten all the pies, he’s eaten the factory that made them), for example? Why is the Prosecution  fielding witnesses that help the Defense (more of that anon)? Why had the Prosecution’s “star” witness, Rachel Jeantel (who was the last person to speak to Trayvon on the night he was killed), not been coached beforehand (“You listenin’?” she aggressively asked Defense Attorney Don West)? When the judge announces that the jurors’ lunch has “arrived”, what is it?  

   

In my office, during the day, I have the live feed from Fox 35 in Orlando, where the trial is taking place. In my living room, I have the trial live on CNN, but with intermittent analysis. At night, I watch HLN and Fox, and Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan on CNN.

    

Judge Alex Ferrer, whose courtroom show Judge Alex entertains me every weekday at 2pm, has been on everything. He seems to be the only person who is up to speed on Florida law (such as the reasons behind the prosecution having to field witnesses that potentially damage them) and the legalities of a case that has “experts” responding emotively, rather than delivering unbiased opinion. Women with big hair and tombstone teeth shout at frightened men with glasses as they all try to second-guess what the jury is thinking (six people – allowed under Florida law). 

You see? I am learning, so it’s technically work).

    

The women’s dress sense varies according to age. The younger ones go casual, like Sporty Barbie; the older ones look like Norma Desmond after a night on the tiles. Judge Alex looks like an ad for Savile Row: impeccably dressed, perfectly ironed (or “pressed” as I now call it over here), shirts and exquisitely chosen matching ties. He is by far the best looking expert and stands out as a Greek god in the Fraggle Rock of men before us, so, naturally, I agree with everything he says.

    

It’s not hard to do that, though, when he applies reason and the law to the evidence. But although I have always been in favour of cameras in the courtroom, what worries me with these big, publicity generating cases, is that viewer access spawns a level of hysteria from people with preconceived ideas (long before they have heard the evidence) that I suspect, with Zimmerman, will end in violence – not least because, so far, the prosecution (to me) is not proving its case, and Zimmerman looks likely to go free, or, at most, have the charge reduced to manslaughter.

    

The hatred and aggression appearing on a second by second basis on the Twitter feed that accompanies Fox 35, is truly disturbing. If they had to weed out this kind of prejudice during jury selection, small wonder that it took them so long (interestingly, the jury is made up of six women). These are not people who want to pass judgment when presented with the facts of the case; they are vigilantes who, in reality, are mimicking the very vigilante behaviour of which they accuse George Zimmerman. This probably says more about the nature of social networking than it does about the pros and cons of cameras in court, but, in this case, the ethics of the two seem inextricably linked.

    

The public is nevertheless fascinated by the workings of the law and, as Judge Alex points out elsewhere, if the public is allowed into the courtroom (which they are in the UK, as well as the US), all the cameras are doing is making the proceedings available to a wider audience.

    

Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher’s 1986 series LA Law ran for eight seasons on NBC in the US and was picked up, to huge critical acclaim, in the UK (I have every episode on videotape – remember videos? They were those bricks you started to chuck out at the turn of the Millennium). Dozens of law-based shows, on both sides of the Atlantic, have followed. I reckon I have seen every episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit at least half a dozen times.

    

The truth is, that all human life can be seen in a courtroom - love, jealousy, sex, death, prejudice, empathy, hatred – and when several of these factors come together in a big case, it is as if we are united as an audience in the very essence of life’s daily dramas, but magnified a thousand fold.

   

I’ve missed my daily Zimmerman dose today, as the trial is off air for the weekend. But the week’s appearances of Judge Alex are still stored in my Time Warner Cable box, so my legal fix is never more than a click away on the remote. Yes, I’m afraid I really am that sad.

Or just someone who really cares about nice laundry.  

   

  

   

    

James Gandolfini and the Art of Twitter

It was a little after 4.30pm in Los Angeles on Wednesday when Twitter went into overdrive after Variety and the Hollywood Reporter confirmed the death of James Gandolfini.

    

On holiday in Italy, the actor, who was just 51 years old, had apparently died suddenly from a suspected heart attack. The outpouring of shock, disbelief and despair that the world had lost this genius of a man was immense.

    

Gandolfini is best known for playing Tony Soprano, a capo of the New Jersey-based DiMeo crime family in the HBO drama, The Sopranos (from series two, he was the acting boss). First broadcast in January 1999, it won a multitude of awards, including five Golden Globes and 21 Emmys - three of the latter for Gandolfini. In its time, it was considered the most financially successful series in the history of cable television (and remains HBO’s highest rating series ever), and in 2013 the Writers Guild of America named it the best-written series in television history.

    

Its success (and ongoing success thanks to box sets) is in no small part down to Gandolfini’s performance, which is strong, warm, funny, frightening, tender – and he brings to the character a complexity that, despite the violent themes, makes him immensely likeable, especially to women. An unlikely sex symbol (overweight, overbearing, cruel), Tony’s struggle is trying to balance his life in the Mafia with a complicated family life and his bouts of depression. Visits to his psychiatrist, Dr Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) complicate his life still further, owing to the sexual tension between the pair (although the good doctor never openly shows or acts upon it). He is that lethal but attractive combination in a man – powerful and vulnerable.

    

At first, people thought the news of his death was a hoax; Twitter is renowned for some sick individuals announcing the sudden passing of celebrities. I recall on the day that Michael Jackson died, I was in the gym and a friend texted to say that he had just heard that Jeff Goldblum had been killed while filming. That, thankfully, turned out to be a hoax.

    

For the next couple of days after Gandolfini’s death, it was as if the whole world united on Twitter to send their condolences to Gandolfini’s family. People who had worked with him spoke about his kindness and warmth; all proclaimed his incredible talent.

    

It is at times like this that social networking operates most successfully, providing a platform for people to share their thoughts and emotions. While Twitter has its fair share of trolls, whose personal comments cause great distress, and while it is also a platform for rumour-mongering, it still provides a great social service.

    

With increasing numbers of people having to work away from home (I spend most of my time on the other side of the world, over 5000 miles away from most of my friends and family), social networking stems the feelings of loneliness and isolation that are often felt. More so than Twitter, Facebook shares photos, stories, TV and movie clips, book extracts – anything that people have enjoyed personally or professionally that they think others might, too.

    

Through Facebook, I have touched base with incredibly talented people the world over whose work I would never have known had it not been for this online contact. I rely on Twitter for most of my news, as it reaches the Twittersphere long before it reaches traditional broadcast and print routes. The problem with this is that it might not be entirely accurate but, for the most part, it is.

    

I keep up with famous court cases and have learned a great deal about the law as a result of comments and discussions on Twitter. I have been directed to TV shows that have never reached my radar. Twitter and Zeebox have also resurrected the pleasure of watching live TV, as Tweeters share comments while a show is actually on the air. The disadvantage if you have recorded the show is that social networkers have a habit of giving the game away, thereby ruining that night in front of your stored programmes you were so looking forward to.

    

But social networking has undoubtedly changed the way we look at the world and our communication with it. Just think, if it hadn’t been for social networking, you would not have just read this blog. 

And that really would be tragic.

   

Matthew Rhys, Judge Alex and TV Addiction

Dressing gowns could have been invented just for watching TV. 

This week, having seen just two episodes of The Americans in the UK, I bought and downloaded the other 11 in LA and, over two days, watched the lot. In my dressing gown.

    

A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into one of its stars, Matthew Rhys, on a Virgin flight from London to LA. Matthew’s family lives just a couple of miles from me in Cardiff, yet it was only in LA three years ago that I finally got to meet him.

    

He is an extraordinary actor. His performance as gay lawyer Kevin in Brothers and Sisters was genius; no less so is his undercover Russian spy, Phillip Jennings, in The Americans. And he's always getting his kit off. Always in the name of is art, of course.

    

While The Americans is not yet a box set, increasingly viewers have turned to these packages to view shows they have missed. More than anything, it saves time. No ads, no having to remember to set your Sky Plus or TIVO – you just slob out on the sofa for 12 hours with an Indian takeaway and a bottle of Rioja and forget to shower as you become immersed in the story.

    

I watch way too much TV. There are episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Cold Case I have seen several times over. My daytime fix, the courtroom show, Judge Alex, at 2pm, is programmed into my Record list, and I am currently watching repeats of shows I first saw just weeks ago. 

Judge Alex is like a favourite cartoon: no matter how many times you see it, it’s still funny. I was hugely entertained this week by a case involving heavy discussions about rims, which means something entirely different in the US (think cars, rather than body parts). Call me easily amused, but hearing Judge Alex say “rims” just made me giggle. A lot. Like I said. Easily amused.

    

On Tuesday, two of my favourite shows, Suits and Covert Affairs return to the USA Network (Suits stars the divine Gabriel Macht - an actor born to play Christian Grey - PLEASE!). Now, here’s my dilemma: do I watch them live on the night because I will not be able to bear waiting (nor everyone telling me on Twitter what has happened before I have seen them), or do I wait a few weeks for a dressing gown day when I can watch non-stop (and, in the meantime, totally avoid Twitter)?

    

At least if I opt for the latter, I will avoid the American ads, which are many. I always lose weight when in the States because these ads make me feel so ill with their surfeit of food – all of it orange. Orange prawns, orange chicken, orange bread – no amount of colour adjustment on my set transforms these disgusting beds of fat into anything other than a floating sea of orange cholesterol.

    

I imagine that men are as put off sex as I am food, with ads that put the fear of God into you with the products’ side effects.

    

You can get your sex drive back, but be warned: this product may cause sweating, palpitations, liver damage, kidney damage, headaches, nausea, brain tumours, blood clots. Then there’s the dastardly warning; please see your doctor if you have an erection lasting longer than eight hours. I imagine after hearing about the possible side effects, you’d be lucky to get one at all.

    

The box set saves you from the side effects of consuming too many commercials, and if you download them, they also save you from having your shelves cluttered up with these monstrous cardboard bricks.

    

Practically the whole of my life runs through the computer now. I have systems that enable me to watch UK TV in the US and vice versa. My laptop is plugged into my TV so I can run everything through my 50 inch screen. I suspect that in a few generations, nobody will have legs, as humans will have lost their need ever to use them.

    

But as it’s Sunday and there’s not much on the TV, I’m going to do something revolutionary and take a hike up Runyon Canyon. I may take my iPad with me, just in case I get withdrawal symptoms and need to watch repeats of The Americans when I’m there.

    

Then it’ll be back home for supper and taking my dressing gown out of the wash ready to start another TV viewing week.

Tomorrow, on Judge Alex, the defendant Richard says he took his Bengal cat to Kismet for breeding and to sell Bengal kittens, but was devastated when Kismet told him his kittens had died. 

Oh, please say pussy, Judge Alex. Just for me. 

Matthew Rhys - Cymru Am Byth in America!

Who would win a wet cotton shirt competition? Colin Firth or Matthew Rhys? 

It was the question on viewers’ lips when it was announced that Rhys is to reprise the role of Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Darcy, in a BBC adaptation of the PD James’s sequel, Death Comes to Pemberley.

   

The 38 year old actor from Cardiff is sitting in the Pali Hotel on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, pondering the answer, but it’s a fairly quick response: ‘I’d say Firth.’

   

It was Firth’s Mr Darcy, emerging from the lake, all tousle-haired, with white shirt clinging to his fine, muscled chest, that set female hearts racing back in Andrew Davies’s sexy adaptation of the Jane Austen 1813 classic back in 1995. So can we also hope for a repeat performance of the iconic scene from Rhys? ‘Definitely not. Colin is so rooted in the national psyche, it would be almost sacrilegious to try to do it; it’s a level of comparison I wouldn’t want. He looked good. Really good. It’s not as if he looks bad now, but that scene resonated so much.’

    

Comparisons are nevertheless inevitable, not least in the physical similarity between the two men – dark, handsome, great eyes, and the ability to hold a fixed expression that makes the ladies swoon. Rhys was chosen, says Ben Stephenson, head of BBC drama, because of his good looks and a ‘likeable but dark edge’ as an actor. ‘We did not want a Milk Tray advert kind of handsomeness.’

   

Rhys still feels a little apprehensive at taking on a role so fixed in the minds of viewers. ‘It’s what I found when I played Dylan Thomas (in the 2008 film, The Edge of Love). Everyone had an idea about him, even though there had never been any footage, so nobody really knew. It’s the same with Darcy. So many people love Pride and Prejudice, they have a very strong idea of who or what Darcy should be. Coupled with that is the fact that Laurence Olivier played him, Colin Firth nailed it, as did Matthew MacFadyen, so there are instant comparisons to be drawn. My only saving grace is that it’s not Pride and Prejudice, it’s Pemberley, it’s 6 yrs on and he’s a very different Darcy.’

   

Anything remotely sexual (‘at least, on screen’) is definitely off the agenda five years after Darcy’s marriage to Elizabeth Bennett, but they have two children, so something must have gone right (‘although you can’t categorically say that both the kids are his’). The toned down nature of the couple’s attraction can be attributed to the adaptation being a family show.

   

Currently single (he claims, although he is intensely private about his personal life), he believes that we are all searching for that one person. ‘I have romantic, rose-tinted notions that someone’s out there – I just wish she’d hurry up and knock on my door.’ 

   

Rhys clearly has a place in his heart for the man he is trying to get to understand (not least, in the love department) where others, on first impressions, fail. ‘I think he comes from somewhere else. First of all, when I approach a character, I never try and give them negative characteristics; I always try and look for where the empathy lies – justifications. I think with Darcy, it’s all to do with Pemberley and the name he’s inherited. He’s incredibly duty bound and he’s incredibly honest – which is why Elizabeth first hated him.’

   

While Rhys sees his own romantic nature in Darcy, he is less sure whether he shares the man’s moral core. ‘It’s been tested . . . I struggle . . . but I’ve not always been as well behaved as I should be. Darcy has a strong sense of honour – that’s why they call what we do acting.’

   

While we await the smouldering Mr Darcy, viewers can catch a very different Rhys in The Americans, currently showing on ITV in the UK. Created by Joe Weisberg and first broadcast in January this year on the FX cable channel in the US, it is the story of two KGB spies, in an arranged marriage, posing as Americans in suburban Washington DC during Reagan’s Cold War era. While Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) remains firmly loyal to the motherland, Phillip (Matthew Rhys) is increasingly attracted to the American way of life, which his two children (who remain oblivious to their parents’ true identity) have embraced.

   

It is an astonishing performance by Rhys, who employs different guises and accents with seeming ease. He moves between love scenes and scenes of extreme violence with a fluidity that one minute has viewers’ hearts pounding, and the next melting for the character’s tenderness.

   

The show is a huge hit in the US, where Rhys has become a star following his portrayal of gay Kevin Walker in Brothers and Sisters, which ran for five seasons. It required him to get his kit off and engage in relatively explicit sex scenes with his lover, Scotty (Luke Macfarlane). There was only one thing he found difficult about the scenes – ‘Stubble. That was the first thing I remember thinking. Then you just approach it as you would any part.’

   

In The Americans, he’s getting his kit off – again. The KGB has never been so sexy; so sexy, it makes you want to defect. Where once there were men in overcoats growling in Russian, now there is Rhys’s torso engaged in a variety of sexual poses with different women.

   

His seeming lack of shyness and undoubted good looks (he has a ridiculously perfect mouth) have turned Rhys into a sex symbol on both sides of the Atlantic – an observation he greets with uproarious laughter. ‘It continues to make me laugh; I don’t know anyone who genuinely believes they are a sex symbol.’

   

He hasn’t always been confident about his looks, either. ‘I was a massively self-conscious as a kid. I had bad skin, bad acne and the multitude of insecurities that every teenager has. I overcame them by pretending to be other people. It was a natural progression into this ridiculous business.’

   

It took a long time for Rhys to feel comfortable about playing out sex scenes and developing the confidence to take his clothes off in front of the camera. ‘The first job where you have to do that, you’re terrified; you just feel so vulnerable. The second time is pretty scary, too. By the third time, it’s more familiar. You just think, I’m gonna have to do this.’

   

It’s a far cry from the shy 25 year old who, playing opposite Kathleen Turner in The Graduate in 1995, could not bring himself to look at the 45 year old’s naked body onstage once. What he did learn, however, was how to effect his American accent, as Turner would correct him when he got it wrong. Having also grown up with American TV shows such as Starsky and Hutch, Rhys’s accent could, these days, easily pass for a native’s and is undoubtedly a factor in his having been able to land top jobs in the US, where so many others have failed.

   

Like Phillip in The Americans, he is now a foreigner (proudly Welsh - his first language) trying to be an American, while acknowledging the need to keep a realistic head on his shoulders. 

‘This place is like an asylum. It’s an industry driven town and it’s like Klondike – that gold rush fever. Everything is possible, and I love that about the place; it is the land of eternal optimism, and it’s great. You can chase your dreams; you can follow your dreams until your last day. There is that thing in the air, that mercurial thing that anything is possible here; but on the flip side, where I come from, you carry your sack of salt on your back, because you take a pinch of it every second of the day.’

   

Rhys’s down to earth attitude, delightful nature and great humour make him a joy to work with – everybody on both sides of the Atlantic says so, and nobody has a bad word to say about him; but there are things that rile him. ‘I don’t deal with diva behaviour very well – any sort of rudeness or ignorance; arrogance doesn’t sit well with me – or injustices; for example, if somebody’s being ill-treated because of hierarchy on the set.’

   

His lack of grandiose behaviour rooted in realism has ensured ongoing success. While his acting skills were honed at RADA, he carries a Welsh modesty with him that is borne of both family and country. ‘As a race, the Welsh are not known for their arrogance, and we have a healthy attitude – an ability to smash it out of anyone who does have it. But we do suffer from small nation syndrome sometimes. I think we could do with a healthy dose of confidence. But you know, there’s a thin line between confidence and arrogance.’

   

His modesty is also abundantly apparent in his ability to recognise external factors that have contributed to his success. 

‘I don’t say this glibly, but so much of this business is luck – massive, massive luck, and I’ve just been incredibly lucky in the parts that I’ve been given and in the timing when they’ve come about and I’ve been able to do them. Because as much as you sit down at the beginning and you leave drama school and you say This is what I want my career to be, there’s no way on God’s green earth that it’ll pan out the way you want. And another great liberating day is when you realise you have very little control over your career unless you’re Tom Cruise – A Listers are the only ones who can go This is what I’ll do next. You’re at the mercy of the gods.’

   

At the moment, the gods are smiling very kindly on him. When he finishes filming Pemberley, it’s straight back to New York to film series two of The Americans, which is already being tipped to pick up dozens of awards – including several for Rhys.

   

As for the future, he’s not sure, although he feels that he will in all likelihood return to the UK. ‘I feel like I’ve been on location for eight years. I keep feeling someone’s going to tap me on the shoulder and say “Come on, time to go home.” I’ve no idea where the future lies. Given the employment situation in the US and Britain, you just go where the work is these days.’

   

Until then, he is just looking forward to taking up residence at Pemberley where, filming in Yorkshire, he will be able to return home often to friends and family in Wales. 

Maybe, in the rugby club, he’ll bet getting his kit off for the lads. 

And why not. He’s done it for everyone else.