David Threlfall has admitted that his door isn’t being battered down with offers of work.
The Shameless star features in new ITV detective drama Code Of A Killer, but said that he took his work where he could get it because he wasn’t always inundated with new roles.
He said: “I don’t sit around thinking, ‘Ooh, it would be good to do…’ A lot of my colleagues don’t work and don’t get as lucky as I do, and I’m very mindful of that.
“I don’t want to sound like one of those people you can read about online or in a newspaper, where they’re doing this, then next year they’re doing that. That’s not any bitterness on my part, it’s just like, well, ‘That all sounds so lovely then, doesn’t it?’.”
David added that the benefit of not knowing what his next role will be keeps him “on the edge… So therefore you have a real desire to do something”.
He went on: “I’m not one of those where scripts are dropping through the door every day of the week, they’re not. There’s an unspoken code with actors, the whole cliche of just resting or waiting for the right thing, I’m just not.
“I don’t know. I’ve got no work. I don’t know where it’s coming from, so there we are. I’m just spending my time worrying whether [Man] City will overtake Chelsea’s five-point lead.”
David, who has directed episodes of Shameless in the past, continued: “I’m sure I’ve got ambitions. But I wouldn’t walk over hot coals or anybody to get it.”
His new Code Of A Killer role sees him in the true story of Alec Jeffreys’ discovery of DNA fingerprinting, and its first use by Detective Chief Superintendent David Baker (played by David) in catching a double murderer.
He said: “I love the process of being on set and trying to work something out. There’s a certain amount of detective work involved in that, that correlates, as it were, with playing a detective, in finding out about things.
“David [Baker] said the same thing to me; he said, ‘You could do this job’, and I said, ‘I don’t know David, really?’ But a lot of it is about common sense or [asking] why. Why were they here? Why? When? They’re all questions you ask when you’re acting – or you should do.
“If you’re not curious when you’re acting, I think it’s probably time to stop.”
Code Of A Killer begins on ITV on Monday, April 6.
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