Electrician sparks a hit flick for Cantona

STEVE EVETS has achieved a lifetime goal with his role in the celebrated Looking For Eric. HENRY FITZHERBERT spoke to him about his path to the top...

PERFECT MATCH Steve Evets with footballing great Eric Cantona PERFECT MATCH: Steve Evets with footballing great Eric Cantona

Steve Evets was working as an electrician when he got the phone call that changed his life.

The 49-year-old jobbing actor with a smattering of minor TV roles to his name was told that against all the odds he had landed the lead role of depressed postman Eric Bishop in  Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric.

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The small matter that his co-star would be footballer extraordinaire Eric Cantona was one of the many surprises to come, including a trip up the red carpet at last month’s Cannes Film Festival.

“I was in the van going somewhere and my agent rang and said, ‘Good morning, Eric.’ I was over the moon,” recalls Evets, who has determinedly pursued his first love, acting, through thick and thin over 30 years.

The stop-start nature of the work and the lack of anything approaching a breakthrough role – Evets cites an appearance in an episode of Life On Mars as a highlight – meant he spent much of his time working with an electrician pal in Manchester.

“It’s great because whenever I have an audition or filming he lets me do it. And when the work dries up, which it does quite a lot, I’m dragging cables under floorboards or whatever,” he enthuses.

As a result, however, money has always been tight but what has sustained Steve is a conviction that acting is what he loves – the importance of which struck home after a near-death experience aged 28.

The actor spent several days on life support and lost 32 pints of blood after being glassed in the face and stabbed by hooligans in a pub.

“I was out with my girlfriend and mum on Mother’s Day and there were some guys threatening people and I happened to get in the way,” he recalls.

“I got my throat cut and one of them stabbed me through the liver, lung and diaphragm. When I came out of that alive I said to myself, ‘Life is not about owning a flat-screen telly or having a holiday in Mallorca, it’s about doing something you enjoy.’ I was already struggling away at acting but it made me more determined.”

Evets’s days of manual labour and only the occasional acting part should be behind him thanks to his terrific performance as the loveable but despairing Eric, a man defeated by life until he starts getting pep talks from Eric Cantona (who appears, genie-like, in Eric’s bedroom).

The film received a rapturous reception at Cannes where Evets struggled to comprehend the turnaround in his fortunes from just a few years ago when he pitched up at the film festival with two mates to sell a “daft” low-budget film.

“It was surreal and unbelievable,” he says. “Never would I have imagined that I would be walking up the red carpet in a film by Ken Loach starring Eric Cantona. I kept expecting my dickie bow to start spinning round.”

Also present – but stuck behind the barriers with the celebrity gawpers – were Evets’s two mates from his previous Cannes visit, “Just to see if it was really happening,” he says.

So how did they choose to honour their friend’s big moment? By making rude gestures as he went up the red carpet.

“They’d told me they would and they were true to their word,” laughs the Salford-born actor.

Not many Cannes stars can boast such a colourful life as Evets. He left school at 16 and sailed around the world with the Merchant Navy before being thrown out, eventually discovering his true vocation: drama.

He formed a fringe theatre company, striking out on his own both professionally and personally following the collapse of his marriage.

“I tried all that settling down thing but it didn’t work,” explains Evets, who has two daughters from a second marriage.

When Loach put out a casting call to agents saying he was looking for Mancunians aged between 40 and 50 Evets assumed he didn’t stand a chance but he advanced through a series of rigorous auditions.

“He’s watching to see how you react under pressure, if you can stay in character during a crisis,” says Evets. “He threw everything he could at me and he said I always came up trumps.”

Keeping his excitement in check Evets assumed he was auditioning for one of the smaller parts so when he discovered he had landed the lead he was astonished, yet further surprises were to come, including the revelation that Cantona was to star alongside him.

The former Manchester United and France star was smuggled on to the set and appeared in front of Evets as the cameras were rolling in order to authentically capture the character’s surprise.

“This voice said, ‘Turn round’ and I did and Eric Cantona was standing there. The shock was incredible. My mind was racing, I couldn’t believe it.”

It was not the only time he was stunned on set, or “Loached” as Evets puts it. On another occasion he was arrested on set by a police armed response team.

“All hell broke loose, you didn’t know what was happening,” he says.

He also cites Loach’s habit of shooting the film in sequence.

“We did scene one on the first day and the last scene on the last day and I was drip fed the scenes the night before. That way, as an actor you’re going on the same journey as the character.”

I ask Evets what’s next for him.

“Plenty more work until I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown, turn to drink and drugs, stay in the Priory, have a book ghost-written called How I Beat My Demons, bring out a keep-fit DVD, go on a programme with the word ‘celebrity’ in it and adopt an African baby,” he replies, adding with a mischievous grin, “It works for everybody else!”

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