 Though he made his name in a series of upper-class roles in costume pieces (Freddie in A Room with a View, d. James Ivory, 1985; the disruptive John Beaver in A Handful of Dust, d. Charles Sturridge, 1987), he actually ran away from his provincial home to join a circus at 15. When he wasn't in costume, he was apt to be nude, as in his first major role as the hero's working-class lover in Maurice (d. Ivory, 1987); by the time he made Where Angels Fear to Tread (d. Sturridge, 1991), he had cornered the market in E.M. Forster adaptations. He revealed unsuspected depths in two tormented roles: as the doomed son of Jeremy Irons in Damage (UK/France, d. Louis Malle, 1992) and the suicidal Septimus in Mrs Dalloway (UK/Netherlands/US, d. Marleen Gorris, 1997); was convincingly vile as the drunken husband in the miniseries The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (BBC, 1996) and the seducer Patrick in Take a Girl Like You (BBC. 2000); and scored on Broadway in Closer (1998-9) and as slick, nasty Mick in The Caretaker (2000), the London production honouring playwright Harold Pinter's 70th birthday. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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