Norton's next chapter
from selling clothes on a market stall to sipping tea with Meryl Streep, James Norton had a stratospheric few years. He tells Megan Conner how he hustled his way to new heights
Five years ago, just as James Norton was making his breakthrough as a chilling psychopath in the TV series Happy Valley, elsewhere in the country, the then 29-year-old was busy side hustling a second job. "It's a bit of a joke now," Norton explains, chuckling, "but for a year or so, I ran a vintage clothes stall called Bangers on Hangers. Every week, I'd wake up at 5am with a horrible hangover and go to Bermondsey Market to sell stuff I'd found at flea markets." He remembers that, on one level, his double life as a market trader served as an outlet for a latent shopping addiction. "But mostly it was just an excuse for a good old chat," Norton laughs. "I was a terrible market trader: I was always late, lost far more money than I made and the clothes got progressively more moth-eaten. But, at the same time, I loved it. It was a really good way to meet people."
Still if you were perusing clothing in the south London area at that time and were up to speed on your TV viewing, you may have been a little taken aback to see Norton handling over your change. After the first series of Happy Valley aired in 2014, Norton became both household-name-famous and the subject of personal attacks in the streets. "One woman grabbed me by the neck and said, "You're a rotter,"" he recalled, laughing good-naturedly, whn we first met following his BAFTA nomination in 2015.
Fortunately, he's self-aware enough to know that it comes with the territory. "This industry takes you out of normal life, and the risk that comes with it is that people start to treat you in a weird way." To some extent, the market stall seemed a good way to recalibrate. "And, well," Norton adds cheerily, "it tid have a life afterwards. After that, I supplied a Bangers on Hangers menswear rail at the back of actor Charity Wakefield's shop in Nunhead."
These days, of course, Norton is frequently up with the birds. Case in point: when he calls for our phone interview, it's 5am in New York and Norton is already in a car, winging his way to a film set.
The actor is currently in the city to film Things Seen & Heard, an upcoming Netflix drama with Amanda Seyfried, and seems to be transitioning quite seamless from bed to car to make-up chair as we speak. Is this the new normal? "Oh God, I hope not!" he says, chuckling, before apologising profusely. "I mean, this is particularly bad. The schedule at the moment is just... crazy. I actually haven't had a weekend off in six weeks. And I know this sounds ridiculous, but tonight I'm flying to Ukraine for 12 hours to attend a film premiere."
Clearly, it's the sign of a career that's flourishing, and when you look at the long list of projects Norton has recently completed, it's hardly surprising. Over the next couple of months alone, we'll see him in a major TV series - the BBC's retelling of the Profumo affair, The Trial of Christine Keeler - and as the lead role in film festival favourite Mr. Jones.
But most notably, perhaps, is the big-budget adaptation of Little Women, directed by Hollywood's auteur-du-jour Greta Gerwig, in which Norton plays John Brooke, the lovestruck scholar who marries Meg March (played by Emma Watson). While all three roles have felt like a step up for Norton in some regard, he can't deny that the latter has taken him into a slightly new territory.
"I mean, when they started reading out the cast - Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep... it just went on and on," Norton remembers. "So yeah, I felt quite intimidated... and you know, completely star-struck. It was that sort of movie, where at the end of the day you're calling your mum. Where one minute you're having a cup of tea with Meryl Streep, who's making some really rude, puerile joke, and the next you're taking a picture of the teacups."
"And then, from another side," he adds, "watching Greta, this powerhouse, who's completely in control of her craft, just killing it in her creative life and killing it in her personal life. I mean, I think it's fairly common knowledge now, but she was heavily pregnant at the time of filming and none of us knew. I basically turned up to the studio one day," he recalls, still sounding faintly amused by the whole concept, "and she had a baby in her lap!"
If he sounds in awe, he is a little. "My sister had a baby last year, so ever since my nephew came along, my broody things has pretty much gone off the charts." At the same time, his relationship with his girlfriend of two years, the British actor Imogen Poots, seems to be getting serious. "At the moment, we're sort of trying to work out where to put down roots."
As in, they're moving together?
"It's kind of a big topic of conversation at the moment because, up until now, I've been living in Peckham, whereas she's based here... her career's more in the US. We're thinking that, if it's not completely mad and naive, we'll split our time between London and New York."
IN the past, Norton has been open about the fact his relationships with other actors have struggled to survive long distance (his most notable ex is the Wild Rose star Jessie Buckley). So how do he and Poots make it work? "It's so hard," he admits. "I mean, generally, we try to do that thing called the three-week rule, where if you haven't seen each other for three weeks, you jump on a plane, but it doesn't always work. This year, we've completely blown it... it's been over two months."
And while they often meet up in far-flung locations (a look at Norton's Instagram confirms that he and Poots have been everywhere from the Grenadines to Copenhagen in the past year), the 34-year-old insists it's not as glamourous as it sounds. "It's such a strange lifestyle, being an actor," he says, "so for us, it's more about trying to normalise the madness sometimes. It's probably why so many actors date actors. There are times when I need to be around someone who fully understands, because it's not like you can call up your mates from home and tell them you're feeling down - not really. There are times when you're supposed to be living the dream and you're really not, but I'm sure if you said that to some people they'd quite rightly tell you to fuck off."
When he does feel distant from home, he credits his parents with keeping his feet on the ground. The son of two lecturers, Norton grew up in Yorkshire, and recalls having a really happy childhood - that is, until he went to school. "I had quite a tough time at school [Norton attended Ampleforth College, a Catholic boarding school run by Benedictine monks], largely because I was bullied for most of my time there. The thing about boarding schools," he reflects, "is that when that sort of stuff happens, you can't esape, and I found that quite heart-wrenching."
In need of guidance, he turned to one of the monks ("a guy called Father Peter, who I would visit to chat things through - he was basically my therapist at school"), who encouraged him to find solace in religion. When he left, it was to go to Cambridge, where he studied theology, a choice that Norton says was more than just coincidence. "It's funny to think about now," he admits, "because I'm not religious at all. And yet, at one point, it was such an important part of my life."
It was while being involved with theatre at Cambridge that Norton thought more seriously about becoming an actor. "I think it had always been there, ever since I was little and played Joseph in the Nativity play at primary school," he says. "But for a long time, I didn't think about doing it professionally because it just seemed like a huge leap of faith to decide to do it as a career. It doesn't help that when you're at school and you say you want to be an actor teachers will often pat you on the shoulder and say, "You'll grow out of that, don't worry." It's like saying you want to be a rock star."
Thankfully, the journey to stardom was relatively speedy: by the time Norton had graduated from RADA in 2010, he'd already completed his first job, appearing as Carey Mulligan's first boyfriend in the film An Education, and soon after, moved on to the Royal Court, where he was one of the original cast members of Posh, Laura Wade's play about the Bullingdon Club. A number of TV roles followed, most notably the BBC's three-part whodunnit Death Comes to Pemberley, but it wasn't until Sally Wainwright offered him the role of Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley that he felt he'd had a real opportunity to break out.
"I'll always be appreciative of that series because it allowed me to show I could go through a really transformative journey," says Norton, explaining that at the time, he worried about being pigeonholed in middle-class roles. If a much-desired third series were to come to fruition, would he go back? Judging by the sound he's making at the other end of the line, it's a silly question. "I'd love to have one more go at Tommy."
For now though, it's on with the next show, which looks set to be The Nevers, a new HBO series from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. From January, Norton will be back in London for the six-month shoot, and is already looking forward to reuniting with his family. "There'll be lots of seeing my nephew," he says, "and my parents, who are both retired now and live this lovely existence in Yorkshire that mostly revolves around gardening."
Another new-ish pastime for his parents has been visiting their son on set. "My dad especially enjoys it," says Norton, revealing that, in the past few years, his father has managed to wangle his way into an astonishing amount of the productions he's appeared in to act as an extra. Most recently, he came along to The Trial of Christine Keeler, "which was fun. Although, I'm aware that as the CV is getting bigger, he's becoming a bit of a diva."
As for the Keeler show itself, Norton is excited to see how this one plays out. "Now we've had the transition and sort of punctuation mark of #MeToo, it seems such a good time to be delving back into these kind of stories. Because the interesting thing about the Profumo affair is that, over the years, we've only heard it from a male perspective - never Keeler's. And actually, hers is the more interesting one."
We're in the middle of discussing Norton's character, Stephen Ward, an osteopath wo was famously embroiled in the story, when someone called "Andrew" announces himself. For a second, I wonder if it's Norton's dad, but down the phone line, "Andrew" is asking Norton to put on his shoes ready for production (so far, not very diva-like).
"Sorry," Norton says apologetically, for the first time sounding a little flustered, "but they're saying it's time to go."
Before he does though, he'd like to take a moment to revel in the "extraordinary physical transformation" that's taken place since we've been on the phone. "I wish you could have seen the people who have prodded and poked me and doused me in make-up while you've been talking to me," he laughs. "I look a little different to when we first started talking in the car."
And with that, he walks on to the set of the horror movie he's making, in the guise of what he tells me is a 1970s art historian wearing a "really quite dubious-looking" tie.
