Carving an evil niche in cinema history

WITH his flashing sapphire blue eyes and razor sharp cheekbones, Jason Isaacs is particularly good at being bad.

And in his latest film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the Liverpool-born actor exceeds himself as the wicked wizard Lucius Malfoy.

Despite being an immensely amiable character in real life, Jason admits that he enjoys tapping into the dark side for many of his finest screen moments. After all, who could forget the sadistic Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot?

"They're like bad meat," he says of playing people we love to hate. "They stick in your teeth for a long time.

"Besides, the public rarely forget the villains because they make you angry, which is what I'm hoping to do with Lucius.

"I think baddies, if you get them right, stay with you and make your flesh creep. But more importantly, you want to stay with them because you want them to be toppled."

According to Jason, the secret of getting people to loathe a screen character is to make them believable. That's why he looks for inspiration in some of today's dictators.

"I normally look for redeeming features in a bad guy," he explains. "A micro scan found nothing, but I did find things I could believe in.

"You don't need to look very far in the newspapers to find similar characters. If you swap the word muggle (non wizards) for any other ethnicity in the world you find similar figures throughout Europe."

Lucius believes very strongly in the purity of wizard blood and that's quite chilling on screen.

"It has a resonance and then I had something to hang on to," he says.

"So, I clung to the idea of a man not liking the way his world was being swamped by the newcomers. And I thought I'd found a way into making him real and repulsive at the same time.

"The thing about great children's literature is that it doesn't pull any punches."

Sitting in a press conference, surrounded by wide eyed journalists, Jason admits that he was desperate to be in the latest Harry Potter film. He had auditioned for the part of Snape in the original movie but got pipped to the post by Alan Rickman.

"Everybody I knew was either in Harry Potter, or auditioning for it," he laughs.

"Certainly everybody has read at least one of the books to their children and if you're a British actor you couldn't have missed being around when they were casting for the screen version.

"So I finally got the call and it was like 'Thank God.' There was something on the net the first time it came around and somebody sent it to me. I wasn't quite sad enough to look for it myself.

"They sent me a page saying I was going to be playing Snape and so I phoned up my friends and said: 'What's this character Snape?' They just replied, 'We think it's Alan Rick-man.'

"It was a bit upsetting and sure enough, it's because he's sensational in it. So the first film went by and then I got the call for the second one. I went in and they said would you read Lucius Malfoy and I said 'What's he like?' They said, 'He's really evil.'"

And sure enough Lucius, if you believe all the marketing hype around, is completely hideous. His only redeeming quality is his luscious long blonde hair.

"People keep saying to me it will be great for our daughter when she grows up," he says of his much coveted role.

"But I'm not sure that it's that cool to go to school and say, "My dad's the one you all had nightmare's about!" Like most individuals, Jason has caught the Harry Potter bug and has read all JK Rowlings' books with relish.

"I went away and read all four of them in about an afternoon," he says. "They're just fantastically readable and I understood why they'd been such a sensation.

"It took me back to when I was young. I had a terrible obsession with reading. If I started a book I wanted to finish it that night. Enid Blyton, C.S.Lewis, I'd read them under the covers in bed with a torch and I felt exactly the same with these books.

"Rowling is a fantastic storyteller and I got really excited and annoyed that she hadn't written the fifth book. I thought once I was on the film maybe people would sneak me a copy of number five. Tragically it's not happened yet."

Jason's excitement about the whole project is infectuous. But I suspect its more to

do with starring alongside some of the industry's greatest actors than the fictional adventures of Harry.

"To walk on set to do scenes with Richard Harris and Robert Hardy was wonderful," he gushes.

"I went to school with both their children - I went to drama school with Richard Harris' son and to university with Robert Hardy's daughter. They are these iconic figures who would occasionally waft in and see you in a play. So, doing scenes with them was fantastic."

Unfortunately, Jason will not be starring in the third Harry Potter film, having already committed himself to play the part of Captain Hook in Paul Hogan's Peter Hook.

But I am in the fourth one, touch broom," he says. "And then I hope that J. K. has decided to make five, six and seven all about Lucius Malfoy. It's her decision, but I've been sending her notes on the hour. But we'll see and that's why I can't wait for the book. We all can't wait to find out if we're still alive."

A native scouser, Jason originally studied law at Bristol University but during the course found he was spending more and more time devoting his energy to his true vocation - acting.

After graduating, he applied and won a place at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and three years later was out in the world trying to earn a living as an actor. The legal profession would have to find somebody else to recruit.

"My own earliest and only memory of theatre when I was a child was ironically going to see Peter Pan with Anita Harris," he says.

"I thought when I went to drama school that it was insane to do it, but one of those indulgences of youth and then I'd get back on the straight and narrow and do something proper that would earn me a living. Back then my biggest aspiration was to get a job, any job. I still can't quite believe it."

Unlike most ambitious actors, Jason has no idea what he would like to do next. His diary is already full with forthcoming roles and to demand more luck would be tempting fate.

"I think it's very unhealthy for an actor to have ambitions or plans because they are always thwarted," he concludes. "I don't ever think, 'If only I could.'

So I just enjoy the work and take it as it comes. And if I'm honest, my main ambition is that my baby daughter stays healthy and I keep working. That's the important thing."