There are a portion of [my] films that are f***ing unwatchable,” says Craig Fairbrass, with a typical bluntness. “[But] being typecast is better than being not cast.” The London-born actor has slugged away like a journeyman boxer since the Eighties, the grizzled face of a certain kind of British filmmaking. These aren’t your Merchant-Ivorys or even your Lock Stocks, but films with titles as blunt as a sledgehammer. Hijacked. Deranged. Beyond Bedlam. Think gory Brit thrillers usually seen by a niche but passionate crowd of fans. He’s starred in nearly 100 of them, almost always as the heavy. But standing at over 6ft 2in and bearing the stacked shoulders of a professional wrestler, Fairbrass seems born to play them.
There have been flirtations with the mainstream – playing a villain opposite Sylvester Stallone in 1993’s Cliffhanger; two years on EastEnders as dodgy Walford geezer Dan Sullivan – but Fairbrass’s bread and butter is the low-budget gangster movie. There, and thanks to the long-running Rise of the Footsoldier franchise, the 59-year-old has established a following of mostly working-class blokes. “I think there’s a neglected audience out there,” he tells me over Zoom. “I think the normal men… and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but us guys who grew up in London or up north like to watch the chaps be a little naughty and they can relate to it.”
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