He’s your mum’s favourite, after playing the jolly nice man who is jolly nice to Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors, and the jolly nice man who delivers the heartbreaking WH Auden eulogy for his partner in Four Weddings and a Funeral. But there is far more to John Hannah than a Scottish accent, magnificent eyebrows and an unrivalled ability to look soulfully concerned. In The Mummy films, he played treasure-hunting comic relief Jonathan Carnahan. In 2002’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, he took on both halves of Robert Louis Stevenson’s character. He played a psychopathic killer in Truth or Dare, and appeared opposite Denzel Washington in The Hurricane.
On TV, he has been a transhumanist scientist in Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD; a gruff but compassionate emergency medicine chief in Transplant; and a gladiator school owner in the blood-soaked, boobs-and-sandals epic Spartacus – which might have given your mum a shock if she was expecting more Mr Nice Guy. He was also the scientist at the beginning of The Last of Us who warned everyone that a fungi could destroy humanity – so don’t blame him, he did try.
Now he stars in Bad Day at the Office, an action thriller in which his character wakes in a hotel room with no memory, a corpse in the bath and the police knocking at the door. It’s filmed in the first-person using GoPro cameras, and so looks like a cross between Call of Duty, Peep Show and the video for the Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up. Whether he minds starring in a film that for the most part leaves out his best-known feature – his face – is one obvious question. But there’s plenty else to ask about: weddings, mummies, eyebrows, his favourite Prodigy track, or inappropriate Roman orgies to watch with your mum.
Post your questions in the comments by 6pm this Thursday 13 August and we’ll print his answers in the next instalment of our readers’ interview series.
• Bad Day at the Office is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 October
