Lounging confidently on the sofa of a Soho hotel suite, Dominic West has been beaming at me, but now his handsome smile dissolves into a hurt look.
I have just asked him to explain why he, in common with so many actors, feels the need to voice his political views.
‘I should just pipe down and carry on acting?’ he asks, leaning forward to pour tea. I don’t like to be rude, so I raise my eyebrows and shrug as the most polite way of saying, ‘Well, it’s an idea.’
West, who is giving interviews to promote his new film Colette, has also made a campaign video calling for a second EU referendum. In it, he warns people that Britain won’t be able to make trade deals with America, Turkey or India on its own. ‘You can’t cut a deal with these strongmen and their giant economies. You do what they dictate,’ he tells the camera, pulling a haggard face, rather like in those charity appeals.
I try to explain to him what it is like to be a member of the Brexit-voting unwashed masses, going to see a film and wishing you didn’t have to sit there remembering that the actors on the screen in front of you in real life regard you as sadly mistaken, pathetically hoodwinked — because that’s the Remain narrative, isn’t it? I tell him that we Brexit oiks are more than half his audience. Does he not want us to enjoy his movies?
‘What, you’re not going to watch a film because Remainers are in it?’ he laughs incredulously.
I tell him no, but actors give us escapism. We value that highly. So when an actor intervenes in politics, it takes away from our ability to suspend our disbelief. As I watched Colette, the first thing I had to do was battle out of my head invading images of West and his co-star Keira Knightley appearing in referendum propaganda.
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