Silencing the voices

The ‘seriously handsome’ Toby Stephens talks to Mary Wakefield about the magic of acting

With some people, their prep school selves seem barely submerged beneath the adult surface. They talk away like grown-ups but one shrug, a grin, and you can see their inner schoolchild. Toby Stephens, sitting opposite me in a boxy room high up on the top deck of the National Theatre, is a good example. He’s 41, seriously handsome with dark red hair and a fine-boned 1940s face; he’s a dab hand at playing cads and attempted world domination as the evil Gustav Graves in Die Another Day (quite outshining that drip Pierce Brosnan). But there’s something about him that still seems to be 12. It makes me want to hug him, though I’m quite sure that wouldn’t help.

Were you precocious, a child actor? I ask. Toby is the son of Dame Maggie Smith, and the late Robert Stephens.