Norn Iron man

It seems like destiny that Lisburn giant Ray Stevenson ended up a mainstay of comic-book films. The king of large parts (the latest as Porthos in The Three Musketeers) tells TARA BRADYhow it started with a fat suit

STANDING at 6ft 4in, it's not surprising that Lisburn-born Ray Stevenson has become a player in the Marvel universe. It's just a wonder they ever managed without him. At 47, the star of Punisher: War Zoneand Thor has finally been moulded into enough action figures to mount a war on himself.

“Action roles are the only thing that keeps me fit,” says Stevenson. “I hate the gym. I can’t do the matching socks and tops at all. As long as I keep working on a film I’m pacing myself and training. In between times I am a lazy, lazy bugger.”

Happily, there aren’t many “in between times”. On rare days off he can be found globetrotting with his two young sons – four-year-old Leonardo and five month-old Sebastiano – and his intrepid domestic partner, the Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Cariacca.

“It’s a life choice for us and the two wee boys,” explains dad. “We’re gypsy souls. Before Leonardo was one he had been on 21 planes to Hawaii and Maui and LA. People in the States are always amazed. They say, ‘Oh my God, you live in Ibiza. How far away is that?’ But it’s only 2½ movies and a meal.”

Jason Statham has gung-ho geezer-fu chic, but Stevenson may be the Last Great Action Hero. The actor's imposing physique has made him ideal casting for such hard men of yore as Rome's Titus Pullo and as Dagonet, a Knight of the Round Table in Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur.

Who else was Paul WS Anderson, director of Resident Evil, going to call on for Porthos in his new adaptation of The Three Musketeers?"I really just chase the directors and actors I admire and I look for ensemble pieces where you're more likely to find a good character role. And I loved the intense energy of this and the strong visual. It's the first film to be conceived and designed as a 3D movie from the drawing board since Avatar."

Anderson was fortunate that the actor could fit him in. Earlier this year, Stevenson headed up a cast that included Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer on the Irish- American mob epic Kill the Irishman. He's currently shooting GI Joe 2: Retaliationwith Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson.

"I've just finished on a movie called Jayne Mansfield's Carwith John Hurt," he says proudly. "Other people have to remind me. When you're shooting a movie with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, it's amazing, but you're in a professional setting. Your job is to bring it. Their job is to bring it. And you tend to forget who they are. Then someone says their names and you think 'Oh my God'."

His gilded Hollywood career is no fluke. Stevenson, a classically trained actor and a graduate of Bristol’s Old Vic Theatre School, came to the profession late but determined.

“I was 25 before I decided to try. But if I’d done it any earlier I wouldn’t have been ready emotionally. If I’d left it until my 30s it would have been too late. So at 25, I knew I had to give it a shot. I didn’t know why. I was jacking in my career for a profession with no guarantees.”

It took John Malkovich to convince him.

"I saw him in Lanford Wilson's Burn This. There was just something in that play made me realise that there's a validity to acting, to the profession. It's not just a culture of celebrities and celebritising. It is worthwhile." But he still had to tell his dear old mum from the west of Ireland the good news.

“I had to sit her down and explain, ‘Oh, I’m going to live in abject poverty again so that I can follow a dream.’ And she just said the opposite of what I expected anyone to say. She said ‘follow your heart’. I was waiting for ‘Don’t be so stupid’.”

He was "fresh out of the coop" when he landed his first film role in Paul Greengrass's The Theory of Flight. His co-star Kenneth Branagh, in a neat piece of symmetry, was his director on early summer sensation Thor.

“Ken called me up out of the blue. And I was so pleased, because he said ‘I’ve been admiring your work from afar all these years and I’m so thrilled how your career is going. So I’d like to put you in an enormous fat suit. You’re a big strapping lad’.”

It's been an interesting career between Branagh collaborations. Long before Stevenson was attempting to outfox Will Ferrell in The Other Guys, he was earning positive notices for the 2003 Royal National Theatre production of The Duchess of Malfi. Before that, he was an ITV regular on Peak Practiceand Band of Gold. Before that, he was an interior designer.

Hang on. The Punisherworked as an interior designer? "It was interior architecture, really. It wasn't throws and cushions. It was spatial design and projections. After I got into acting I realised that what I was doing was a kind of theatre. It's a theatre of space. And it was really useful training. There's not a lot of magic on a film set. You've got to design a fourth wall in your head so can believe you're not just staring at puffy jackets."

Stevenson, whose Irish mother and RAF father relocated the family to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne when he was eight, is proud of his Celtic heritage and still does what his Irish mammy says. "She told me I should do Kill the Irishman, and I said, 'Hang on, I haven't even read it yet.' But according to her 'these true life stories are always brilliant'. So she took the script to read it herself. I've created a monster. Every time she sees a film she likes, she's on the phone asking: 'And why weren't you in that?'"

The Three Musketeers 3Dopens October 12