Will Sharpe is dressed in baggy all-black: jeans, hoodie and a cap embroidered in red with the words “love poems”. Love poems? That’s pure romantic catnip for fans of the 39-year-old actor, writer and director, who has emerged from the darkly comic shades of his early film and TV work to become a hot contender for most enigmatic leading man of our times.
Suggest this to Sharpe and he’d doubtless throw out a sceptical look from under that baseball cap. We are meeting in the parlour of a central London hotel, crammed with Georgian-period knick-knacks and a chirpily interruptive grandfather clock. Friendly, courteous (he hasn’t eaten lunch yet but puts his boxed delivery order on top of his rucksack for later), he is understated and modest, brushing off compliments like stray confetti. A bit of a giggler in his hipster garb, and with a conversational style full of “sort ofs” and “you knows”, he could be mistaken for being 10 years younger than he is, but this belies his wealth of experience and a sophisticated commitment to camaraderie and artistic innovation. His criteria for career choices? “It always comes down to the people. That’s the part that I really enjoy. Meeting like-minded creative people and learning from them.”
