Actor Mark Wingett stars in new British crime drama King of Crime, set in the world of Cyber Crime Marcus King (Mark Wingett – Quadrophenia, The Bill), Britain’s most notorious cybercriminal, finds himself at the mercy of some extremists, he knows it’s time to settle some old scores, play one of the biggest scams of his life, and defeat the terrorists. It’s just a question of whether he can maneuver his footsoldiers, protect his wife (Claire King – Emmerdale, Bad Girls), and decipher some double-crossing before he’s safe in the land of milk and honey. We spoke to Mark about King of Crime and his carear so far.

What was your journey like in becoming an actor?

Well it was a bit of a thunderbolt really, I really liked English at school and through that got involved in drama and doing plays at school.  When I was 13 I got this thing called a schorship which meant I had extra drama lessons each week and we used to enter lots of exhibitions and drama festivals. At 17 years of age I had a lead in a play with the national youth theatre and that’s where I was seen for a film called Quadrophenia and that was forty years ago and that’s what started my career. I always intended to go to drama school but one job followed another after that and I never actually got round to it!

If not an actor, what profession would you choose?

That’s very interesting actually I discovered in my 20s a love for scuba diving so I think I would either been a commercial diver or a diving instructor, diving was really opening up back then and became one of the biggest growth sports on the planet. So I think I would have done something either on the sea or under the sea.

You famously played police detective Jim Carver in The Bill do people ever confuse you with the characters you play?

Not particularly but people do say “are you a real Police man ” which is quite a compliment really. Recently I had a head on collision around Christmas time in Scotland, it was my fault and I rushed over to the other car and the poor woman whose car I hit said “how did the Police get here so quickly?” it must have been the shock but she was eventually all right the poor woman was probably concussed!  

And you are working with Chris Ellison from the Bill in your new film King Of Crime Yeah it was great, I used to share a dressing room with Chris on The Bill and that was great fun, I don’t think the others knew what to make of us really we have a code you see based on initials and we know what it means but no one else does! So we can go “ PB “ and start giggling and people must be thinking what are they on about?  King of Crime took a month to film which is not a lot of time but I think it’s quite entertaining and an interesting character to play

In King of Crime you are playing a character on the other side of the thin blue line.  Was that a refreshing change?

It was but I’ve actually played quite a lot of villains in my time, I took the part of playing a Policeman in 1983 because it made a change from playing a villain and little did I know that role would last 20odd years! So yeah it’s nice to go back to the dark side.

King of Crime is fairly low budget especially compared to some of the big productions you have been in over the years. How does that affect your performance as an actor?

For me it doesn’t matter the scale of the film you always try and do a good job,  what you have on bigger budget films is you have more time, more time to kind of research and to rehearse although the mechanics of making a film of course are exactly the same. What’s happened of course now is everything is a lot quicker, cameras are lighter, equipment is generally better and post production processes are a lot quicker as well but with regards performance from an actors perspective its exactly the same.

What has been the most enjoyable role to play personally?

Well I really like theatre, I was in a play called Maggie’s End about the death of Margaret Thatcher and I thoroughly enjoyed that but I think my all-time favourite has to be Quadrophenia, actually we have just finished filming a documentary on the making of  Quadrophenia for the 40^th anniversary of the film called Our Generation for Sky Arts which should be out in June. I was 17 when I made that film and nothing will ever top that for me. I’ve had some great jobs though like I played a Gladiator trainer in a version of Spartacus and we went to Tunisia to film that with a great group of actors which was a lot of fun.

What’s next for you?

Well this year there’s a lot going on with the 40^th anniversary of Quadrophenia and coming up in a few weeks we are doing a round table for that which will be members of the cast sitting round acting out scenes and discussing them which is something I’m really looking forward to.  I’m currently in a series called Dark Ditties which is a series of short low budget horror films for Amazon Prime and they really are quite interesting. The production company like to use the same actors for that so I’m really looking forward to filming the next one at the end of February.  There’s also a film called ‘To Be Someone’ which is a Mod story, I’m hoping that will get made this year.

The King of Crime staring Mark Wingett is available now on DVD and Digital Download.