From cyber terrorist in The Net to Mr. Knightly in this month's Emma, Jeremy Northam is up for anything Hollywood has in store for him **

This isn't supposed to happen. Cruising into fifth gear charm-wise, Jeremy Northam is trying to twist a list of interview questions out of my hands, and I am hanging on to them for dear life. Brute force having failed, he attempts the doe-eyed, cajoling approach. "Come on. I only want to have a look," he wheedles, drawing on a Silk Cut in a vaguely rackish fashion. "Just give me those, and I'll know what you're all about."
Northam was late for our appointment at Piccadilly's salubrious Cafe Royal. On arrival he is sincerely apologetic - if a teensy bit stressed by "bloody" photo shoots - and makes amends by paying for the drinks. The reason for our meeting is Emma, Northam's second foray into Hollywood and Hollywood's second foray in as many years into Jane Austen.

"I wouldn't say Emma was a radically ground-breaking film, but its funny without looking for laughs all the time, and it doesn't have the whiff of classic literature," begins the actor. "And I think it will surprise some people." Its not an idle boast: the film reminds one of a charming romantic TV comedy of yesteryear.
The other surprise in store for audiences is Northam himself. Although Gwyneth Paltrow is appealing as Emma Woodhouse, and industry pundits have already tipped her for awards glory, it is Northam's brooding presence which holds the film together. He lends Emma's paramour Mr. Knightley, who in the book is the slightly stuffy sensible "family friend", a jigger of pure sex. Such is Northam's achievement that, by comparison, erstwhile hot rod Ewan McGregor, shorn of his Scots brogue and hip haircut, barely causes a flutter.

All this is not to suggest that hankering after sex-symbol status is something that keeps the 34-year-old actor awake at night. That privilege he'll happily leave to Rufus Sewell, with whom he co-starred - although they shared no scenes - in last year's Carrington. "It makes me laugh when Rufus refers to himself as ugly and bug-eyed," he chuckles. "I'm like, Oh right, that's really good for the rest of us really ugly people." Ahem. The words pot, kettle and black spring to mind.

The Cambridge-born actor first had a stab at reading Emma when he was 14. "I have to say I loathed it," he confesses. "It wasn't my bag at all. I thought it was the worst form of middle-class repression. But I had missed Austen's sense of humour." At the film's celebrity-addled premiere in Cannes, Northam and co-star Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding) took the best seats in the house. Paltrow didn't even show. Recalls Northam with a conspiratorial whisper "Elton John came up afterwards - this sounds very naff, but I'm so sort of starry-eyed - he came up just like an ordinary person and said 'Oh, I really enjoyed it. What a fun film.' He was the only person who said it all night without an agenda."

This healthy cynicism extends - just - to his Hollywood debut The Net. I confess that I thought the film - an abysmal smirch of big-budget buffoonery - to be an odd choice for an actor with his classical training. Northam does the conversational equivalent of an emergency stop. "Look," he says, leaning forward earnestly. "You wouldn't be interviewing me now if it hadn't been for The Net. I would never have been seen for Emma. No way.
"Never in eight-and-a-half years working did I get in a position where someone was going to offer me a part in Hollywood," he continues, with only the slightest edge of irritation. "Not that it was something I had sought after, or particularly wished for, but when it happened I thought, Why the hell not?" And in retrospect? Well, when he saw The Net's trailer, he thought, "Oh my God." And he does admit to being "not so fond of" the finished product. "But I don't regret anything I have done, and in a way, it was the fulfilment of many fantasies."
I first met Northam back in March, when he was shooting The Tribe for Stephen Poliakoff, in which his character is hired to evict a group of squatters, but ends up sleeping with one of them (ex-Brookside babe Anna Friel) and falling in love with another (Joely Richardson). On the day of the set visit, Richardson was trying to score some Class A drugs in the background - she had to repeat her lines eight or nine times before the sound men got a clean recording of it (someone hadn't noticed when booking the underground nightclub location that next door was Green Park tube station). Meanwhile, Northam happily chattered on about life, the universe and acting. At this time I uncovered some random facts: he studied Latin, Greek and English to an A level, his drug-related experiences amount to two tabs of speed at 19 (verdict: "horrible"), he's "not very proud" of his body, and considers himself to be 13 on the inside. "Yep, I'm at that awkward stage and I fear I always will be." His conversation today, as then, is studded with ponderous "hmmm"s which might mean "I can't think of anything to say" but could always double as "I am in deep thought".
So why haven't we seen much of him before? "I think I had a real morbid fear of being one of those actors hanging around London in a leather jacket and a fake suntan." Until last year, Northam was chugging along nicely in a theatre-based career trajectory that included several seasons at the RSC and the National. But after he took some time out from the stage to shoot his scenes for Carrington, he got the lead in Voices From A Locked Room, a low-budget biopic of eccentric composer Peter Warlock. The film was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival, and Northam headed to LA for a meeting with an agent. Four days after his arrival he was cast as the nasty in The Net. "I just thought, Let's go for it." That "go for it" credo has landed him a part in Mimic, "a science fable" in which he will co-star with Oscar-winning Mira Sorvino. Suddenly, Northam pauses, looking very uncomfortable: "Go for it?" he blurts. "I hate phrases like that! Why did I say that? I never say that."