British acting legend Tim Roth talks his twisted new Peaky Blinders villain - and compares modern issues to the National Front he witnessed in his youth
'People connect me with bad guys' – Peaky newcomer Tim Roth on the art of playing a villain
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
In time for the release of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man on Netflix later this week, we spoke with acclaimed British actor Tim Roth about his antagonistic role in the film as John Beckett, a British ally of the Nazi forces during World War Two...
Your character, Beckett, is a fascist traitor but, for Duke Shelby, very persuasive…
The first thing that came to mind was playing him as a geography teacher; someone quite gentle. If you play him as the bad guy then it alerts the people that you’re trying to influence. So, he presents himself as a very reasonable guy with a good idea who just needs some help getting it done. I thought it was the appropriate approach as fascism is sly. It’s a monstrous thing that’s cleverly brought about and, quite often, you don’t realise when you’re in the midst of it.
Steven Knight said the fascist elements in the film have contemporary echoes, do you agree?
Yes, it seems all the more appropriate now. There are also echoes of my childhood in London, when it was the National Front. I went to school in Brixton and was in Students Against the Nazis. I got beaten up a lot. Their doppelgängers now are the same. Last time I was in England, I walked through a Tommy Robinson demonstration. It seemed familiar from the stories my dad told about the Second World War.
Your father was a gunner in RAF bombers during the war…
I think my father had PTSD — his trauma was on many levels. This guy I’m playing is a nod to him because my character would’ve been someone that my father would’ve fought against. You bring your own emotions to a role when it’s needed.
Beckett is the latest in a long line of Roth villains like Archibald Cunningham (Rob Roy) and John Christie (Rillington Place) — do you like bad guys?
If you play a bad guy, people connect with it and you get offered a lot of them. But I don’t mind at all. When people ask, “What drives you as an actor?” I say, “Fear of unemployment, mate.” Which is very British. There’s the jobs you do to make sure the roof stays on and all that. And then there are the ones that you do for yourself and sometimes they fly under the radar, but that’s fine with me.
You were a young tyro once, starring in Made in Britain at age 21. How is Barry doing?
Well, he’s further along than I was then. I didn’t know what was going on — I’d never been in front of a camera before I was on that set for Made in Britain. At that time, most of the actors I was coming across came from the posh world and I was nervous about them and my lack of education or university.
Accent was a big thing back then. Now it’s not. But I was taught as I went. I did little plays for television, one with Emma Thompson and, later on, with Stephen Fry. And I learnt that my prejudices were not accurate. That’s what you do, you learn that stuff along the way.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is in cinemas now and is released on Netflix on 20 March 2026.
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Read More:
- Rebecca Ferguson reveals why she studied Cillian Murphy’s sex scenes and how intimacy coordinators were used for Peaky Blinders film
- Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man review – Big screen spin-off keeps a firm red right hand on proceedings
- Peaky Blinders star breaks silence on major character absence from The Immortal Man film: "It’s something you don’t see on TV"
- Steven Knight explains how Peaky Blinders film ended up quite different from his initial plans
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