I am coming to India in January, hopefully,” Linus Roache tells me as we get face-to-face on a virtual call. “I have been to India many times.. I have worked in Kerala and in Shimla as well. It’s a place very close to my heart,” continues the veteran actor who has credits like Law and Order, Vikings, Batman Begins, RFK and Homeland. He now stars as the older Tom Burgess, a gay policeman, in My Policeman, that streams on Amazon Prime Video from November 4. The younger Tom Burgess is played by Harry Styles.

My Policeman has released in select countries and you also premiered the film at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. What’s the feedback been like so far?

I don’t read reviews and I don’t do social media (laughs)… and so the feedback that I have been getting is directly from people who have seen the film and who I have met afterwards. The overwhelming response is that people are deeply moved. The audience is quite tearful even though there is a ray of hope at the end of the movie.

But it brings up regret and lost love and missed opportunity and wasted time... the audience is touched by the movie and also inspired to love who they want to love. In simple terms, I would say that people have been impacted and moved very emotionally.

Was that also the predominant emotion when you first heard about the film and your part in it?

I love stories that deal with big movements of time... that’s because as an actor, you feel that you have experienced a lifetime within a film. This movie is set in two time periods — we are in the 1950s and the 1990s. Hence, one gets to feel the weight of experience and a life lived and a life lost as well. It was really the depth and the complexity of the story that hooked me.

It is a romantic story with overarching themes of friendship. It’s very nuanced and complex and rich. It’s like a good wine... after you have finished drinking it, you do spend time thinking about it. That’s what this film is for me.

In My Policeman, you play the older Tom Burgess, while Harry Styles plays the younger Tom. What’s the key, especially with regard to this film, to maintain synchronicity and harmony between two versions of the same character and yet make it your own?

Very good question! Our director Michael Grandage included us in his thinking and all of his ideas of the two different worlds. As a cast, we were told and taught about what it’s going to be like in the ’50s and what the world in the ’90s would be like.

Those of us who played the older characters shot later on in the schedule and we got to see what our younger counterparts were doing. We didn’t get to see much, but we were given a sense of what they were like and what they were doing. Michael made a very good point... that 40 years later, we are not really the same person. I definitely feel that in my life when I look back at the young man who did some foolish things (laughs)... he’s definitely me, but I am a different person now.

Michael almost encouraged us to think out of the box about how the two worlds are connected and how they exist in the same universe. There was a lot of contemplation about the parts, but he eventually freed us all to just give our own rendition because we are living in different times and under different circumstances, and more importantly, we are very different people.

Your Tom lives in the ’90s, which is, of course, freer times than the ’50s, but you are also carrying the burden of 40 years of pretending to be someone you aren’t. Does that burden show up in your portrayal of Tom?

Again, that’s a great question! I have thought about this a lot, I have contemplated over it and I have read the book (of the same name) by Bethan Roberts which evokes that kind of a heavy feeling.

I also watched a wonderful movie called 45 years, starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling. The whole movie is about two people married for 45 years who justco-exist. Gina (McKee, who plays the older Marion Taylor and is married to Tom) and I were finding ways to just exist together and communicate without talking... how to inhabit that was a deep contemplation for us. I suppose that when you are older, you do have regrets about missed opportunities and you realise the consequences of it.

Also, we were given an opportunity to rehearse, be in that world and feel like what a normal day in that kind of life would be like. When you watch the film, you will realise that though the older Tom and Gina have been living a mundane life for long, right at the beginning of the film, the third character — Patrick (played by Rupert Everett) — comes into their lives and that’s a massive catalyst to their being of stasis. It’s like a bomb being brought into the house... everything is going to explode, everything is going to change.

Is Tom Burgess anything like you in terms of personality?

I am an actor who loves diversity. I will always have a go at something I have never done, but with every character, you have to find a part of yourself that can make that connection. Every part for me is a new challenge because even though you bring subtle parts of yourself into a character — like I did for Tom — at the end of the day, I embodied someone who isn’t me. And that’s the beauty of the job. Just finding subtle character traits, mannerisms and thinking that are similar, but in the end, it’s also about the art of letting go. You can do all the thinking and reading beforehand, but it’s also about living in the moment.

With Tom’s character, it was about imagining how it would feel if I shut a part of my life down for decades... and then it became an exercise in behaviour to see how people co-exist.

Diversity of roles apart, what excites you the most about acting?

I feel very blessed to still be getting roles and making a living out of acting. As I said, I like this job because of the way it gives me an opportunity to be in a place where I haven’t been before. I have just done two movies and I am working on a TV series at the moment, and all the roles are completely different.

I think I am becoming more of a character-actor as I am getting older. I was always a character-actor, but they tended to make me the leading man. But I am becoming more and more interested in character exploration. I have just finished playing a cyberpunk mercenary and a very screwed-up man with a dark past in a movie called The Apology. And now I am playing a very strong politician in the 1950s who is going against McCarthy (Joseph Raymond McCarthy, US Republican senator). My wife (stage and TV actress Rosalind Bennet) and I have written something together and I am hoping to branch out as director. I love the medium of film... I keep watching films all the time. Editing, cinematography, acting, directing... all coming together is like making magic and I keep pursuing that movie magic all the time.

You just spoke about wanting to be more of a character actor than a leading man. But aren’t the lines getting increasingly blurred in the current creative landscape?

Well, My Policeman is an ensemble film, though more emphasis is given to the younger characters. We actually won Best Ensemble Cast at Toronto... the six of us hold the film together. I come from a theatre background where everything is, at the end of the day, an ensemble.

But I don’t think we have hit that phase yet where we don’t have leading men and leading ladies. They will always be there, and sometimes you have to follow the protagonist. It’s the hero’s journey in most movies and you have to follow them.

You say you watch movies all the time. Any recent ones you liked?

I just watched Triangle of Sadness... it’s such a powerful satire and I came out of the cinema going, ‘Wow’. At the moment, I am not listening to critics. I have realised I have been too influenced by critics and a couple of times, I have watched a film and liked it and wondered why critics are destroying it. I will go out on a limb here and say that I just watched David O. Russell’s Amsterdam. It’s not a perfect movie, but I don’t know why the critics have bashed it so badly. It has some brilliant moments and great performances and done in the genre of a comedy caper. I came out with a lot of admiration for the craft.

I think good criticism is a very high standard to meet because you have to understand what you are criticising. You have to know your stuff and I believe that there are very few true critics out there.

Which recently criticised film that you like personally?

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