Jeremy Northam - the new age spy actor who could go all the way to 007

Jeremy Northam is ideally suited to playing spies. It`s something to do with the rich, honeyed, seductive voice, the perfect English diction and the sly eyes which can ooze charm and cunning in equal measure. He`s had one go already: he was perfect as the machiavellian British spymaster in the World War Two drama Enigma, opposite Kate Winslet. But in his latest film, Northam beautifully subverts all of his natural characteristics – not least his good looks – to turn almost every cliché about the screen spy on its head.

Cypher is a strange, complex, futuristic spy thriller, which its director – the Canadian Vincenzo Natali – quite justifiably calls "James Bond meets Kafka". In it, Northam plays an American accountant, Morgan Sullivan, who is so bored with life that he joins a multinational company as a corporate spy. He`s given a new identity and sent to a series of hilariously tedious conventions (one is on processed cheese, another on shaving cream distribution outlets) in order to tape the proceedings. "He`s a nerdish, bone-achingly normal guy in a boring job," says Northam. "And now he thinks he`s going to be James Bond."

Speaking of being James Bond, having tested the waters in Enigma and Cypher, how would Northam fancy taking on the 007 mantle?

"It`s funny, I still feel about Bond as I did when I was ten years old: when you think of the first time you saw a Bond movie, you remember it as if you were in the film yourself. They appeal to that side in all of us, I think. And after that sort of fantasy, I`m not sure I could ever get my head around the idea that I would actually, seriously be doing it."

But would he, if he were asked? "It isn`t that I wouldn`t consider it. It`s that I don`t think I`d ever seriously be considered. You might as well ask me whether I`ll ever go to Mars."

Cypher is released on September 5

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