After spending four years playing gay characters on TV, Toby Sawyer is glad to be going straight in two new plays, he tells Steve Pratt.

TOBY Sawyer spent three years in teen soap Hollyoaks as Bazz, a gay lad coming to terms with his sexuality. He then spent a year playing gay bar manager Tom in the revamped Crossroads.

Two soaps, two gays - it's easy to see a trend developing. As an out gay actor, he might have had cause for concern over this apparent typecasting.

Perhaps Crossroads' reputation for wobbly sets and equally wobbly acting should have been more of a worry. But he just couldn't resist booking in at the legendary motel.

"It's such a cult thing and when you get offered a part you think, 'if I turn it down I might regret for the rest of my life'," he says.

"Everything is a gamble. They brought out a book about Crossroads, the early years and the later years, so to be in the same book as Benny was great."

Acting, after all, is the art of pretending to be someone else so there's no reason why he should be restricted to gay roles. "It's important I play all the characters as well as I can," he says.

"What attracted me to Tom in Crossroads was he was quite different to Bazz, looking after his younger brother and hopefully settling down. Quite boring, really. It was being part of a more stable couple and not about them being gay. I thought that was moving it on." Casting directors can be short-sighted - why else would the same faces turn up in every series? - but Sawyer is happy with the way things are going, especially now he's working more on stage.

"There is a certain shorthand about casting but what's so brilliant with the theatre is I'm allowed to be a lot more different people than perhaps recently I have been on TV," he says.

Apart from "some cheesy amateur dramatics" over which he draws a discreet veil, Sawyer didn't consider acting as a career until he joined the drama group as a student at university in Newcastle.

"I auditioned for the first play, Twelfth Night, and got in. We went to the Edinburgh Festival, did all the things students do, and I got into acting," he says.

His current theatre role - roles, to be precise - prove his point as he's playing two very different parts in two very different plays being premiered as part of the Northern Exposure festival of new writing at West Yorkshire Playhouse, in Leeds.

In Huddersfield, the first production of a Serbian play in this country, he plays Igor, who's returned to his homeland after living in the Northern town for ten years. "It's a black comedy, quite rude and filthy and sexy," he says.

In the other play, Coming Around Again, he plays a "proper Northern boy who gets a girl up the duff". Add playing the Ewan McGregor role in the stage version of Brassed Off - "you can't get more heterosexual than a miner" - and you can see that Sawyer is getting plenty of opportunity to display his versatility as an actor.

The schedule of rehearsing and opening two new plays in tandem at Leeds has ruled out visiting Huddersfield, but Cheshire-born Sawyer's always regarded himself as a Northerner. "My mum comes from Middlesbrough so I used to go to Robin Hood's Bay and Scarborough on holiday. I've always felt Northern. When you live in Manchester, you don't want to go south," he explains.

He was 24 when he joined the Hollyoaks cast. He learnt a lot because he was able to watch everything he did on TV six weeks later. It also brought him to the attention of theatre directors.

So did an eye-catching role, involving a three-in-a-bed romp, in the film Quills, with Kate Winslet. That led to him being auditioned for the role of Anakin Skywalker in the latest films in the Star Wars series.

Sawyer hasn't turned his back on soaps, saying he'd love to be in Coronation Street or EastEnders. What he'd really like now is a role in a TV series going out after nine o'clock, something like Cutting It or No Angels.

"I've only had one week off all year, so I haven't had time to go up and audition for anything," he adds.

Huddersfield and Coming Around Again continue at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until June 5. A third production in the Northern Exposure season, Crap Dad by Mark Catley, plays from June 9 to 12. Tickets 0113-213 7700.