When people approach him in the street, Michael Elwyn sometimes forgets his name. Well, not his exactly but that of his character in the cult TV hit This Life.

"A lot of young people come up to me and say, 'you're Miles's dad' and I have to think, 'what's his name?," admits the priest's son whose taste for the theatre was nurtured growing up in Shakespeare's birthplace Stratford-upon-Avon. (The name was Montgomery in case you can't remember).

This Life remains the TV role for which he's most recognised but is one of many in a career stretching over 37 years. Other series, of which he had high hopes, have failed to find popular success. Among those are Tim Firth's Border Caf. "I thought that was a really good series," says Elwyn, currently appearing in Arthur Miller's Broken Glass at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.

"Tim is one of the few good writers not writing to a formula. He writes quirky characters. But it didn't get the viewing figures they now want. I was thrilled to play something different as I'm often cast as the authority figure. There's been a lot of that over the years.

"My Border Caf character was really mixed up, having a mid-life crisis. I had to learn drumming which wasn't easy but I became good enough to mime. I'm Welsh enough to love singing but had never played an instrument."

He was also in the BBC's Second World War-time series No Bananas which those involved imagined becoming a long-running saga like A Family At War. Again, the audience share didn't warrant carrying on, according to the powers-that-be.

Two recent TV experiences have endorsed his conclusion that "you can't beat doing a good play in a flourishing theatre". He filmed Plain Jane, with Kevin Whatley and written by top writer Lucy Gannon, two years ago, but it has yet to be screened. ITV comedy Big Bad World was pulled from the schedules after three episodes, before the episode in which he appears was shown. He can rest assured that his appearance in new ITV series Micawber, which he filmed in York, will be screened - it stars David Jason.

No wonder he enthuses about stage work, saying he's never gone 18 months without doing a play. "I would hate not to do theatre," he says. "It's just that TV pays the bills - some is good, some is not so good."

Elwyn moved with his family from Wales to Stratford when he was five, so his early years involved seeing the theatre's leading lights of the 1950s and 1960s. Productions such as Antony And Cleopatra, with Michael Redgrave and Peggy Ashcroft, and Peter Hall's War Of The Roses season made a lasting impression on him.

"It was so powerful. I must have been about ten times," he recalls. "I went to the Stratford theatre as much as I could. My parents encouraged me. You'd have to queue up and sleep out to get tickets.

"I always had the acting bug. My father was a priest and there's a very strong link between the church and the theatre. His preaching was theatrical in the best sense of the word - he moved and inspired. I loved seeing him work, that was a big subconscious influence.

"I did school plays, and the acting just built up more and more. When I went to university in Oxford I acted all the time. I treated it like a drama school."

At one point Elwyn managed a theatre, the Watermill at Newbury, for three years. He'd acted there and directed, so the idea didn't seem so alien. "I quite liked the idea of running something in the community - the challenge of running a building, handling all the problems and accepting the responsibility."

The converted watermill received only a small grant, depending on audiences for its income. He's proud that he didn't have to do Agatha Christie thrillers to keep going, recounting proudly how an Ibsen play attracted full houses. "I used to act at the end of the season and never directed myself. I would like to think I'm a good actor-manager," he says.

"I tried to get another building, got very near but didn't get asked so I went back to acting. I have directed over the years but I'm an actor at heart."

His current role in Broken Glass, set in 1938 Brooklyn, has him playing a doctor with a woman patient who, for no apparent physical cause, is unable to move her legs. Her obsession with news of Jewish atrocities in Germany is one of the possible causes of her paralysis.

Elwyn previously worked with director Ian Brown on a tour of Strangers On A Train, best known as a Hitchcock movie. He also had to remind co-star Susan Penhaligon, from TV's Bouquet Of Barbed Wire, that they'd worked together before. "It was 30 years ago when she was very young in a TV series called The Regiment," he says.

"It's good when you meet up with people again. Actors always like making connections. Our lives are rather vagabondish, so when you do meet people it just gives you that feeling of family."

* Broken Glass continues at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until June 9. Tickets 0113-213 7700.

Published: 11/05/01