A very angry young man

ONE of the scariest scenes in new horror movie, 28 Weeks Later, finds Scottish actor Robert Carlyle being consumed by the rage virus that's sweeping the country.

His character, Don, becomes a very angry young man, turning on his wife - the same woman he deserted as gangs of rage victims attacked their home. When they kiss, she passes on the rage virus. The sight of Carlyle in full flesh-ripping, blood-vomiting, eye-gouging mode are the stuff of nightmares.

"That was pretty disturbing, actually," confesses the Glasgow-born actor who first caught the eye of cinema audiences as the psychopathic Begby in Trainspotting and then as a stripping miner in The Full Monty.

Actress Catherine McCormack, who plays his wife, was replaced by a very realistic dummy for the scenes where she's ripped apart by Don.

"The dummy was so like Catherine. It was like her lying there. We're good friends, Catherine and I, so it was kind of strange on the set when people made jokes about the dummy and slapped it. I was like, 'you're slapping Catherine, don't do that'," he says.

"The rest of it, after the kiss, was up to me. It was 'do what you want to do, Bobby'. So the eye thing came from me but, looking at it, it's disgusting. That sequence was probably four or five hours to do. And I had a headache for two days afterwards from smashing my head on the glass.

"All it says in the script is 'Don transforms'. It's one of those moments, it could be anything. For an actor, you have the space to let that energy go. It's a very cathartic experience. I think it's in you. I've always believed that, as an actor, anything you're asked to do is within you. You have to try and find it, find that really, really dark spot."

The eyes had it in another respect. His rage make-up called for red-tinted contact lenses. "That was the worst part, that was terrible," says Carlyle, who doesn't wear lenses in real life.

"It's like a fist in your eye. The trouble with those things when you're working with them on film is that the studio is very hot and they stick to your eyes. You have to get constant drops to make sure that doesn't happen.

"I scratched my eye making another film, Eragon, a couple of years ago and it's a bit of a problem. I can't keep the lenses in too long."

The premise of 28 Weeks Later is that a rage virus has all but wiped out mainland Britain. And it appears it's not under control, despite the US army declaring the war against the infection has been won. The film follows Carlyle's family - his wife and two children - as they battle against the rage.

Carlyle was happy to be part of the project because he's known and worked with the makers of the first one, director Danny Boyle and producer Andrew Macdonald, over a number of years. Even though Boyle was handing over directorial duties (to Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo), the actor had no worries. None of the original cast survived for the sequel which he sees as a good thing is some ways because it means 28 Weeks Later stands on its own. "If you enjoyed the first one, you'll enjoy this one for sure. But if you haven't seen it, I don't think it matters," he says.

The main bone of contention is whether it's a zombie movie. Carlyle settles for horror film, or thriller-type horror film. "My understanding of zombie movies is people rising from the dead, from their graves and walking very slowly. These people in our film don't do that," he says.

He also doesn't subscribe to the snobbishness surrounding horror movies. A decent script is a decent script, no matter what genre. "I could sit here and write a horror script, putting in the things that are going to work. There are certain elements I identify as being quite key, suspense and apprehension.

"Hitchcock was brilliant at that, not in a horror sense but in a suspense way. In our film, as soon as that match is lit and that candle is lit in that little cottage and the music soundtrack comes in, you know something very nasty is going to happen. That's a crucical point in a film like this. You have to deliver once you've promised, once you've teased."

28 Weeks Later delivers by the bucketload of blood and gore. Yet the scariest moment for Carlyle was facing the wife he deserted to save his own skin. "It was funny when I watched it back and heard me say that 'babe' thing. A friend of mine says that to his girlfriend every time he's done something wrong. I took that from him. How is she going to react? He's afraid, and in terms of being scared that's probably the scariest moment in the film for me."

Carlyle is serious about his work, be it serious drama or horror movie. So the scene in which Don is confronted by his daughter about leaving their mother to die gave him pause for thought.

"I suppose there are a lot of moral decisions made in this film. It's an entertainment, of course it is, but there are some elements within it worthy of talking about on a moral level," he says.

"Parents understand what their children are on about, and then tend to go 'no'. It's a kind of normal thing. I kept thinking 'what if it was my own kids'. I have three under five. Is this what's ahead?"

Since his Bafta-award winning performance in The Full Monty made him an international star, Carlyle has mixed commercial movies with indie pictures and TV series. There've been rumours about a Trainspotting sequel but nothing definite, although he adds: "I would do it tomorrow".

He is doing another Irvine Welsh script, The Meat Trade, a modern-day take on 19th century bodysnatchers Burke and Hare. The film, also starring Colin Firth as the head of an organ clinic in Edinburgh, is scheduled to go into production in the autumn.

He tends not to think too much ahead. "I've never been good at accepting jobs six months down the line. If I'm thinking about this, I can't think about that. So I always seem to fly by the seat of my pants."

He's worked in the US and feels there's a long discussion to be had about the differences between film-making here and there. He's happiest being around the kind of projects that he enjoyed growing up. "My heroes were - and are - the great British actors of the 1950s and 1960s. Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, and the films they made then. Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, Billy Liar.

"Those films spoke to me, even when I was younger, even before I knew what a film was. I understood what they were about because they were telling me about that time.

"What I do, if I can find it, is something that documents the time. Then you've got a job worth doing. That's not to say you can't get that when you're working with American films for the American market. But it's a different sensibility and there's less room for that."

28 Weeks Later (18) opens in cinemas on Friday.