Smooth operator

and romanced Keira Knightley in the costume drama The Duchess. Now actor Dominic Cooper has been knocking on people’s doors trying to sell them mortgages.

It was all part of his research to play shady mortgage broker Dave in BBC2’s drama Freefall, written and directed by the Bafta-winning film-maker Dominic Savage.

Cooper was asked to doorstep people in preparation for the role. “I was never sure whether the director had told these people I was an actor or whether I was an actual mortgage broker,” says the 31-yearold.

“It felt very heartless a lot of the time.

It was actually quite terrifyingly easy to get them to agree to these mortgage terms that they wouldn’t be able to afford.”

Freefall tackles the current financial crisis by following the lives of three men with everything on the line.

Gus (played by Aidan Gillen) is a highflying city exec who packages and sells bundles of mortgages for extortionate profit. Dave is the mortgage broker who can make anything happen.

Then there’s his old school friend, Jim (Joseph Mawle), who’s offered a way out of the council flat he and his family live in through an offer that seems too good to refuse.

Cooper thanks his own old school pals who are now salesmen – “although not as brutal as Dave” he’s keen to point out – for sharing the tricks of the trade with him.

“It’s very conceived. You go into someone’s house and get a very quick understanding of who that person is,” he says.

“You see little things in their house, things that they’re really obsessed with or that they really want and you cling to them and use them as tacks to inspire this person to buy your product. It’s really clever.”

He admits he revelled in the chance to play the smooth-talking salesman.

“Yeah, I was excited to get under his skin and understand how these people operate,” he says.

“Dave’s horrible – he’s an awful guy.

He’s totally full of himself, he loves the money, and he just wants more of everything.

But I don’t blame him.

“I don’t look at the people who did what he did and think, ‘how could you have done that?’ because we all do what we do for a reason. Dave just didn’t question the consequences.

“It’s totally about greed, but then that seems to be the world that we’re living in at the moment. We seem to all think that we’re owed something.”

FREEFALL was made with a small crew and a script that was completely improvised. “The director kept telling us a script would arrive and it never materialised,” says Cooper.

“There was a trepidation of not knowing what to expect, which was very intense and frightening but it made you feel like you were having to pluck thoughts and make snap decisions, so I found it exhilarating and liberating as an actor. It was challenging and rewarding.”

“But we were told there were going to be times when it feels terrible and that we’d just have to embrace that and absolutely go for it as long as were clear about what the character was thinking and what we needed to achieve in the scene. We just had to take a risk.”

Making her acting debut as Dave’s beautician girlfriend is Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding. “She was great,”

says Cooper.

“We thought she sounded perfect for the role, so we got together and did some improvisation. She took to it immediately and just did it.”

His previous on-screen partnerships include Keira Knightley, whom he acted alongside in the film The Duchess.

And in Mamma Mia!, his chemistry with his on-screen fiancee, Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried, seeped into reality and the two have been dating ever since.

One result of Mamma Mia!’s phenomenal success was being asked to appear in an extravagant song and dance number alongside Hugh Jackman and Beyonce at the opening of the Oscars in February.

“That was ridiculous,” he says.

“It was (Moulin Rouge’s) Baz Luhrmann directing that was just brilliant.

“And to be dancing on a stage in front of every one of the most famous actors you could ever imagine, trying desperately to do this dance routine, yeah, it was completely surreal.”

■ Freefall: Tuesday, BBC2, 9pm.