After finding fame as one of Alan Bennett’s History Boys, North-East actor Jamie Parker shadows Hollywood A-lister Tom Cruise in a new film about the plot to kill Hitler.

He talks to Steve Pratt about how a survival course almost cost him the role.,p> GOING on a Ray Mears-style survival course almost cost Darlington actor Jamie Parker a role in the new Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie. It resulted in him making a last-minute dash through London’s West End to his audition for Hollywood director Bryan Singer.

“I was out of contact for a week in the South- East of England with my wife doing a survival course,” explains Parker, who made his name in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys on stage in London and on Broadway, and then on film.

“We’d been living in a forest for a week and didn’t have our telephones on. I got back to the car and there were 19 messages from my agent on my mobile, asking ‘where are you?’.

“I said I was in Kent and he said ‘how awful, can you get to Covent Garden Hotel – Bryan Singer is in town for the afternoon and you have a meeting for the new Tom Cruise film.”

So Parker made a dash for London. “It ended up with me running through Covent Garden in the pouring rain with a beard, wearing shorts and mud all over my hands. And there was me in this posh hotel with this A-list Hollywood director.

It was kind of surreal,” he says.

The film, Valkyrie, is based on the true story of the German army officers who plotted to kill Hitler. Cruise stars as Colonel Stauffenberg, a loyal officer appalled by Hitler’s actions who joins senior commanders to confront and overthrow the Fuhrer. They then plan to assassinate him.

“I knew it was the story of the conspiracy, I certainly didn’t know anything about the guy I was supposed to be playing before I went to the meeting,” he says.

Parker plays Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, Stauffenberg’s personal aide, who had possibly the most intimate view of the conspirator in the lead-up to the attempted assassination.

Producer Chris Lee describes the character as “a kind of surrogate for the audience as the new kid on the block who gets to know the resistance as we watch”.

Parker explains: “At first, he’s just listening and observing all that’s going on around him, but as he becomes more and more involved, you get to see that process.”

He was surrounded by familiar faces on the set in Germany, where the film was shot on locations where actual events occurred. Many of the cast were British: Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp, Tom Hollander and Eddie Izzard. “It was crazy,” Parker says. “Everywhere you looked there was someone you’d seen in other films.”

He admits that working with Tom Cruise was a daunting prospect. “When I first got to the set, I had a sort of minor meltdown, thinking ‘that’s Tom Cruise, who I’ve seen in an awful lot of films’,” he says. “But he turned out to be an extraordinary bloke. He has unlimited energy and he’s willing to go for it right from the word go.

“He brought a real focus to the work ethic every day and you can’t help but be affected by that. It requires that you’re always switched on, and it was an exciting experience.”

Imagining what a Hollywood star would be like to work with was unhelpful as far as he’s concerned. “You try not to have preconceptions or expectations. Whatever they are, they end up being wrong. You can’t hope to have any idea until you turn up on set,” he says.

“Cruise is extremely generous and welcoming to people on the set. He engaged 150 per cent in whatever conversation he was having.

“He was determined to have a family-orientated set and made sure the crew and cast members had the opportunity to have their family around too. You felt they didn’t have to sit in their hotel room, they could come along and join in. That was a delight and a surprise.”

Parker sees Cruise as “totally disciplined”.

He was glad to have fellow Brits around, he says. “Obviously I’m in a different league as far as credentials go, but I had something in common with them. As far as feature films, the only other thing I had done was The History Boys, which was at the other end of the spectrum, shot in 30 days.

“With Valkyrie, there were trailers and cranes and steadicams. That was all completely new to me. I had to keep my eyes open and learn on the hoof. It was much more technical – much more piecemeal.”

His role meant he was in a lot of scenes and always with Cruise. “I had this very luxurious position of not really being in the actual centre of the maelstrom, but I was in the scene. I didn’t have a single scene that didn’t involve Tom Cruise.

“So I had a lot to do. I was there more or less every day, but I don’t say a huge amount in the film. I was able to just watch and learn.

“It was apparent from the script that the story had been well researched and there was a military specialist on set to advise on such things as which arm I held my cap under.”

Valkyrie took him away from home filming in Germany for four-and-a-half months, shorter than the several years in which The History Boys occupied his attention. He was involved in the award-winning National Theatre play from the very beginning, from readthrough to the London production and world tour that ended on Broadway, where the production won several Tony awards.

Parker’s approaching 30 and glad that the opportunity didn’t come along earlier. “I don’t envy people who are thrust into the limelight in their late teens or early 20s. They don’t have the maturity to keep their feet on the ground,”

he says.

Since filming Valkyrie, he’s returned to the National on London’s South Bank in The Revenger’s Tragedy.

“That was a ball, to be honest,” he says. “It was such a joy, I didn’t realise how much I liked it. Just going through the stage door – it’s a wonderful place and I was chuffed to bits to go back.”

He’s currently auditioning for films, and a TV drama series may be in the offing. His parents still live in the North-East and although he doesn’t get back that much, “it still is and always will be the place where I grew up”.

■ Valkyrie (12A) opened in cinemas yesterday.