Before Ruth Wilson inhabits a character on stage or screen, she likes to research the role in depth to figure out what makes her tick. Faced with playing Alice Morgan in the cop series Luther (which premiered last year on BBC1 and returns for a second series next month), she watched the Hannibal Lecter films and read the philosopher John Gray's bleak account of human nature, Straw Dogs.
"I'm drawn to damaged, complicated characters," Wilson, 29, tells me over coffee at the National theatre. She's not kidding. Alice Morgan is a psychotic physicist who murders her parents at the start of Luther and views human relations in terms of energy transfer and dark matter – although there is more chemistry than physics in her relationship with Idris Elba's eponymous detective, to whom she unexpectedly warms during the first series. "What really excites me is the unknown," Wilson says, "and getting to grips with something you have no idea about."
She's also appearing this summer in a Donmar production of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, as a prostitute who embarks on a sea voyage with her estranged father. To prepare for the title role, Wilson travelled to Minnesota, at her own expense, "to get Anna's accent, but also to research the area where she's from. I spent two days digging up information in a library and talking to professors," she says, with the enthusiasm of a history student – which she was, before training as an actor at Lamda. "I felt like a kid in a sweet shop."
Wilson is amiable in conversation – her long, dramatic mouth curves easily into a mischievous smile – but she has had to fight hard for good parts. "My remit has always been: I want to do something different from the last thing I've done." She made her breakthrough playing Jane Eyre in a 2006 BBC mini-series opposite Toby Stephens. Then she was Stella to Rachel Weisz's Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Donmar (winning herself an Olivier). She rubbed shoulders with Ian McKellen on an American TV remake of The Prisoner and her co-star in Anna Christie is Jude Law. Does proximity to so much fame make her head spin? "Not really," she shrugs. "I don't hold much store by it. I end up teasing them a bit."
She concedes that she was excited to work with Idris Elba. "I loved The Wire and I thought: wouldn't it be great to work with Stringer Bell. A year later I was pinching myself." At their first read-through, Elba told her how much he loved her in Jane Eyre and she immediately called his bluff: "You never watched Jane Eyre!" She had "enormous fun" doing Luther, but would like to try something different now. "My parents are desperate, they keep saying: 'Please stop doing these angsty roles; make it easier for us.' So, yeah, I'd love to do some comedy." Given her versatility, and that mischievous grin, it sounds like an idea worth encouraging.
• Luther returns to BBC1 in early June.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
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