Russell Tovey: 'I spent all my dollars on art – I'm an addict'

Russell Tovey at home in London - Rii Schroer
Russell Tovey at home in London - Rii Schroer

Russell Tovey shares his home with a French bulldog called Rocky and a fine collection of contemporary art, both of which are competing for my attention. Rocky makes a good go of it, careering around the room in the company of two visiting basset hounds – “He’s showing off,” grins Tovey – until, a handful of dog treats later, we get to looking at the stuff on the walls.

Not many actors invite you on a tour of their home, but not many actors have a home that doubles as a gallery. “The point of art is to share it,” says Tovey who, since banking his first decent-sized pay cheque for the film version of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, has amassed more than 100 works by established and emerging artists.

And they are not just fancy baubles to decorate the place, although they do look great on the walls of his flat, a converted east London warehouse. Tovey lives and breathes art. His shelves are crammed with books on it, his spare time is spent at art fairs, and he co-hosts the podcast Talk Art in which he and Robert Diament, the gallerist, interview leading lights in the art world. As he puts it: “I’m a complete geek.”

Tovey often sits in the living area, an enormous space flooded with light and dominated by a giant Torey Thornton collage that his mum hates (“She says, ‘I could do that…’”), and decides things need rearranging. “Someone will come over and say, ‘I only went out to get some food and you’ve moved everything around!’ ” He jokes that he’s made so many holes in the walls that if he ever sells the flat he’s “going to have to get through vats and vats of Polyfilla”.

Many of the works on display are by American artists, such as Loie Hollowell and Jamian Juliano-Villani. The majority are by women. “I have a lot of the old girls,” he says, referring to Rose Wylie, Phyllida Barlow and Carmen Herrera (who sold her first painting at 89, and is still going at 104). “I’m a feminist. I feel maybe within an art context women are not as appreciated as men and I disagree with that, so I can rally for them. And maybe I find that struggle as a female artist more interesting than a male artist on the same journey.”

'There is a class divide, but art can bridge that': Russell Tovey with his art collection - Credit: Rii Schroer
'There is a class divide, but art can bridge that': Russell Tovey with his art collection Credit: Rii Schroer

Tovey’s own career has been in the ascendant since The History Boys, the 2004 National Theatre show that went on to Broadway and the big screen. Acclaimed stage, television and film roles have followed – as a werewolf trying to live a normal life in BBC Three’s Being Human, a Mormon clerk wrestling with his sexuality in Angels in America and, most recently, a standout performance in BBC One’s dystopian drama Years and Years. In November, we will see him in cinemas in The Good Liar, a thriller with Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen.

Yet he has none of the studied cool practised by some of his peers. He is friendly and open, self-assured without being full of himself. It’s not difficult to see why many of the artists he collects have become friends, including Tracey Emin: “I absolutely adore her. She’s a big part of my life.”

The first “proper” piece of art he bought was an Emin monoprint. “I’d met Tracey at that time and she said, ‘Oh, I’ll tell them to give you a discount,’ so I thought, that’s brilliant. And then the invoice came through and there was VAT of 17.5 per cent, which I hadn’t factored in. I didn’t even know what that was.” He was, he admits, “very out of my depth”. So he threw himself into learning about that world, not wanting artists to think he was “just some young actor who had a bit of money”.

He was brought up in Romford and Billericay, Essex, by parents who ran a coach company. As a teenager, he visited the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997, which featured some of the most notorious works of the Young British Artists – from Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde, to Marcus Harvey’s handprint image of Myra Hindley. “That changed everything,” Tovey says. “I remember being completely blown away, thinking it was the most amazing thing and it was ours.”

Russell Tovey (far left) in the 2006 film adaptation of The History Boys
Russell Tovey (far left) in the 2006 film adaptation of The History Boys

Art is not an investment for him. (“My accountants are like, ‘How much did you spend on that?!’ ”) “I want to live with work and I want to support emerging artists and feel like I’m contributing to art history in a minor way. Like I've worked in America, I've done TV shows there and I’ve earned good money but I don’t have any dollars left at all – I spent all my dollars on art. But I have to. I’m an addict.”

In the early days, Tovey felt a bit embarrassed to discuss art with his History Boys co-stars in case they laughed at him: “I think it takes a long time to own the fact that you’re a geek.” That production changed the lives of its cast, which included Dominic Cooper and James Corden. The latter has spoken of the crushing feeling of seeing the others come in each day with film scripts while he was only offered bit parts on account of his weight. Tovey says of that period: “We all had a united feeling but we were like a boy band, all wanting to go on to solo careers afterwards, and it was all about navigating your insecurities and your jealousy and your ambition.” He laughs at the memory of Cooper leaving his Hollywood scripts at the side of the stage for the others to see. “There was a pecking order and Dominic was at the top. He was the leading man, destined to be the pin-up.”

These days, Tovey has attained a certain pin-up status himself. Gone is the awkward schoolboy look – now he’s gym-honed and models for the luxury label Loewe. He has 625,000 followers on Instagram, and they’re not all there for his thoughts on art. “I think when I was in Being Human I was a secret embarrassing crush that you would never admit. And then, I don’t know. I think I’ve got better with age. I feel more sure of myself now.”

One of Tovey’s biggest fans is Russell T Davies, who cast him in Years and Years, and long ago lobbied for him to play Doctor Who (the job that time went to Matt Smith). “I would have totally gone for it,” Tovey says. Would he still be up for it? “I don’t know if it’s the sort of thing where, if you’ve been touted as James Bond and it doesn’t work out, it can’t happen again. It feels like now if I did it, everyone would be like: ‘Oh… OK.’” He pulls a comically disappointed face. He then brings Benedict Cumberbatch into the conversation. “If they do more Sherlock, maybe he won’t be Sherlock any more, and it can regenerate as another Sherlock. That’s possible, you know.”

A hint at a future role? Perhaps, although he has the next few years mapped out. In the new year, he is doing a Broadway run of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – and then there’s fatherhood. He wants to be a dad by the time he’s 40, and he turns 38 in November. He is in a relationship, with personal trainer Steve Brockman (owner of the aforementioned basset hounds), but being single wouldn’t be a deal-breaker. “I’ve got to start thinking about it. Lots of my friends are doing it now, surrogates and other things, and it feels right. I’m up for it. I know a dog isn’t a baby, but I’ve had him” – he gestures at Rocky – “six years now and it’s been one of the best things that ever happened to me. It’s a complete honour to be burdened with him, and I feel like the next step is a kid, isn’t it?”

He has just bought a flat in Margate, and – in a measure of the weight he now carries in art circles – is curating the Margate NOW arts festival, which will run alongside the Turner Prize exhibition at the town’s Turner Contemporary gallery. Tovey firmly believes that art should be “classless” and the festival will go to unexpected places. “It might be something in a fish and chip shop, or you might turn the corner and in a housing estate there might suddenly be a big installation. Art is for everyone, and that’s what Margate is doing. Yes, there is a class divide, but art can bridge that.”

On my way out, I see a Tracey Emin neon over the front door that reads: “More passion”. It could be Tovey’s motto. “I’ve always been unapologetic when it comes to enthusiasm,” he says. “I’m passionate, and I think passion goes a long way.”

Margate NOW runs from Sept 28 to Oct 13 (margatefestival.org)