Man of mystery shows his lighter side

Lennie James got into acting by being interested in a particular girl.
By JANICE RHOSHALLE LITTLEJOHN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
FILLMORE, Calif. -- When British actor Lennie James arrived in Los Angeles early last year, he gave himself three months to get a gig. After three weeks, he'd been offered two.
"I promised my mates I wouldn't tell the story again," jokes James, who landed his role on "Jericho" after his first audition -- almost unheard of in Hollywood.
"I didn't test for the network. I didn't actually go back and do another meeting. It was all on that first meeting, and I was done and signed up," he says with a smile. "That's why my friends hate me."
But audiences are loving James as Robert Hawkins, one of the mystery men in the CBS drama about a Kansas town trying to cope in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on the U.S.
Unbeknownst to those around him, Hawkins has been involved in undercover operations that may hold the key to saving Jericho. But he also must contend with its prodigal son, Jake (Skeet Ulrich), who has an equally clandestine past.
Exec producer's praise
"Lennie is a great dramatic actor," says executive producer Carol Barbee. "But he's also very funny and very friendly, and he has all of those facets to him that make him a great con man and we needed a great con man.
"I always thought Hawkins would be this incredible, interesting little thread that would probably pick up momentum," Barbee continues. "But very quickly the audience just wanted to see Lennie and he's almost become a co-lead with Skeet."
Says Ulrich: "I think we have similar rhythms and understandings and it's very natural working with him. It's clear when you're doing scenes with him that he has a point of view as to what the scene is really about for him and with the character."
Unlike the closed-off Hawkins, the 40-year-old Londoner is open and personable while on location filming the episode airing Wednesday (8 p.m. EDT). In it, tensions flare between Jericho and a neighboring town, forcing Jake and Hawkins into an alliance.
"In the episode that preceded this, it was pretty much a showdown with a gun between them and now there's an uneasy truce between the two of them," says James, rejoining Ulrich for the scene in this farming community northwest of Los Angeles that doubles for the Kansas town of New Berg.
Whether Hawkins is a good guy or deceptively evil has yet to be revealed, but James relishes the ambiguity.
"It's like doing a Rubik's Cube where you have to put all your squares in the right position before they will all fit," says James, "and sometimes you have to move them out of order to be able to work them back in. That's how you do the cube. That's kind of how Hawkins' mind works."
Getting started
In high school, James had his mind set on a career as a rugby player "until one particular girl with fine assets turned my head," he says, grinning. "She was going to spend the whole summer doing this thing called 'a play.' I was, like, if she goes away for the whole summer, somebody else is going to get next to her."
He followed her to the audition, but could only get in the room if he tried out, "and I got it," he laughs. "She didn't. But there were other girls there with fine assets, so I stayed."
Eventually, James went on to study at London's Guildhall School of Music & amp; Drama, where he graduated in the late '80s.
But instead of forging full time into an acting career he got "a proper job" with the government's social security office, while moonlighting with a theater company.
"Then at work, they wanted to send me away for three weeks, and I said, 'I can't go, I'm rehearsing this play,"' he remembers. "My boss said to me, 'You're going to have to decide whether you want to follow a career here or you want to be an actor.' ... I turned around and left."
Since then, he's written for and appeared on the London stage and in the films "24 Hour Party People," "Snatch," "Sahara" and the recent BBC America terrorism drama, "The State Within," in which he played another complex antihero.
"I enjoy inviting audiences into the mind of my characters as much as into their stories," he says. "Even now, having this conversation, we know there's a million things that I'm not saying and it's the 'not saying' that is part of the journey."
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