'I'm Scottish, I'm working class. What do you expect?' John Hannah admits he's prone to melancholy and had therapy to deal with fame after Four Weddings

• John Hannah, 53, has starred in films from Sliding Doors to the Mummy
• Best know for his eulogy in Four Weddings, the actor is turning to comedy
• In Marley's Ghosts he plays the husband of a psychic woman
• He talks IVF, cycling and going through therapy with FEMAIL

By Richard Barber for MailOnline

Published: 11:43 EST, 29 September 2015 | Updated: 12:19 EST, 29 September 2015

You can't accuse John Hannah of sticking to the tried and tested. From Sliding Doors to Spartacus, from Rebus to The Mummy, he's played them all. 

He made grown men weep with his funeral eulogy in Four Weddings. He's urged canny consumers to shop at the Co-op in a series of TV ads. And now he's tackling his first unapologetic sitcom.

His latest role is in a piece of pure hokum from Gold called Marley's Ghosts written by Danny Peacock, elder son of Trevor, perhaps best known as Jim Trott in The Vicar Of Dibley. 

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John Hannah, 53, is set to star in sitcom Marley's Ghosts as the down-on-his luck husband of a psychic

It requires you to buy into the idea that our heroine, Marley, possesses the rare gift of being able to see and converse with the recently departed, something of a mixed blessing given how many friends and family keep keeling over in her close proximity.

It was great fun to do, says John, who plays our heroine's down-on-his-luck husband, Adam. 'I don't think I've ever had such a tight little crowd around me.' 

Smack The Pony's Sarah Alexander is Marley. 'She's talented and charismatic and she's funny, too, which is quite rare for a beautiful woman. Sorry if that sounds sexist but most good-looking females aren't prepared to be goofy.'

Nicholas Burns is Marley's soon-to-be-dead extramarital lover while the dippy vicar – again not long for this world – is played by Jo Joyner, taking time out from Albert Square and her role as Max Branning's estranged wife, Tanya. 

There are three opening episodes to test the water, beginning on September 30, and then everyone has their fingers firmly crossed it will be recommissioned.

It's something of a surprise that John took up acting at all. At 16, he was apprenticed to an electrician, a visionary man called Tommy Byrne. 

The show, airing on September 30, stars (from left to right) Sarah Alexander as psychic Marley, John Hannah as husband Adam, Nicholas Burns as Marley's lover Michael and Jo Joyner as the vicar

'One day, he turned to me and said I ought to be an actor. I was going through my James Dean phase at the time with a dash of Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift thrown in. 

'I suppose he recognised that my passion for films should in some way be pursued.'

With nothing to lose, John took a recording out of the local library of Derek Jacobi playing Richard II and learnt a couple of the speeches. 

He applied to the Royal Scottish Academy of Drama and, aged 20, was offered a place at his first attempt.

He struggled for a decade after graduating and then Four Weddings turned him into an overnight star. 

His father, John, who died at the end of last year, was a toolmaker; his mother Susan, now in a residential home, worked in the local Cadbury Schweppes factory. 

Things become difficult for Adam, as his wife is embroiled in an affair with the soon-to-be-dead Michael

If John was knocked sideways by his instant fame, it was nothing compared to the reaction of his parents. 

'I think they felt all this was happening on a planet that was totally alien to them. In some ways, it became something of a barrier between us,' he said.

He has two sisters, Elizabeth and Joan, older than him by nine and eight years respectively. 'I think one of them' – he won't say which – 'was a little resentful of what happened to me. She's always been a bit dismissive of what I do; certainly unwilling to talk about it.'

But then, he doesn't mind admitting he had sessions with a therapist to help him deal with his sudden, quite unexpected celebrity. 

'I'd been through 10 years of struggle and then overnight, it seems, I'd become someone who was a desirable commodity. I reacted badly to the superficiality of it all.'

Adam says he had great fun creating the sitcom and described the cast (pictured) as a 'tight little crowd'

John, pictured with his on-screen wife, became an actor after he took up an apprenticeship with an electrician who suggested he give it a go

He adjusted in time, of course, and has gone on to enjoy a successful and varied 30-year career. It's a career, moreover, that introduced him to his wife, actress Joanna Roth. 

The two met when they played opposite each other in a National Theatre production of Measure For Measure. 

Joanna's from Glasgow, John from East Kilbride. 'But she doesn't have a Scottish accent,' he said. 'In fact, she's quite posh.' She'll next be seen on TV in an upcoming episode of Endeavour.

In the early days, he was the one who made all the running. 'I was enormously attracted to her although, mysteriously, she wasn't in the least responsive. So I invited her for a picnic in Battersea Park.'

The two of them set off, each driving their own car. 'I was leading the way. Then, at a set of traffic lights, I put on the brakes without enough warning and Joanna ran right into the back of me.

'I looked in my mirror and she was slumped over her steering wheel – in embarrassment, as it turned out. 

'But I didn't know that. I scrambled out of my car, raced over to hers, gently eased her out and started comforting her.'

The Scotsman struggled to find work for a decade after graduating from the Royal Scottish Academy of Drama until he starred in Four Weddings And A Funeral, famously reciting the poem Funeral Blues

Unnoticed by John, the whole incident was being watched by a queue of people waiting for a bus. 

'Obviously, none of them had any idea that Joanna and I knew each other. So, when I planted a consoling kiss on her cheek, the entire queue burst into a spontaneous round of applause.'

They will have been married 20 years next January. In an industry littered with the husks of broken relationships, how come they've bucked the trend? 

'I once asked the same question of the film director Lewis Gilbert who was married for over 50 years. He said: "You have to get two people who are equal, who respect one another." I think there's something in that.'

John and Joanna struggled to start a family. 'We got to our fourth and last attempt at trying to get pregnant through IVF. I was shooting a scene for a TV thriller called Amnesia. 

I was showing the police the spot where I thought I might have buried a body when I saw Joanna walking towards me, giving me a double thumbs-up. 

'We hadn't been absolutely sure she was even pregnant so the news did come as a bit of a shock, to say the least.'

The actor, who is a keen cyclist, has just finished shooting the first of a sci-fi trilogy, entitled Genesis

The twins, Gabriel and Astrid, are now 11 and neither is showing any inclination to follow their parents into acting. 

And if they did? 'Well, considering what the profession's given me, I couldn't justify telling them how precarious it can be. 

'They've just started in senior school but, by the time they were five, they'd flown round the world twice, first class, accompanying me to film sets. I don't think I climbed on to my first aeroplane until I was 20.'

He's just completed shooting Genesis, the first in what, it is hoped, will be a sci-fi trilogy of films full of androids at some unspecified point in a post-apocalyptic future. 

John plays a civilian leader in a nuclear bunker. The second offering, if it comes to pass, will focus on the straggle of survivors battling it out with the robots roaming the land.

At 53, John remains enviably trim. A keen cyclist, he took part in a five-day event in 2014 in the Dolomites. 

Then, earlier this year, he was involved in the Wicklow 200, cycling through the peaks and troughs of the countryside south of Dublin. 

This summer, he also swam the full length of the Dart 10k, a stretch of the river in Devon.

So, life's pretty good although, by his own admission, he's still given to moments of melancholia. 

'Well, I'm Scottish,' he points out. 'I'm working class. What do you expect?' He's smiling as he says it, though. 

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