"I've played a wide range of tormented characters and it's infinitely more fun because they are always the most interesting parts" he says.

"There is a lot of psychology to get into. Stephen is not the sort of man you would want anything to do with under normal circumstances" 

Colin, 33, recently returned from Hollywood - where he played yet another psychopath. This time he was playing an acting coach who trains an actress by torturing her. The film was called The Playmaker - and Colin 
hated every minute. "It was complete rubbish" he says. His sole reason for doing it, was to spend some time with his three-year-old son Will, who lives with his former love, actress Meg Tilly. "I was desperate to see will 
after six months doing theatre in Britain, so I said yes" he says. "It paid well but it was a silly story. I'm praying it will sink without trace".

"I'm very lucky. I've done some great work over the past seven years or so - but this was an aberration. The problem is that scripts in Los Angeles come to me after Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner or 100 others have turned it down."

Colin makes no secret of the fact that he misses Will. Although the boy was in Los Angeles while The Playmaker was being formed he normally lives in Canada with his mum. Meg and Colin fell in love on the set of Valmont, and spent four years together in Canada trying to make the relationship work - but eventually Colin made the painful decision to return to Britain alone. "I found it very difficult to settle in Canada" he says. 
"We were living in British Columbia which is very rural and isolated. I'm a city person and I just couldn't be happy there."

"I thought I could adjust but I was wrong. I realized I missed my friends, my work and the rest of the family too much. It is tremendously difficult because I miss Will very much. But I phone, write and make tapes for him to listen to. We go for long periods without seeing each other but we also spend a lot of time together".

These days Colin is living a single life in East London and looking forward to seeing his next tortured soul on screen. He is playing the uptight Mr D'Arcy in the BBC's 6 million adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. "D'Arcy is austere, arrogant and taciturn, with a great deal of pride", says Colin. "He suffers in love."

But there is an age limit on playing anguished romantic figures - so Colin is determined to enjoy them while he's still young enough. "I don't know how much longer that sort of character will be available to me", he says. "As you get older there is less opportunity to do parts like that so I'm making the most of it".