Whether it’s with the raised eyebrow of Blackadder or the gurning of Mr Bean, Rowan Atkinson is one of Britain’s most famous and beloved faces.
But behind the mask of his comedy characters, the real Rowan is not a man who brims with the kind of confidence his success should have earned him.
He’s careful as he speaks, taking long considered pauses before each answer, and never strays far from his comfort blanket of self deprecation – even describing himself as “dull”.
All might explain why Rowan was particularly worried about his next role – playing it straight in ITV ’s new version of Maigret.
In fact Rowan, 61, was so concerned about taking on the mantle of the serious “ordinary” detective that he turned it down – and producers spent more than a year trying to convince him to do it.
“I wasn’t sure I could do it,” he says, without a glint of false modesty. “I don’t think you can decide to play the leading role in a mainstream ITV drama without being reasonably certain you can play the part at least possibly as well as it can be played.”
His doubts were over how different strait-laced, pipe-smoking French detective Maigret is from his previous roles.
And indeed, previous incarnations based on Georges Simenon’s books, including Rupert Davies’ 1960s series and Michael Gambon’s 1992 version, have shown the character is as far from Johnny English as they come. A fact not lost of Rowan.
“I haven’t played many ordinary men. I tend to play rather odd men,” he says thoughtfully. “The thing with Maigret is he hasn’t got a limp, he hasn’t got a lisp, he hasn’t got a French accent and he has no particular love of opera.
“He’s just an ordinary guy doing an extraordinary job.” He adds: “It’s quite dark, quite seedy, quite sleazy.”
Ironically it was Maigret’s “thoughtful and quite compassionate side”, similar to Rowan’s own, that convinced him to “wake up to it” – plus the fact they were asking him to play younger than his years.
“The idea of playing a TV detective felt like a bit of a cliche,” he says.
“But I quite liked the fact that I’m rather old for it because he’s supposed to be around 50 and I’m definitely around 60!"
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The series - split into two feature-length films – begins this month with Maigret hunting a serial killer plaguing Monmartre, Paris in 1955. Filming was exactly the challenge Rowan feared. “I take the work extremely seriously. I’m quite a dull person to work with,” he admits. “The demand of modern television drama is that it’s very low-key and naturalistic and generally the characters I play are not. It was a couple of weeks before I settled in.”
As if scared to over-egg his own performance – already getting fantastic reviews – Rowan begrudgingly admits: “For me no glass is anything other than half empty, but I think the programme is very good.” Quite why Rowan is so humble is a mystery it would take Maigret himself to crack.
The County Durham-born star has a masters degree in electrical engineering from Oxford, but fell in love with comedy, joining the Oxford Revue with pal Richard Curtis at 1976’s Edinburgh Fringe.
He got his big break with BBC’s Not the Nine O’ Clock News, before joining forces with Curtis in 1983 to write Blackadder, which became one of the BBC’s most successful sitcoms.
By 1990, he had also created the silent Mr Bean, whose physical comedy spawned two hit films. And by the time Rowan had brought his latest creation, the hapless spy Johnny English, to the big screen, he was a global star, well on his way to his £85million fortune. A fortune he loves to spend on one thing - cars.
The qualified lorry driver has owned a host of enviable motors including a rare McLaren F1 which he crashed in 2011, triggering a £910,000 insurance payout.
Surely then he would have liked a stab at the Top Gear job? Especially after he once topped the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car racing leaderboard before being toppled by Matt LeBlanc, the actor who has nabbed the top role.
“It’s not something I could ever do,” laughs Rowan. “Neither was I asked.”
That would appear to be that on that subject. Another subject that’s off the table is his love life. Fiercely private, Rowan has made more headlines for his personal life than his work recently, after leaving wife of 24 years Sunetra, 54, for comedy actress Louise Ford, who, at 32, is half his age.
Last November he was granted a “quickie” divorce from former make up artist Sunetra, mother of his two children.
By January, Louise had moved in at his £5million North London home.
His new relationship bliss now explains why he was so keen to return home from filming Maigret in Budapest, Hungary, so often. Rowan even admitted: “I don’t like being away from home.
“I like to be in my own bed every night rather than somebody else’s. I got away every weekend.” Any more about Louise, is kept fiercely between the couple.
But one thing Rowan is keen to stress, having tried both sides of the industry, is his peers should have more respect for comedy actors. “It’s weird the way the arts community still have a long lasting cynicism of the importance of comedy,” he says.
“It’s as if comedy is just farting about for money whereas as soon as you play a serious role it’s, ‘A-ha! Now you’re an actor, now you’re doing something of meaning’. That’s an attitude that I would dispute.”
- Maigret Sets A Trap in on ITV at 9pm, Monday, March 28, and Maigret’s Dead Men, will be shown later this year .