Engaging, polite but gloriously off-message, actor Sam Riley is about to star alongside Angelina Jolie in the Disney blockbuster Maleficent. By Tom Lamont

When I heard you’d been cast in Maleficent, a live-action retelling of the 1959 Disney cartoon Sleeping Beauty, I thought “You thought,” Riley interrupts, “I would have been playing Prince Charming. Surely.”

Well, yeah. Riley might be 34, and seven years removed from a name-making acting debut in Control, the Joy Division biopic in which he starred as Ian Curtis; he might be a very new father who, on the morning of our interview, also happens to be hungover after a big night out. But with his Burberry-contracted good looks (boyish, beardless) he still looks very young. Teen-friendly. A plausible Prince Charming in a Disney film, I reckon.

“I don’t think I have the teeth,” Riley says sadly, opening his mouth to show a crowded lower deck. He explains that in Maleficent he plays a henchman, servant to the wicked witch of the title, played by Angelina Jolie. “I’m her lackey,” Riley says, “her gobshite.”

 The film is called Maleficent, by the way, and not Sleeping Beauty because of a shift in focus on to Jolie’s character. A $200mn kids’ film, its 3D effects still being tweaked some two years after Riley filmed his scenes, it isn’t quite like anything the Yorkshire-born actor has made before. To date he’s tended to appear as frowning thinkers, handsome and nicotine-bathed and doomed: Curtis in Control, Pinkie in an adaptation of Brighton Rock (2010), Sal Paradise in an adaptation of On the Road (2012). In the new film, says Riley, “I don’t smoke, or die. So it’s kind of new ground.”

Why this job, why now? “I audition just to remind people that I still exist sometimes. I have to do it occasionally, otherwise the casting directors forget who you are. That’s what my agent tells me anyway. I liked the sound of the part, it sounded fun. And obviously working with Angelina was an attractive proposition. Now I’m a father, it’s nice to think my son’ll be able to see something I’ve done before he’s 18.”

It was curiosity too, Riley says. “What’s it like to do a movie of this scale? They took over seven or eight studios at Pinewood. Usually you walk from the trailer to the set, but here it was golf buggies.  I had to wear a net over my head in case anyone was watching. You know, secrecy and that. I looked like Michael Jackson going shopping.”

This actor has an appealing unruly streak. Every so often as we sit in a part of a London hotel that has been taken over by Disney, for the purposes of promoting their expensive new film  Riley looks over his shoulder, in case he should be overheard saying something wrong. For instance, calling his character in a Disney film a “gobshite”, or for having to fudge details of the narrative. “When she’s 16, obviously, she’s put in the uh, the sleep, the sleepy thing,” is his outline of the Sleeping Beauty plotline.

He is carefully respectful of his co-star, several rungs higher on the fame ladder. Jolie tends to be referred to, with muted voice, as “her” or “she”, as if she might be listening for her name on the other side of the door. “All my scenes are with her,” says Riley. “We bicker and banter like an old married couple. It came very naturally to both of us she’s always bickering with Brad, I imagine. She’s really good fun. That always sounds like a lot of bollocks, doesn’t it? But right from the get-go she was a very approachable and kind and nice colleague to have.”

One day during shooting, Riley says, his parents visited him on the Pinewood set. He took them by golf buggy to meet Jolie, and they were “uber-charmed,” Riley says. “They floated back to Leeds”

He grew up there, in Leeds, a public schoolboy who liked The Jungle Book and James Bond and who for a while wanted to join the military.  “The sorts of schools I went to kind of encouraged it. I mean, I had a picture above my bed of Colonel H Jones. He was the paratrooper from the Falklands war who died in a hail of bullets. Which at the time seemed like an incredibly romantic idea.”

The interest in being a soldier waned under the nervous dissuasion of his parents; also when Riley “realised how much marching was involved”.  He began to tell people he’d like to be either an actor or a singer.  After school he formed a band, called 10,000 Things, who were signed by Polydor and supported the Libertines on tour. They released an album that caught an awful review in the NME, a zero out of 10, and were dropped by their label. Riley refers to 10,000 Things now as a “pub rock band”.

Was that all they were? “We were a very good pub rock band. But if you never break into stadiums we played some festivals. We were always on as people were walking in.”

After the band fell apart, Riley floundered for a while. He worked in a clothing warehouse and a bar; a low came when he had to serve the Kaiser Chiefs, a rival band from Leeds, their drinks. He had done some acting for TV over the years and now he called up his agent to see if there were any parts going. One of the first auditions he went to was for Control. — Guardian News and Media

Jolie wants daughters to have individuality

Actress Angelina Jolie says she wants to raise her daughters in a manner that they are proud of who they are and that they carve their own individuality. The 38-year-old raises children Maddox, 12, Pax, 10, Zahara, nine, Shiloh, seven, and five-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne with fiance and actor Brad Pitt.

Jolie said young women have too many opinions forced on them. Hence, she wants her girls to develop their own individuality, reports contactmusic.com.

“I think of my girls and I just want them to be proud of who they are and know who they are. There is so much being forced upon young people today about what they should be like.

“You see so much opinion being thrown at young people and everything they do gets sent out into the media and then gets rated. I would like for young girls to be able to find out who they each individually are and be really proud of it, no matter what comes their way,” Jolie said.

The actress said that she always tries to be a better person, and can’t understand people’s negative opinions about her when she was young. The philanthropist even hopes that she turns into a good role model for her daughters. — IANS

When Theron hit “rock bottom”

Actress Charlize Theron says she reached “rock bottom” in her early 30s and wasn’t aware that she required therapy. Later the 38-year-old found the regular sessions useful, reports femalefirst.co.uk. “I didn’t know that I needed therapy. I was walking through life just kind of thinking everything was fine — you go and you work and there’s this catharsis that happens when you are an actor, and that’s healthy, right?

“(In my early 30s, I was) kind of at rock bottom. I called a friend and said, ‘Will you give me the number of your therapist?’ And I started seeing an incredible woman who is always just a phone call away,” she said. — IANS

Sofia Vergara splits from fiance Nick Loeb

Actress Sofia Vergara has called off her relationship with businessman Nick Loeb. The duo was unable to decide how to spend time together, she disclosed via a social networking medium. She shared a screenshot of a note on her Who Say account May 23. “Not that anyone should care, but in order to not give the press the chance to invent crazy and hurtful drama, I prefer to tell my fans personally that Nick and I have (decided) to be apart,” Vergara said in the note.

“We have (been) having too many problems with figuring out how to spend time together and (because) of my work and now his, it’s been getting worse and worse, not fun anymore,” she added. They will continue to be good friends. “We are still very close but we (believe this) is the best thing for us right now,” added the 41-year-old. In February, the actress was still deciding on plans for her dream wedding with Loeb, saying she was unsure about the exact details. — IANS