Trevor Eve: 'The Weinstein scandal is appalling. It's essential that changes are made'

Trevor Eve glides into a bar round the corner from his home in Chelsea: tall and regal of bearing, with his floppy Shoestring locks now coiffed in a silver quiff that Elvis might have envied if – like Eve – he had reached a venerable 66. His handshake is so firm and long-lasting that, for a second, I have visions of myself watching the entire Waking The Dead canon, only to find Eve still warmly clasping my chilly mitt.

In tinted rectangular glasses, which he removes to gaze into my eyes, “I’ve made an effort”, he purrs in his Rada-trained baritone, when I compliment him on his extremely elegant, dark suit. “It’s taken a very long time, but I’ve grown into wearing suits. I’d like to say my tailor made it, but I probably picked it up on a job.” He laughs lightly for a long time.

Though impeccably polite, there’s also an underlying menace to Eve. He reminds me of a golden eagle, resplendent and gimlet-eyed, ready to spring at any moment.

For nearly 40 years, he’s been one of telly’s most bankable stars, who since the eponymous Shoestring back in 1979, has starred in every kind of telly drama from the remake of Bouquet of Barbed Wire, to Hughie Green’s, Most Sincerely, to Waking The Dead, which ran for 11 years. He’s done loads of theatre and set up his own production company.

He also boasts one of showbiz’s most enduring marriages – to Sharon “Gold Blend” Maughan, though their relationship has long been dogged with rumours of infidelity. She’s previously denied they have an open marriage, but added: “Of course I’ve been tempted to leave my relationship. I’m only human… we’re very passionate people. There have been plenty of rows and disappointments.”

All her basilisk-like husband will say about their union is: “We’ve been together a very long time – 37 years, 40 since when we got together. Impressive, isn’t it?”

He’s more forthcoming about Maughan’s plight as an actress of a certain age (she’s 67). “My wife’s been out there a long time, and it’s not easy,” he says. “Nobody minds when men crag up, do they?” No, they call you silver foxes, I say. Eve, for whom that phrase could have been coined, laughs uproariously: “They do! You’re absolutely right!”

But it sounds as if the business can also be challenging for younger generation; take the couple’s gorgeous daughter Alice, 35, who lives in Hollywood and whose credits include playing a braless nanny in Sex and The City 2 and Dr Carol Marcus in Star Trek: Into Darkness, where she famously stripped off quite gratuitously in her underwear.

“Actresses have a lot tougher time than actors because of the physical judgements that are put upon them,” Eve says, staring at his lapel in disdain as if he’s just spotted a stain the dry-cleaner missed. “It’s unbelievably pressurising, I know this through my daughter. Having had her go through the process has really brought home to me how shocking it is.”

What does Eve, who was based in Los Angeles in the 1980s, make of the current Harvey Weinstein harassment scandal? “It’s appalling – I can’t really add anything, but it’s essential that changes are made. They have to and they will. It’s ridiculous that actresses don’t have equal pay [with actors]. I mean, what is the rationale behind that?”

It certainly seems unfair that while Maughan’s career has gradually sputtered out, Eve’s is still going strong. The morning after we meet, he off to film the TV adaptation of Deborah Harkness’s fantasy novels A Discovery of Witches in which he plays a 1,000-year-old Pope. “We’re filming in Venice. You think: ‘Well, the problem is …?’” he says. Then there’s his part in the sixth series of Strike Back, Sky’s hugely popular SAS drama, which starts on Tuesday and just for this season features Eve playing a dodgy arms dealer.

“We were filming in Jordan, Hungary and Croatia – so there weren’t too many downsides,” he beams. “I don’t know whether you should say this, but in Jordan you don’t have too much health and safety breathing down your neck, so I was up in a Black Hawk hanging out on a rope over the Dead Sea. I love that kind of stuff – that’s the joy of acting. You get to play like a kid all the time.”

The Eves are turning into an entertainment dynasty to rival the Redgraves. As well as Alice, there’s George, 23, who’s just graduated and is in a band called Joy Room, and Jack, 32, who went to Rada and is now a director-writer-producer. “I never wanted any of them to follow their parents,” Eve says. “Alice went to Oxford and I was thrilled but while she was there she was offered a film, and I thought: ‘Oh no!’ For all of them, there are times when I think a lawyer would be great, or a brain surgeon. It seems hard these days for actors to make a living.”

Eve’s father, a drinks wholesaler from Birmingham, didn’t want his son to act for exactly the same reasons. “He was born in 1900, so to him the idea was comparable with me deciding to become an astronaut, just other-worldly.” To quell his fears, Eve studied architecture at Kingston Polytechnic. “I was quickly disillusioned, it just wasn’t creative,” he says. He’d never been to the theatre, but hanging out on the groovy King’s Road and used to sneak into plays at the Royal Court during the interval and caught the theatre bug, so applied to Rada, which he found in the Yellow Pages.

On graduating, Sir Laurence Olivier took him under his wing, introducing him to many greats of the time, including Franco Zeffirelli. “That generation could party like there was no tomorrow, and then be on the set next morning bright-eyed and ready to go,” he sighs. “I was in a film of Dracula with Olivier and Frank Langella and Donald Pleasance: the lunches were two hours with a bottle of wine, and then you had some cognacs and went back to work. But health and safety finished that: you can’t operate equipment when you’ve drunk all that.”

Perhaps working with such legends contributed to Eve’s reputation for being exacting. “Exacting…” he says, an eyebrow raised faintly. “That’s the politest way it’s ever been put.”

OK, let’s just call it difficult then. On the first day shooting Shoestring, he had a stand-up row with the director, insisting smooth Eddie would wear a slimline tie rather than the kipper tie the wardrobe department had supplied (Eve won). Stories abound of him demanding endless reshoots as the crew yearned to go home, and sending scripts back for countless rewrites. Rumour has it Waking The Dead was eventually axed, despite attracting more than 6 million viewers an episode, because BBC executives could take no more of such tantrums.

“It’s not like I’ve been arguing about the size of my trailer,” Eve sighs, his noble features pained. “I only really care about the quality of a piece. I think it’s about playing the lead in a series. It’s very different when you’re in a play or a film, but when you’re carrying a series and are the central thing from the acting perspective, your input, if you care, is going to be big. So then if you disagree with someone who’s higher up than you, you can either be pronounced difficult – or exacting – but very rarely caring. 

“I suppose what I always felt, but I feel less now, is that making something was collaborative,” he says, then laughs bitterly like Hamlet contemplating Yorick’s skull. “What a misguided person I was!”

Then he laughs again, more happily. “It doesn’t matter now. Now I’m going through my extremely grateful period, just happy to still be working.”

Strike Back returns on Tuesday 31st October on Sky One, 9pm