Ian McShane: 'Snow White And The Huntsman' was a disappointment

From 'Lovejoy' to 'Deadwood' and 'Sexy Beast', Ian McShane has made a career out of playing rogues. But now he's given it all up to make blockbusters for his grandchildren, he tells 'The Guardian' newspaper.

In recent years McShane has been busy with  Hollywood special-effects blockbusters such as 'Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides', 'Snow White And The Huntsman' and 'The Golden Compass'.

In Bryan Singer's 'Jack The Giant Slayer', which opens next week, he plays a softly spoken king.  "I wanted to play a good guy for a change. We filmed in England, so I got to see my family."

He is  realistic about their shortcomings of fairytale blockbusters. 'Snow White', he says, was the most disappointing. "Six hours in prosthetics every day," he laments. "By the time you got on set, it was all crash-bang-wallop. It hadn't been properly worked out."

He had fun making the fourth 'Pirates Of The Caribbean', up to a point, and still wears a chunky skull-and-crossbones ring from the film.  "They're not looking for subtle scenes of character-building. They don't make it in. You just enjoy it while you can."

On the plus side, he gets to take his grandchildren to these popcorn movies. "You can't exactly sit them down and make them watch 'Deadwood'. I took them to the 'Pirates' premiere. A premiere at Westfield." He gives an "I ask you" shake of the head. "You hear: 'Please welcome Gok Wan to the red carpet!' Christ, it was odd."

Deliberately un-showbizzy, he and his actress wife, Gwen Humble, chose Venice Beach as their home 10 years ago. "It could be anywhere," he says approvingly. "It could be Brighton."

"I do as little as possible. Lots of walking on the beach. That's another great thing: no one owns the beaches. All those rich fuckers up in Malibu keep trying to get the public off it. They lock parts of it up. David Geffen tried it: 'Get orf my land!' I live on Venice Beach because it's for everyone."

In the interview he reveals he enjoyed playing Lovejoy, the antiques dealer hero of the Sunday evening comedy drama that ran in the late 1980s and early 1990s so much that he turned down an $80,000-an-episode stint on 'Dynasty' to keep doing it (though he did serve time as Sue Ellen's film-maker husband on its rival, 'Dallas').

He still gets approached by its fans, even in LA. "They love it here!" he hoots. "The antiques thing is so popular, isn't it? That dreadful David Dickinson said to me once, 'You're responsible for me being on the telly.' "What an awful burden to bear."

He jokes the when he filmed an episode with Sir John Gielgud he kept calling him "Loveboy".

He started making 'Deadwood' in 2004. "What Deadwood did was to talk about how capitalism started, how civilised society came in and how that brought its own problems."

He still laments the fact it was cancelled after just three seasons. "It was tragic."

Accepting the Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work on the first season, McShane called it "the best gig I ever had", and he stands by that now. "I'll catch it on TV sometimes and get drawn in. It was not good. It was fucking brilliant."

'Jack And The Giant Slayer' is out on 22 March.