Martin Compston almost pulled out of Line of Duty

Martin Compston almost pulled out of ‘Line of Duty’

The ’40-year-old actor almost didn’t get his career-making break as Steve Arnott in the BBC police drama - which co-stars Adrian Dunbar, 65, and Vicky McClure, 41 - because of his wish to star in the Scottish “version of ‘The Godfather’” but his agent pushed him towards the Jed Mercurio-created series.

Martin told The Big Issue: “When I was offered ‘Line of Duty’, I’d already been offered the film ‘The Wee Man’.

“And at the time my focus was really on ‘The Wee Man’ because growing up on the west coast of Scotland, that story is so ingrained in the culture, it’s like our version of ‘The Godfather’.

“So I was actually panicking. I was about to pull out of ‘Line of Duty’. I’m forever grateful to my agent who said, you have to do this. I had no idea what a big success it would be.

“I just knew it had an amazing cast and script. I had no idea it would be that big.”

Martin recently revealed he was “delighted with the response” to the news the show was coming back for a seventh season.

He told Chris Moyles on his Radio X show: “I’m delighted with the response. People are now really intrigued to see if there is another one, but there’s nothing changed for us in terms of where we’re at after we finish a series… We always take a year between [seasons] at least. The dust settles and Jed figures out whether there’s a story to tell. So I’m delighted that people are so excited and so desperate to find out but, as I say, this is what we’ve done after every series so we’ll just wait and see what he thinks.”