James Norton ‘terrified’ of fame Flatliners lead role will bring

He became a household name after starring in the BBC’s epic adaptation of War And Peace — but James Norton is terrified about the next level of fame.​

Norton, who lives with former co-star Jessie Buckley, will soon appear in the Hollywood sequel to Flatliners and new BBC crime saga McMafia.

Asked whether he was worried about becoming more famous, he told ES magazine: “Yes, it’s terrifying because right now it’s a lovely place where if we walked down the street maybe in 20 minutes someone would stare.

“Or you get the people on the Tube who sit there with their phones pretending to text and then the flash goes off and you’re sitting there going, ‘You’re f***ing kidding me’.

“But most of the time you get people politely coming over going, ‘I’m sorry to stop you, but I just want to say I loved Happy Valley’, and you go, ‘Great’.

“This Flatliners film or McMafia could propel me into the next stage and at what point do you go, ‘F***. I really almost wish I hadn’t moved into that place because now I can’t walk into a pub’?”

Norton, 32, had a series of stage and TV roles before winning acclaim in 2014 in the BBC crime drama Happy Valley and the ITV detective series Grantchester. He said of his relationship with Buckley, 27, who starred in Tom Hardy’s Taboo: “It’s tough because you don’t see each other. She’s been away for a year. She’s done three jobs back to back. We see each other on average once every six weeks.”

Asked if he would move to Hollywood, he said: “I’m not averse to it. I would go with the work and if there was a really great opportunity. I think Hollywood is this beast and there is a commercial element to it, which I’m aware of — the fact that it’s so much more profitable and money-orientated … You could get really rich. That’s one way of thinking about it. But then you do lose your life.”

He says fame is “unnerving” but “you can’t really work with the best directors and the best actors and have the best scripts available to you if you don’t put yourself in front of the public, as they define whether you’re a success”.

In Flatliners, a sequel to the 1990 thriller which is out next week, he stars alongside Ellen Page. It is his first major film role and he said that on his first day “I was like ‘F***, this is way out of my depth’”.

In McMafia, he plays a hedge fund trader, and son of a Russian mafia boss, who is drawn into organised crime. Filming took place in France, Russia and Serbia. Comparing it to another big-budget BBC series, he described it as “The Night Manager with more depth”.