Review: Sleeping Beauty, York Theatre Royal, until January 29.

In 17 years as the prince of panto baddies at York Theatre Royal, the leonine David Leonard has played such tyrannical luvvies as Dr Evilstein, Rockula, The Dreaded Lurgi and the Sheriff of Rottingham. This winter, he is Evil Edna in Sleeping Beauty, the leather-clad villain in the guise of a villainess. Here he discusses heroes and villains and villainous heroes with Charles Hutchinson.

Who was the first film villain to catch your eye?

"Basil Rathbone, who went on to play Sherlock Holmes. He really looked the part with his very long, razor sharp nose and chin and that stayed with me.

"What is it about noses? Look at Laurence Olivier's Richard III: why would you choose a big nose to represent evil? Always the same. It goes back to Basil Rathbone."

Who was your first screen hero?

"The first 'outsider' hero I clapped eyes on as a child was... I was a great fan of all those Errol Flynn films, Captain Blood and The Adventures Of Robin Hood.

"I was a great fan of Spencer Tracy too, and John Wayne and Gary Cooper. They were my celluloid heroes in the dark days of the 1960s when I was growing up. They were the heroes I was watching when the BBC put them on every weekend."

Whose voice stood out to you?

"The greatest villainous voice of all time was George Sanders' voice, doing Shere Khan, the tiger in The Jungle Book... even though I always say my voice is a cross between Kenneth Williams and Donald Sinden."

Who was the 'hero' who spotted your theatrical talent?

"It was my music teacher in Middlesbrough who picked me out to do Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. I was the only one who had watched all those old films, and I found I could do the lines. He said: 'How can you do that?, and I said "I don't know!"

Were there any other influences?

"I picked up on my mother's theatricality in the way she answered the phone.

"Then when I was 11, I auditioned for Benjamin Britten's opera, The Turn Of The Screw for this company called Opera Nova. They sent me for elocution and singing lessons - and I came home with this RP accent. I must have been insufferable."

Did you find yourself drawn to villainous roles from a young age?

"In The Turn of The Screw I played Miles, the boy haunted by ghosts, and because of the pull between good and evil in the story, I had a real sense of what evil was as a child.

"I've always thought villains were the best roles with the best lines, and although I've done romantic leads - people say 'You can do them, because you're tall and dark' - I've never been very satisfied playing them."

Why do you prefer leaning to the dark side in your stage roles?

"It's that thing of having power and that's why I like playing kings. I played Joseph II in Amadeus in Colchester and I loved the doors being opened for me and that feeling of power that you can destroy the world and have power over people to decide if they will live or die.

"Then there's the downfall of villains too: in Shakespeare they have these wonderful soliloquies where they tell the truth about themselves for the only time in the play and direct their thoughts directly to the audience.

"I love that power, that haughtiness, villains have, rather than playing someone earnest or good."

The British tend to play villains rather than heroes in Hollywood movies. Why is that?

"There's an interesting line that runs through British villains, and it's a camp sensibility, a camp villainy, and Hollywood loves that. Jeremy Irons was incredibly camp in The Lion King; you couldn't have been camper than Gary Oldman in Dracula and Olivier's Richard III was as camp as can be. Put it all in the pot, and it's there in the collective psyche of this nation that all villains are tall, elegant, thin nosed and sound like George Sanders as Shere Khan."

You have played outsiders, not only the panto villain, but also Shakespeare's Richard III, Elyot Chase in Noel Coward's Private Lives and spy Sir Anthony Blunt in Alan Bennett's A Question Of Attribution.

"Elyot Chase is an outsider written by an outsider, Noel Coward, who's putting on a mask to the world: a campness to cover homosexuality. It's also fun to be villainous, and Elyot just laughs at seriousness but he's charming as well and that means he can seduce people - and that's another power game to play."

Do you consider actors to be outsiders, taking on various guises, heroic, villainous or whatever, to escape from themselves?

"To play someone else is interesting but I've never really felt it was to get away from who you are. What made me want to be an actor? I can't say exactly, though I was always performing as a kid. Wanting to be someone else on stage and wanting to escape from yourself can dangerous, and I just think it's fun to act, even though it's hard work and you can be rejected or get a bad review. You would only do it if you enjoy it, and enjoy the lifestyle, and I do."

Heroes do not feature as prominently as villains in your influences. Why not?"

"I'm suspicious of heroes; you're often disappointed by your heroes, particularly in politics or your pop heroes. You think Oh God, you've sold out'... like when Van Morrison did that duet with Cliff Richard.

"Your heroes can start off like Robert Lindsay's Citizen Smith but then you find them on Grumpy Old Men, disappointing you when they used to inspire you."

Sleeping Beauty, York Theatre Royal, until January 29. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 16:04 Thursday, January 13, 2005