Interview: Jude Law

Yet it's the very role, of a charming-but-sad womaniser, that Law says he has been resisting throughout his career.

"Alfie is very much the part I've been avoiding for 10 years, never really wanting to play the lothario or the young buck," maintains the 31-year-old father-of-three.

"Now those kinds of roles are the challenging parts because I've not gone there."

A challenge is something Jude seems to be relishing these days.

His suave, slightly shy English charm has made him Hollywood's current golden boy. And his heartfelt performance in Cold Mountain, for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination, confirmed his star status.

But the film was also his only release of last year, as he faced the high-profile end of his six-year marriage to actress Sadie Frost.

There was intense interest in their split, which came only a year after Sadie gave birth to their son, and after their two-year-old daughter was rushed to hospital, suspected of swallowing part of an ecstasy tablet.

Jude's recent series of seemingly back-to-back roles have allowed him to let work give refuge from the media attention that followed the couple's break-up.

He seems to be everywhere at the moment, featuring in six new films with a couple more in production. He's currently on British screens in the retro sci-fi adventure Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow with Gwyneth Paltrow. Then he reworks Caine's cheeky cockney as a womanising but lonely New York chauffeur in Alfie.

Before the end of the year he'll be seen in the bleak Closer with Julia Roberts, as Errol Flynn in a cameo for The Aviator, play a louse in I Heart Huckabees and narrate Lemony Snicket's: A Series of Unfortunate Events.

But making Alfie scared him.

"I'd never had an interest in looking at films about relationships, sexual relationships in particular, centred around the world of a guy who's sort of 20. There's a sort of flippancy about them."

What changed his mind was entering his 30s, he admits. "They're not necessarily the muscles I've flexed as an actor. Not that that's the direction I'm going in, but it's a reason for the direction I went with Alfie."

Jude made the film during a hard time for him personally, and it shows, says director Charles Shyer.

"It's a big deal for an actor to talk to the camera, especially an actor like Jude who's just so exposed, there's nothing held back."

But he did it, and found himself an off-screen model-turned-actress girlfriend in the process in co-star Sienna Miller.

It's unlikely that Alfie is the start of Jude trading on his looks though. He has always been a chameleon-like actor who takes his craft seriously.

"What was interesting about Alfie was it's about a crux time when you can't pretend you're not a man now and your responsibility is as a man and not a kid. Which is something I'm going through," he says.

The role of screen heart-throb worries Jude. "You can work for another 10 years, pushing yourself as hard as you can, and you are still accused of that. You're still tainted with that brush.

"To tell you the truth it's a bore, the last thing you want is a label like that. I personally cringe when I read anything about my private life."

But the turmoil in his personal life was also evident during the filming of Closer, about four strangers who fall in love and then tear each other apart.

"I did Closer at the end of an emotional year for me and I was able to open up and purge all that on camera. I'd be lying if I said I didn't use a lot of what was going on."

Doing films like Alfie and Closer is something of a cathartic relief, admits Jude. "They can't help but be. Sometimes there's nothing more revealing than letting it all kind of hang out in front of a cast and crew."

Jude, who first burst on to cinema screens as the amoral Bosie in Wilde, has always been a character actor blessed with the looks of a leading man.

But he has been reluctant to leave the shadows of supporting actor and become the centre of attention, he admits.

"It wasn't necessarily that I was avoiding playing the leading man, it was either I didn't feel I was right for the part or other parts were more interesting," he maintains. "My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing."

Like a lot of good actors, Jude has an appealing sense of humour.

"I think we were all jealous that Angelina Jolie got the best costume, to be honest," he says about the retro-aviator look of Sky Captain. "I mean, Gwyneth Paltrow looked pretty awesome, but I particularly liked the fish bowl. I was like, 'Why don't I get a fish bowl?'."

While his new releases are coming out, Jude is enjoying some down time following the financial collapse of a planned production.

Next month he joins Sean Penn, Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet for a remake of 40s classic All The King's Men, followed up by a role as a blue-collar worker in the drama Dexterity early next year.

"The thing is I don't think I've changed in my own head or my attitude to acting, even though a lot has happened. I'm still one of those guys who is happy to go to the pub."

Real name: David Jude Law

Birthdate: December 29, 1972

Significant other: Sienna Miller

Career high: Oscar nomination for Cold Mountain

Career low: The less than high-profile Music From Another Room

Famous for: Making headlines as his marriage to Sadie Frost collapsed

Words of wisdom: "I've always liked what Thomas More said in Utopia, which is that in Utopia every person is allowed their own lifestyle and religion but no-one is allowed to tell others that theirs is right."