Jude Law places the accent on the future

Going eyeball-to-eyeball with a 6ft 5 Russian wasn’t the only part of Black Sea which Jude Law describes as “a bit of a risk.”

The 41-year-old takes the lead role of Robinson in the new film, part submarine drama, part heist thriller from Glasgow-born director Kevin Macdonald.

As the skipper of a ragtag crew of Brits and Russians on the search for Nazi gold, Jude chose to give his character an Aberdonian accent, far away from his London upbringing.

“Robinson wouldn’t have sounded right coming from Lewisham,” he laughs.

Not surprisingly for a man who has endured a difficult relationship with some sections of the media, Jude’s bold choice has already come under scrutiny even before the film has been released.

After watching the trailer, in which Jude does admittedly sound more Groundskeeper Willie (The Simpsons’ resident Scot) than Granite City, one local commented: “Even if he had a buttery in both hands, I am not sure he could persuade me he was from Aberdeen.”

“It’s a leap and you just hope it works,” he admits. “Early on, Kevin and I had a long discussion about Robinson’s back story and that we wanted to reference his life above the sea.

“We made him from Aberdeen because Kevin said there were a lot of submariners in that area, so it suggested he’d have come from a family that has suffered under the mistreatment of successive governments and, more recently, bankers.

“His father could have been a docker who had lost his job and Robinson was now being done in by the system in the same way. Much of the film is about how the working man, the skilled man, has been spat out by society and done over by the banks.

“There is a great social comment to the piece interwoven into a heist thriller set on a submarine.”

It sounds improbable but Macdonald has managed to pull it off, steering Black Sea clear of the rocks to produce a mostly engaging drama.

Jude is the newly-redundant sea captain who, along with his most trusted shipmates and a group of Russian submariners helping them to navigate the local waters, go in search of the wreck of a German U-boat which sank in 1941 while carrying £180 million worth of gold bullion from Soviet Russia.

But a lack of trust between the disparate groups and jealousy over who should get what share of the loot put the mission in jeopardy.

The Talented Mr Ripley star is no subscriber to method acting but did spend four days on board the Royal Navy’s nuclear class submarine, HMS Talent, as it patrolled the Straits of Gibraltar.

“It was an extraordinary experience,” he told me. “You lose sense of the world above water when you’re down there, the men are not told where they are, and they (HMS Talent has a crew of 130) spoke openly about how dysfunctional they feel when they’re away from their boats, fitting back into married life or whatever.

“Sleeping in their own bed was a big thing for them because they work on a six hours on, six hours off system and share a bed with the person who is on while they’re ‘off’.”

Jude announced last month that he is to become a father for the fifth time after his ex-girlfriend, Catherine Harding, told him she was pregnant. He has three children with ex-wife Sadie Frost and a five-year-old daughter from a fling with American model Samantha Burke.

And, it seems, the cheery actor is all about looking forward rather than back.

“I’ve always been a great believer in civility and manners, being positive and getting on,” he reasoned. “Turning 40 felt quite significant as you feel slightly more confident and comfortable in who you are, and in the job I do there are going to be more layers and complexities to the parts I’m offered.

“Younger roles can be more frivolous and also, when you’re starting out on an acting career, people try to bracket you or put you in a box and say this is the kind of role you should be playing and it has felt like I’ve been trying to shake that off for the past 10 years, so hitting 40 feels like starting afresh.

“I wouldn’t have been able to play Robinson 10 years ago because it wouldn’t have been believable.”

With or without the accent.