Samuel Barnett plays John Everett Millais; a child prodigy who joined the Royal Academy of Art aged only 11. Whilst there, he met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, two of his future Pre-Raphaelite brothers. He developed a controversially realistic style of painting, creating works like – the now iconic and widely reproduced – Ophelia. His other paintings include The Woodman’s Daughter, Mariana, The Order Of Release, Christ In The House Of His Parents and portraits of Ruskin and Tennyson among others.
However, contemporaries of Millais would have known him as much for his infamous relationship with the wife of art critic, John Ruskin, as his paintings.
Samuel Barnett has acted across stage and screen, most recently in BBC Two’s Beautiful People; and the stage and film versions of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. He tells Programme Information’s Hannah Khalil that he was drawn to this project because of the quality of the team behind it, as well as the character of Millais:
“It’s a really funny part, plus my character falls in love with the wife of the biggest art critic of the time, Ruskin, and he gets the girl, which is wonderful! I’d seen some of the drama Ben Evans had produced for BBC Four – Fantabulosa! and Steptoe And Son – his work is of such a high quality. I also knew Franny Moyle, she had executive produced a Wilfred Owen programme I was in and she wrote the book for Desperate Romantics, so the whole thing was a really attractive package.”
Peter Bowker’s writing was also a draw for the actor: “The scripts are really great and I realised, after reading Franny’s book, that Pete has interwoven a lot of quotes from the actual people’s letters and diaries into the script so skilfully and it reads really well as dialogue. It feels really modern, too, and we were told to make it sound as conversational as possible – I think we’ve been able to do that.”
Samuel revealed he’s been familiar with the Brotherhoods’ paintings since his youth; “I knew their work because they are my mum’s favourite period of art, so we had calendars and posters when I was growing up. But there was still a lot of research to do for the part, which was difficult because a lot of the books I read were just about the art really, they weren’t about the people. But Franny’s book gave such an insight, I read it really quickly because it’s so well written and all about their personal lives.”
He admits to an eclectic taste in art and a real admiration for Millais’s style of painting; “I like all sorts of art, that’s why I love wandering around The National Gallery. I really admire paintings that look like an actual snapshot – I think that’s just extraordinary. That’s what’s so special about Millais: flesh – people’s actual skin – looks real, for example in The Order Of Release and Christ In The House Of His Parents; it’s photographic, it doesn’t matter how close you get to the painting, you don’t see the brushwork. With Millais’s paintings it’s microscopic; when he does hair it’s extraordinary, you can see every strand. His paintings are my favourites – not just because I’m playing him – I think he’s the best artist of the group, technically and also emotionally.”
Despite the fact the drama is set more than 150 years ago, Samuel is sure it has something for everyone and will appeal to modern audiences: “You don’t have to know anything about the period or the artists; it’s a human story and a ’sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’ story as well: this was the period when supermodels and celebrity was born. The use of the printing press meant everyone, nationally and internationally, could see these guys’ paintings and the models they used, that was a first – art had never had exposure like that before.
“They were the modern artists of their day and looking at their work now you think ‘how can they have been criticised and pooh-poohed as young artists with no talent?’ The Royal Academy at that time wanted nice, classical-looking, attractive pictures; they thought the Pre-Raphaelites were almost heretical. The critical response was reactionary because they were doing something new – which is what often happens to our modern artists now.”
Samuel is no stranger to playing historical characters, having played the war poet Wilfred Owen in a BBC Four drama-documentary. He admits that such roles offer a particular set of challenges: “The worry when recreating is one of accuracy – you want to be true to life but, in the end, you can’t worry about it too much, because every actor will do a completely different job. Many actors won’t attempt the kind of precision-recreation that Michael Sheen does brilliantly, for example. Equally, it’s easier because these are not contemporary characters, so no one remembers what they were like. At the end of the day it’s just my take on Millais – someone else might do it differently.”
Having started his career in theatre, Samuel has been playing many more roles on screen recently, but he claims he’s not getting much public attention in London: “In New York I get people coming up to me because The History Boys was such a hit on Broadway and they show the film all the time on cable over there, so people recognise you. Someone approached me on the Tube here who was a fan of Beautiful People. She said, ‘I thought you were really good … shame you weren’t in it more’, and off she got. I thought, ‘thanks very much!’ They say people don’t look at one another on the Tube – I now know that’s not true!”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the playboy and agent provocateur of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – the Casanova of his time. Engaged for 10 years to shop assistant-turned-model Lizzie Siddal, the woman he eventually married, this didn’t stop him sleeping around, much to the chagrin of his friends, writes Programme Information’s Jane Dudley.
Rossetti is played by Aidan Turner in BBC Two’s new drama about the Brotherhood, whose other members are John Millais, William Holman Hunt and, in this story, Fred Walters, an amalgam of several other people in the men’s lives at the time.
Aidan, who recently starred as vampire Mitchell in BBC Three’s Being Human, describes Rossetti as an “absolute free spirit. He’s a chancer and a womaniser – he’s a libertine in every sense of the word.
“Rossetti trained in an art college briefly and left to pursue his life as an artist and met Hunt. Hunt kind of trained him more and he’s striving to be as good as the other guys. He’s highly ambitious but he has this sort of lethargic attitude a lot of the time and doesn’t really like to put in the hard work but wants the results. He’s not quite as talented as the others and he knows it in the back of his head, but he tries.”
Aidan says all the members of the Brotherhood are completely different – John Millais is the truly talented one, Holman Hunt has intensity like no other and, as for Rossetti, whose works include Girlhood Of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilli Domini, what he lacks in talent he makes up for in confidence. “Hunt is the first member of the brotherhood that Rossetti meets and they become really close. Next is John Millais, the prodigal child. He’s the one true genius of the group – he doesn’t even need to work that hard, it just comes naturally to him. And then there’s Fred, who idolises Rossetti in a way, he looks up to him so much and tries to be like him and dresses like him. He really yearns for that confidence and cockiness that Rossetti has.’
“They’re all such different characters, you kind of wonder why they’re friends but I guess all friendships are like that. Most of my friends are radically different people. I don’t think I really like people like me,” he laughs, “I don’t have time for them, they’re just too close – they do your head in!
“I guess that’s just how they worked, though – they bounced off each other.”
Rossetti is, undoubtedly, a charmer who gets what he wants – no matter who he hurts along the way. But despite these shortcomings, Aidan hopes he’s playing a likeable character. “That’s my big thing in this drama – to make him likeable, because a lot of the time he might come off as petulant. He’s a problematic character; he’s intensely passionate and wears his heart on his sleeve. He says what he thinks and what he feels, and a lot of the time it’s frustration, especially in the first three episodes – he’s frustrated that he’s not getting to the places that he wants to be and these other guys are, and he just can’t understand why – he doesn’t want to give in to the fact that it’s probably his lack of talent and tact.
“He’s one of these people that life seems to go really smoothly for because he just rests on other people’s hard work.”
Rossetti’s long – and ultimately doomed – love affair with Lizzie begins when the Brotherhood look for a model to paint. It’s well-documented that the men often engaged in after-hours activities with their models and Lizzie was no exception. “Hunt, Rossetti and Millais want to find a beautiful red-headed woman and Fred Walters spots Lizzie working in a hat shop one day and tells the rest of them that he’s seen this incredible goddess in the shop and they go and check her out.”
It soon becomes clear that Fred has fallen for Lizzie, too, but, as always, Rossetti gets the girl: “Fred hates the way Rossetti treats her, and rightly so,” says Aidan. “So many people at the time pointed out to Rossetti that you can’t treat people like that. He’d constantly just sleep with other women: he had no qualms about stuff like that.”
Aidan admits that, while he knew little of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood before taking on the role, he could now probably use the group as his specialist subject were he to be a contestant on Mastermind: “Do you know what, I probably could – I know so much about this guy!” he laughs.
“I’d heard of Rossetti and I recognised some of the Brotherhood paintings but I didn’t even study art in secondary school. But that’s the great thing about this job – you can completely immerse yourself in a character. There’s so much information on these guys – endless amounts of books and a fantastic website which has everything he’s ever done, every sketch he’s ever made, every painting he’s ever painted.”
Having spent much of the end of 2008 filming BBC Three’s hit drama Being Human (which returns for a second series next year), how does playing an historical figure compare with playing Mitchell the vampire? “I’ve not played a lot of real-life people who have existed before and I love it,” says Aidan. “I approach it in a completely different way – as regards Mitchell I had to make up the story, nobody would ever know, whereas Rossetti’s back story obviously existed, so that work was done.”
Now that he’s played Rossetti, Aidan admits he would love to play more of his heroes but he fears at six foot he’s a little too tall for the roles he’d like: “I’d love to play Napoleon but I’m probably too tall. I’m slightly obsessed with him. I’d also love to play Barry McGuigan, the Irish boxer, but I look nothing like him. He’s tiny and he’s got this funny ‘tache and looks very Irish and I don’t,” he laughs.