'I didn’t want to do an ITV drama': Matthew Macfadyen on making it big in the US

One of the stars of last year's breakout hit Succession, the actor is getting used to being recognised in the US. He talks about juggling success with family life - and why he's starring in a film about electricity

Matthew Macfadyen was idling on the stoop of his boutique Manhattan hotel last month when a man walked past and said warmly: "I loved you in Billions." Macfadyen, at 44, is one of the handful of male British actors on US TV - among them Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic West and the actor for whom Macfadyen was mistaken, Damian Lewis - whom to American eyes can appear indistinguishable. "Thank you!" he replied, cheerfully. (Macfadyen is extremely polite, and inclined to be grateful for any recognition at all.) "Then he came back two minutes later and said: 'Succession! So sorry.'" He roars with laughter.

Tom Wambsgans, the role Macfadyen plays in Succession, is robustly against type. In the 14 years since he played Darcy to Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Macfadyen's career has leaned heavily towards period drama. He did Anna Karenina and Little Dorrit. When the pilot script for Succession reached him, he had just played Mr Wilcox in the BBC adaptation of Howards End. Tom, the ambitious, oleaginous husband to an Elisabeth Murdoch-type heiress was as far from these foppish roles as Macfadyen could get, a gift even before the show took off. "I thought: 'I don't know if this is going to have a life and I don't know where the characters are going to go. But it's clever and farcically funny.'" At the very least, he thought, "it'll show I can do an American accent".