The Morning Show star Billy Crudup said it was “a dream come true” to make his West End debut on Thursday night.
The actor – whose CV includes hit films Almost Famous and Justice League – said the opening night of his one-man show Harry Clarke had been “fabulous”.
He said: “I’ve been coming to London for 30 years to see theatre and to get to share some of the work that my colleagues and I have been working on for over five years now was a dream come true.”
He plays the title character – a damaged young American who cons his way into the affections of a wealthy New York family by pretending to be English.
Crudup – who is married to Hollywood star Naomi Watts - plays all the parts switching accents continuously going from American to cockney and a more refined English voice influenced by softly spoken 1950s matinee idols but insists he is not a natural mimic.
He said: “I don’t do great accents, I have to work. You know I went to graduate school to study acting so I have techniques I can employ but I’m not one of those people who hears it easily.
“My son is 20, he can do accents like you can’t believe. He hears it and it comes out of his mouth. That is not me at all.
“I’m continuing to apply notes that I get from a dialect teacher here as well but even after six years I’m still working on it.”
He describes the character of Clarke – a deeply damaged man who can only find peace by pretending to be someone else – as a “fabulist” and compared him to disgraced US politician George Santos.
The New York representative was kicked out of Congress after it emerged he had lied about having a career on Wall Street, his college education and having Jewish ancestors as well as falsely claiming his mother died in the 9/11 attacks.
Crudup said: “We’ve got a guy who recently got expelled from congress who I can only think of as a fabulist. He just wanted his life to be like that.
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“Its an existential question. No doubt there were cave people going ‘Oh, if I was only on the other side of the mountain what kind of man I could be?’
“In the imagination the grass is always greener.”
