Eddie Marsan: James Brown helped me escape my
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- Eddie Marsan names Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine by James Brown as the song that changed his life, saying it helped him escape his insecurities about girls through dancing.
- Marsan's earliest song memory was My Sweet Lord by George Harrison, heard during a family caravan holiday on the Isle of Sheppey.
- His first single purchase was Big Time by Rick James, bought at Paul's Music on Cambridge Heath Road in London.
- Marsan admits he secretly loves Ain't No Pleasing You by Chas & Dave but tells people he hates it, explaining that his whole career he has tried not to appear as a 'caricatured cockney.'
- He credits Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton with making him cry, saying he only understood its significance when he heard it while being driven to a film set in Virginia after the birth of his first child.
- Marsan describes himself as addicted to 'two things in life — funk and praise.'
- His new project No Ordinary Heist is airing on Now and on Sky Cinema from 27 June.
Why it matters: Marsan uses the playlist format to quietly map a working-class London identity he says he has spent his career trying to disguise — from apprentice printer to actor policing his accent against the 'caricatured cockney' tag — offering a rare unguarded self-portrait from a character actor known for guarded roles.
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