George Frew meets Casualty star Paterson Joseph, currently appearing in A Doll's House at the Oxford Playhouse . . .

There are some actors who specialise in playing themselves, whether they're cast as King Lear or King Kong.

And there are others, like Paterson Joseph, who like to stretch things a bit, take a few risks and expand their repertoire.

Paterson, at 36, has an impressive CV, but is probably best known for his roles as Dr Mark Grace in Casualty and for his part alongside Leonardo di Caprio in the film The Beach.

But this week, local audiences can see him in a different guise altogether - playing Torvald, the domineering lead character in Ibsen's tragedy A Doll's House at the Oxford Playhouse (October 17-21).

"Yes, it's certainly a departure from appearing in Casualty, he laughs. Paterson, whose parents are from the Caribbean island of St Lucia, was born and brought up in north London.

"I bunked off school a lot," he admits, "something which I now regret but which seemed the right thing to do at the time. I had a variety of jobs and when I was 18 I was training as a chef but it bored me. I needed to do something else - so I applied to the National Youth Theatre."

Paterson says he's never found any racial prejudice in his chosen profession and that his colour hasn't prevented him from playing a wide variety of roles, either - despite the dire warnings his sister issued when he announced he wanted to act.

"She just said, 'What's the point? You'll only end up playing butlers or slaves'," he recalls.

"Now every black actor has a different story and some get typecast, but that can happen to anyone, whatever their colour. As for the parts I've done, I could have been anyone from anywhere.

"Acting is a tough business across the board - whatever colour you are. But I've got all sorts of stuff on my CV."

With some actors, the theatre is a sort of holy experience and no other acting medium comes close to its superiority. Many of these sort of thespians behave as if they wouldn't sully their hands if a TV producer or a Hollywood director came calling - and they also tend to be the ones who never get asked to audition, anyway.

Paterson likes all three acting media for completely different reasons.

"In a way, the theatre is less rigid - although you can never escape from the audience when you're on stage, he reflects. "I think it's great to be able to do film, TV and theatre. Television is very immediate and film is very...well, international, usually."

Of his role as Torvald in A Doll's House, he says: "He sees himself as some sort of magnanimous king who has the world on his shoulders. He's the sort of husband who can't treat his wife as an equal, so it's more like a father and daughter relationship than man and wife.

I've tried not to make him just a two-dimensional figure. He thinks he should show his wife how one should live one's life - and all she has to do is to be pretty, like a doll."

Paterson reckons he's too young to play Othello yet, but he strongly hankers after the chance to do Iago, the Moor's evil lieutenant.

"I'd love to play Iago, and I know just how it could be done - so if there are any directors out there who are interested, get in touch!"

As far as television is concerned, he admits that there "might be something happening next year," but won't reveal what. "I don't want to talk about it because you never know what will happen.

True enough - but it can be stated with some confidence that where Paterson Joseph is concerned, the offers of diverse roles will just keep on coming.

From Casualty to Ibsen.