He certainly menaced magnificently as Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and he does some fine menacing as Captain Hook in the new version in Peter Pan. But, as he also plays the father-figure Mr Darling in the film, he reckons the good and the bad cancel each other out.
 "And funnily enough, Hook is less evil than you have ever seen him before. He is a complicated character, very melancholic and the main thing driving him is that he is furious about getting older and most of all, he is not getting respect from young people. "I think that's pretty easy for us to identify with and he is less villainous than a lot of characters I have played. "Wendy is also semi-in-love with him but also repulsed - and that's why the same actor (ie Isaacs) plays Hook and her Dad. "Anyone who pretends to be a grown-up will see a lot of themselves in Hook." He suggests the film, directed by Australian PJ Hogan, is the first to respect JM Barrie's original. "There is a boy playing a boy and for the first time you can see why Wendy fancies him. "The first time I saw the play was at the Liverpool Empire with Anita Harris as Peter Pan. I was about seven and I could not work out why a woman who looked like my Mum was being fancied by a little girl. There was a person dressed as a dog and they said Peter Pan could fly when she was clearly being lifted up by a rope!" Isaacs spent a year on the Gold Coast in Australia making the movie. "It was fantastic, no winter, no summer, no autumn just glorious weather every day. It was like Neverland itself. "I suppose they shot there because it was a cheap and there was a giant film studio where we took over every single studio stage where they went to town and bui lt Neverland."
 So that sounded like good fun. "No it wasn't,' he grimaces. "It was incredibly painful. "First of all it was humiliating as I had to sword fight with my left hand. I am pretty good with my right hand and had to learn from scratch. "But the young actor Jeremy Sumpter who was playing Peter Pan was a natural athlete and was fighting to Olympic standard in about half an hour and there was me flailing around with a wet noodle of an arm. "Then I spent a lot of time in mid air and if you have ever been lifted up by your underpants you know what it is like - just imagine that three months at a time. It brings tears to your eyes!" The best part, he says, was taking off his costume at the end of the day and hanging out with the kids from the film. | 
