The Wise guy

The death of Stalin's Khrushchev is just the latest in a long line of wily schemers for Steve Buscemi. The master character actor. Talks Alex Godfrey through a career spent one step ahead.

MY INTRODUCTION TO STEVE BUSCEMI IS EVERYTHING you’d fear, which, perversely, is everything you’d want. Due to some miscommunication, I’m in the adjoining room to the Brooklyn photo studio, gormlessly unaware that the shoot wrapped 10 minutes ago. “He was about to leave!” the photographer says when he finds me, leading me into the studio, where Buscemi looks agitated. “You were hiding in plain sight!” says Buscemi, looking like Mr Pink, sounding like Mr Pink, in a space not unlike a warehouse. It’s not good for your nerves. Of course, he’s absolutely fine, and gentlemanly too. There’s just all that baggage.

From Reservoir Dogs to Fargo to this month’s The Death Of Stalin, Buscemi is all too convincing as cerebral hotheads, unleashing machine-gun diatribes and not letting go, a dog with a bone. In the latter film, directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci (The Thick Of It, Veep), Buscemi plays Nikita Khrushchev, one of the Politburu’s highest in command, who bashes heads with an unpleasant array of nemeses in the power struggle after Russia’s tyrant-in-chief kicks the bucket. As you would expect from Iannucci, it’s both dark and hilarious, with Buscemi on frightening form.