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One effect of money and power is that a family like the Feddens is willing to take in an outsider like Nick, almost to adopt him. “I think that for a lot of wealthy, upper-class families, in times of economic boom, and in times of emotional boom in a way, when things are good, it's quite attractive to have an aesthete around,” Stevens muses. “To invest in art, in piano recitals, in the finer artistic things.”

He explains: “At the beginning of the story the Feddens are quite open to this character of Nick, this aesthete coming in. He doesn't have any great purpose, but he's an artistic, romantic, intellectual figure — something of a curio, almost, to have around the house. As the '80s progress, and the recession kicks in, and things start to fall apart personally in the Feddens' life, they have to start chopping off all the extravagant arms of their life. By the end of the story they can't really afford to have that around any more.”

To some viewers, Nick shows his naïveté in seeming to believe that he will be with the Feddens forever. Stevens agrees that Nick still has a lot of learning and growing up to do in the period covered by the story, even though Nick is no longer a teenager. “It's something that people don't really tell you when you're growing up, that actually a key part of adolescence happens between the ages of about 19 and 25,” Stevens reflects. “That's the really emotional roller-coaster of a stage. You've left university, you're out on your own, you're confronted with the real world. It's quite an incredible time, a difficult time. Nick comes to London from a little town in Northamptonshire, and it's a great voyage of personal discovery for him.”

Stevens himself was born in 1982, a year before the story of The Line of Beauty begins. “It was fascinating to be part of a piece that was about something within my lifetime, but not really something that I was conscious of,” Stevens says regarding the show's social criticism of the 1980s. “I think people were quite surprised by somebody who was a child in the '80s being part of a commentary on a period that they didn't really understand. So I was reading about Thatcherism, reading about the political turmoil of the early '80s, the problems that homosexuals had in the mid-'80s — it was a fascinating decade, really.”

Stevens' next project will also be for the BBC. He is to star in a TV film adaptation of Dracula, which will air in the United Kingdom later this year. “I'm playing Lord Holmwood, who is an English aristocrat who realizes he's inherited syphilis,” Stevens explains. “So he gets Dracula brought over from Transylvania for some kind of special transfusion which goes horribly wrong. It's a slight flight of fancy from the Bram Stoker novel. But it still retains a lot of the key elements. It's good fun.”

Stevens has already attracted a lot of attention for his Line of Beauty role, with some predicting that he could become the next Hugh Grant. Asked about his future plans, he says: “I want to do more of everything, really. I love London, and I love British theater, and there are a lot of great roles in television and theater over here. But I've got representation in America, and I'm going to pop over there and see what's happening. It's a lottery, the film world. But I'd like to go where the interesting roles are.” He laughs and advises, “Watch this space.”

The Line of Beauty will be available on DVD on Tuesday, Oct. 17.
Get it at amazon.com.

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