One of Britain’s best actors is back on stage as Scrooge. He reflects on his Salford childhood, his rebirth after a breakdown – and why we need to get the Tories out

As a child of no more than seven or eight, Christopher Eccleston saw an animated version of A Christmas Carol. It was his introduction to the Dickens classic and he was so taken with it, he says, that he started to draw it “quite obsessively. The scene where Scrooge arrives home and passes the Scrooge & Marley sign.” What was it that grabbed him? “The unpleasantness of him. I presume that all of us are aware of our duality. I think, from an early age, I was very aware of it. I thought I could be very good or I could be very nasty. I dwelled on that as a child quite a lot.”

Eccleston is about to play Ebenezer Scrooge in Jack Thorne’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol, first performed at the Old Vic in 2017 and every year since. He has not seen previous productions, which he is thankful for. “I think I’d have been too intimidated.” We meet in a rehearsal room on the top floor of the London theatre. Eccleston is intense. It is not aggression: he is warm and funny, but there is something hawk-like about the planes of his face and his direct gaze. Partly because of his roles, his image has been one of either bristling male anger or forlornness, but the way he looks and the way he feels often don’t match up: there is a low-key joy to him that does not always come across. In 2016, he was hospitalised with severe clinical depression, but says he is content now. “Very happy with my relationship with my children, and very happy with this work. And happy to have got to nearly 60 in one piece.”