In love with Hamlet, Dylan, Keats . . .

Ben Whishaw sits unrecognised, wearing a black T-shirt and drinking red wine in a dark corner of the Royal Court’s café. He has just come off stage from rehearsing Mike Bartlett’s new play Cock — in which he plays a chap who takes a break from his boyfriend and accidentally meets the girl of his dreams — and he’s still all buzzed up.

I had been warned that giving interviews isn’t Whishaw’s favourite occupation. But it certainly doesn’t show here. There’s no sulkiness or distractedness on his part. Perhaps his recent jaunt around the US, to promote his hotly tipped performance as John Keats in the film Bright Star, has acclimatised him to the rigours and demands of a celebrated life.

He leans towards me as I sit down, and says conspiratorially, ‘I think it’s important for an actor to remain surprising. It is very hard to watch an actor if you know too much about him. There need to be unknown areas, otherwise it’s just a “star” playing a role.’

He’s quite right, of course. But, even with his reluctance to become a household name, it seems that Whishaw is set for stardom.

Bright Star — the affecting love story of Keats and his Hampstead next-door neighbour Fanny Brawne (played by Abbie Cornish) — could tip the balance. It has gone down fabulously well with American ‘tastemakers’; it drew an enraptured response at last month’s London Film Festival; and it opens worldwide around now, with the words ‘Oscar’ and ‘nomination’ hovering around Whishaw’s performance in particular.

Playing Keats, he says, was a bit like playing Hamlet — which he did to searing effect, a year out of college, in Trevor Nunn’s 2004 production at the Old Vic. Both roles gave him an opportunity to explore gigantic, stormy emotions; from the deepest love to the deepest despair.