Looking For Eric

Written by Paul Laverty and directed by Ken Loach, Looking For Eric follows the story of Manchester United fan and postman Eric Bishop. Eric's life is spiralling into crisis. His step-son keeps a gun under the floorboards, he thinks he is still in love with his ex-wife and at his lowest he considers suicide. Then he begins to hallucinate, and his hallucinations bring forth visits from his hero Eric Cantona, who gives him philosphical advice. It's a wonderful film, and Steve Evets is great as Eric the postman, Have a wee read of his biography. he's had a more interesting life than Cantona.

Born in Salford, Evets joined the Merchant Navy after leaving school, but was kicked out after three years, after jumping ship twice in Japan and spending his eighteenth birthday in a Bombay brothel. He then briefly worked delivering pipes before starting his acting career, initially by forming a street theatre company with two friends. As there was already a Steve Murphy on the books of Equity, he decided on the stage name Steve Evets: "The first thing that popped into my head was 'Steve' backwards, so I put that on the form." In 1987 Evets was stabbed through the liver, lung and diaphragm, glassed in the face and had his throat cut in a pub fight, he spent time on a life support machine and as a result had six major operations including the removal of parts of his ribs that had become infected from the unclean blade. He has three children to two different women and has an ex wife that he has no children to.

He moved into theatre work, and had small roles in several television series such as Casualty, Life on Mars, Shameless, and Emmerdale. In between acting roles, he worked under the name Adolph Chip-pan, performing political comedy poetry in Manchester. He also worked as a musician, and was introduced to Mark E. Smith of The Fall in the mid-1990s, leading to Evets performing his poetry at some Fall gigs. When Smith found that Evets could play bass guitar, he was drafted into the band in Turkey after previous bassist Jim Watts had been sacked. He played in The Fall between 2000 and 2002, before leaving to front his own band, Dr Freak's Padded Cell, which he described as "electronic dance music with sort of very political overtones", even getting Smith to provide guest vocals on one track; Evets made a video for the track and posted it on YouTube, much to the dislike of Smith, ending their friendship. His first major film role came in 2008, playing a terminally-ill wheelchair-bound alcoholic, alongside Robert Carlyle, in Kenneth Glenaan's award-winning Summer. He followed this with the lead role in Ken Loach's 2009 film Looking for Eric, starring alongside Eric Cantona. This role saw him tipped for the Best Actor award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. In 2009, Evets worked on a third film, Best Laid Plans.