BRIAN Capron is living proof of the theory that actors are nothing like the characters they play.

Before meeting him, you can't help but feel a sliver of unease. This is the man, after all, who plays Richard Hillman, Coronation Street's first serial killer. A man whose knowing asides to camera and cold, dead eyes have left audiences on the edge of their sofas desperate to see what he'll do next.

"It is quite odd at times because people do come up to you in the street and say things like 'hello murderer'," Capron admits with a genial smile.

"I think the thing about Richard, though, is that he teeters on the edge of melodrama. He's not simply outright evil, and I think that allows people to almost, at times, root for him.

"The thing that surprised me most was how much children like the character. Families will come up and bring their children over and say: 'My daughter really likes you,' and the child will be about six and I'm thinking, OK, but the other night I hit someone with a crowbar until they were dead."

Meeting Capron is unnervingly like meeting Richard Hillman's equally dapper, but terribly nice, twin brother. Sitting in a room in the heart of Granada's television studios, he's as immaculately dressed as his screen alter ego, amusingly deadpan and clearly having the time of his life playing the Street's latest bad guy.

And it is a measure of how much the character has imprinted himself on the public consciousness that, no matter how charming and funny 55-year-old Capron is, you still sort of expect him to pull out an instrument of murder when no one is looking.

"I know, I know," he says, laughing. "I think part of it is that when you are playing a role in a long-running show such as this, then the character takes on a life of its own. To some extent, Richard Hillman is a part of me now: Not that I'm intending to murder someone - I can switch him on and off suddenly."

As though to demonstrate, he leans across the table and fixes me with the patented Hillman look of death before leaning back again and laughing.

"It's that easy," he says. "The idea is that he's actually quite normal in many ways but has this inner ruthless streak. There are moments when he just loses it, and that's where the dead eyes come in."

And part of what makes Richard so much fun, both to watch and for Capron to play, is this sense that despite the small murdering problem he is actually a devoted family man who truly cares for his wife, Gail, and her two children. Interestingly, Capron says that this touch was first thought of by himself and Helen Worth, who plays Gail.

"Richard was initially written as a con man," he says. "And Helen and I kept thinking that it wouldn't work because if the audience thinks he doesn't care for Gail, then he's just a traditional soap bad guy and we thought it could be more than that. So we discussed what the character would be like if he truly wanted stability and a family and would do anything to hold all that together.

Family man

"Then we went to the director and writers and they agreed. And I do think that's what has made the character so popular, and meant that people have really enjoyed the storyline, because he is a family man.

"There was a moment quite early on when they wrote a scene where Richard hit David and I went to them and said: 'We can't do this,' because if we'd done that scene then we'd have lost the character and the audience. Thankfully, they agreed."

Capron claims not to have drawn on any incidents in his past for inspiration for Hillman, but there is a sense that the emphasis he places on family - and the importance of having one - comes as much from him as from the character.

Raised on a council estate near London's Heathrow airport, Capron never knew his real father, a French airforce pilot who died when he was 18 months old. "My mother met him during the war," he says. "He was from an old French colonial family and asked her to marry him and move to Algeria, where his family lived."

He breaks off and stares into space. "I don't think it was that easy for her. I do have the letter he wrote asking her to marry him and it's incredible, very eloquent, but then they got out there and Algeria at that time..."

For whatever reasons, Capron's mother returned, pregnant with him, to England. His father made sporadic visits to attempt to convince her to allow him to bring up their son.

"I don't think it was in a nasty way," he says, slowly. "I think he was just saying: 'I can provide for this child - I can give him a good life'. It wasn't easy for her, and then he died in a plane crash and his family flew over and tried to convince her to give me to them."

Settled

Instead, Capron's mother married a Heathrow airport guard and they settled down to life on the estate. "He was a good man, my step-father," Capron says. "But that marriage didn't work either and I think it did make her bitter in the end.

"The only thing I regret is that I don't know anything about my father's side of the family, and that's important to me because they form part of my children's heritage and I want them to know about them."

This desire to unearth his past has led Capron to start trying to track down his long-lost relatives. He is getting married in June to long-standing girlfriend, Jacqueline, who is the mother of his son, Louis, six. There are also two daughters, Lucy, 27, and Ellie, 24, from a first marriage - and he says he is keen to unearth his past before then.

"We've found a phone number now - Jacqueline's been incredible about it," he says. "So, hopefully, we'll be able to go over there and meet them and I can find out more about what my father was like."

He sounds wistful for a second, as though thinking about what might have been, but the moment passes and he smiles and acknowledges that, right now, his life is as good as it gets.

"Oh, definitely," he says. "Of course, you do worry about the fact of leaving the soap - and, no, even I don't know quite how it will all end. We've shot several different endings - and maybe this will turn out to be my career high.

"But, then again, I was an established actor for years before I played Richard. I starred in a comedy series, Full House, and in Grange Hill, acted on stage, and appeared in every type of TV drama you can imagine."

He leans back and smiles, obviously relaxed. "I've had a couple of interesting offers and maybe something will come of them - then again, maybe it won't. I could get anxious about it and there are moments when I do, but overall..." He shrugs. "The thing is I'll always be able to say I played Richard Hillman, and, whatever else he is, he's certainly one of soaps' most memorable roles."

He undoubtedly is - and the man who breathed life into him can take a justifiable amount of pleasure in that.

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