Fans may recognize Russell Tovey as the beleaguered werewolf in BBC’s Being Human, Patrick’s love interest in HBO’s Looking, or, more recently, as the enigmatic new character on ABC’s runaway hit Quantico. But what may be lesser-known about the actor is his off-screen relationship with contemporary art—a serious passion he regularly touts on Instagram.
I last saw Tovey on the fair circuit during this year’s Armory Show, where he was standing in front of an enormous contour drawing by legendary Young British Artist Tracey Emin at Carolina Nitsch‘s booth. These days, Tovey told me, he’s been on the gallery crawl in New York whenever he has a spare moment, making the occasional studio visit along the way.
In a recent phone conversation, we talked about the artists he’s been interested in, the importance of collecting, and how he got into art. “As a kid I always connected to pop art through cartoons and comic books like Tintin and Marvel, and then discovering Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol,” he said. “I loved advertising art and people like Mel Ramos using that in his work, but I never realized that you could actually buy into art and live with it.”
See the rest of our conversation, and some of the works in his collection (like the Wolfgang Tillmans photograph pictured above), in the interview below.
Read the full interview on artnet News.