ACTOR Stephen Graham has carved out something of a niche for himself playing tough-guy types with a hair-trigger fuse.

Fresh from playing a football hooligan in Awaydays, a psychotic racist in This Is England, and even Al Capone – Graham, 35, is about to hit the small screen as a mercenary ex-soldier in BBC series Occupation.

Casting directors have pegged him as someone who looks like he’d punch someone as soon as look at them, but in real life Graham, from Northwood, Kirkby, is a home-loving father of two, and it helps him spot the vulnerability behind the tough guy facades.

In three-parter Occupation, Graham plays the role of former soldier Danny who returns to Basra to cash in on the post-war construction boom, which saw millions of pounds of foreign aid flood into the country. On the surface, he’s a mercenary “security consultant” selling muscle for dollars, gradually being sucked into a quagmire of greed and murky morals.

But, at its heart, the new drama, commissioned by Jane Tranter and also starring James Nesbitt, is a story of three men whose lives are changed when they enter a block of flats in Basra during the invasion. Deeply affected by their experiences, Danny and his comrades Mike (James Nesbitt) and Hibbsy have struggled to re-adjust to life back in the UK.

Graham says he was hooked by Peter Bowker’s screenplay as soon as he read it.

"I couldn't get my hands on it," he explains. "My wife, Hannah, is an actor as well. When I was reading it she was grabbing it off me all the time. I'd go off and make a cup of tea and she'd be there with her head buried in it saying: 'You've got to get that part'. I'd say: 'Give it back,' and we'd end up fighting over it."

He gained insight into the complex reasons that drove soldiers back to Iraq when he was filming on another production in Britain and learned the 3rd assistant director, Chris, was former Special Forces. He learned how it wasn’t just about the money.

“He told me the thing that kept him out there was the fact that he didn't have any wife and kids. He had nothing. He was just there for the camaraderie and the buzz and the thrill. He'd been doing it since he was 18, so he didn't have any other routine," he says.

"He couldn't cope when he was back here at home seeing his mum and dad and his friends. They didn't quite understand what he'd been going through. He was in the Falklands and then in Kuwait for Desert Storm. It gave me a real understanding of Danny and what made him tick."