Jared Harris: ‘Dad knocked out an Irishman then brought him round by throwing Guinness in his face’

You seem to have a predilection to play real -life characters who die prematurely. Who would you like to play who lives to old age? NeilHV

Well, I don’t know if that’s true. Captain Crozier [from The Terror] didn’t die, and Lane Pryce [from Mad Men] wasn’t real. I would love to play [the 19th-century US president] Ulysses S Grant. His history has largely been written by southern US historians and so his achievements have largely been denigrated. But his campaigns are taught in all the military academies around the world. Despite a pretty disastrous presidency, he still managed to [sign a] Civil Rights Act – and he destroyed the Ku Klux Klan .

When the civil war broke out he sold firewood by the side of the road to try to put food on the table for his family. Eight years la