Jason Isaacs cries at “everything”

He said: “As soon as anyone meets me, they know I’m nothing like the scary, tough characters I’ve played.

“I remember once sitting on a plane next to someone who recognised me from ‘Civvies’, where I played a soldier with PTSD. He told me he’d served in the Falklands and the series had felt very real for him.

“And then I watched a movie on the plane and I started sobbing, with snot pouring down my face, because I cry at everything. He was so disgusted that he moved seats.”

Although the 58-year-old star doesn’t think he gets “fooled easily”, he admitted he fell for a scam when a man claimed to have been mugged on the way to the airport, prompting him to kindly hand over some cash to help – and only realised his mistake when his friends told him about a new “trick”.

He told Total Film magazine: “I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t get fooled easily.

“I was in Soho [London] once and I saw this guy standing at a traffic light, sobbing and holding a suitcase.

“He’d been mugged on his way to the airport and lost everything except his plane ticket, so I took him to an ATM and gave him some money.

“Afterwards, I was chatting to a friend of mine who said, ‘Have you heard the latest trick? These people are standing at traffic lights crying, holding fake airline tickets…’"