Sam Riley, former aspiring rock star, gets to play rock legend Ian Curtis in 'Control'

Sam Riley was folding shirts in a Leeds warehouse when he got his second shot. The first, living out the rock-star dream, crashed to a halt when his band, 10,000 Things, got caught up in record-label politics and some murderous reviews. So the singer and part-time actor figured he had little to lose when he went to audition for the role of Ian Curtis in a long-gestating biopic about the legendary Joy Division frontman, who committed suicide in 1980, just before his band was to leave for its first US tour.

Getting the part, and nailing the performance, in Anton Corbijn's "Control," opening Friday, will keep Riley out of the warehouse for a good long time. Talking up the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, the 27-year-old Riley looks every slouchy inch the British rock peacock. But in conversation he proves to be good-humored, self-aware, and frank about what it took to get into the troubled head of the post-punk musician who took his life at 23.

Q: Anyone who loves music will love those moments in the movie when you're in your room, on your bed, studying an album that you've just bought, losing yourself in it. What were those moments for you?

A: The first real band was the Beatles when I was about 8. I was obsessed by them, ridiculously wearing round glasses and things like that. And then it was the Stones, once I started smoking cigarettes.

Q: And the first time you came upon Joy Division?

A: It's kind of strange because no one's ever said I looked like Ian Curtis before this, except for one guy at a pub in Leeds, a pub where we played quite often when we first started, '98 or something. He said, "10,000 Things - Ian Curtis fronts the Rolling Stones." I said, "Who's Ian Curtis?"

Q: Come on.

A: I mean, I knew "Love Will Tear Us Apart." I'd seen that video, I liked it. And a friend had given me "Unknown Pleasures," actually, amongst a whole load of CDs he was getting rid of. But I only really listened to "Transmission," I really loved that particular song. But I didn't connect immediately with any of the others.

Q: Was it too downbeat for you?

A: Maybe. I was more of an upbeat, rock 'n' roll type guy. The first time I ever saw Ian doing anything other than "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was when I started researching this. That's when I felt a connection. The albums I always felt a distance, the coldness of them.

Q: So it was seeing him perform?

A: "Transmission" was the first one, the Granada TV performance, that one. I was watching and I thought, "If I had that haircut, I could look like that." And then when he gets to the final segue of the tune, where he really lifts himself into that manic thing, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I thought, "This is the most original frontman I've seen for a long time." I thought he was electric.

Q: Was it hard putting away your own stage moves to take on his?

A: I was always running all over the place, gyrating. We were crude, really, my band - lyrically and performance-wise. So it did take quite a while. I ended up getting the DVD [of all the live Joy Division performances], it was only an hour in total. And on one of these videos, I'd never seen anything like it, he was like a duck or something. But it was quite frustrating to research him because he would keep disappearing out of the light. I wasn't sure whether I was getting it at all.

Q: When did you know you had?

A: Anton got us together, all the actors who'd play the band, two weeks prior to the shooting. We were in a rehearsal room together - he wanted us to get together so we could mime convincingly as the band. We were all desperate to do it ourselves, and not mime. Anton was adamant - he thought it wasn't going to be possible to get together four actors and have them play the music convincingly. Fortunately, they were never really virtuosos, which gives us a little bit of escape. We really worked at it. That's when it really came together for me - when I heard the band playing behind me. They were calling me "Ian" the whole time, we called each other by the names. Not to be pretentious about it, but I tried to channel it. And when I heard the music come out of the amplifiers, I felt as close to Ian as I could be.

Q: In the Joy Division documentary there's a quote about Ian Curtis where someone says, "All he did in his spare time was read about human suffering." What do you do with that?

A: [Laughs] I love that. I love Ian Curtis. He was really brilliant, wasn't he? He comes from a family not too dissimilar from mine, where he was very much loved, and looked after. He went to a nice school. And I think there's something about coming from that safe background that makes you always slightly self-conscious about being in rock 'n' roll. It's always more convincing if you've been picked off the street or you've been a criminal in your early life. So maybe to read about all that suffering is to sort of try to bring yourself as close to what you feel is authentic rock stardom, where you had hardships and the working-class ethos. It wasn't particularly Ian; nor am I.

Q: Are you ready for what this film might do for you?

A: I try not to think about it, but I also realize that my days doing whatever I've wanted with nobody giving a [toss] are numbered. I mean, I want to be a movie star - always partly have. And another part of me really doesn't want my opinion asked, because I'm not confident enough sometimes that I'm saying the right thing, or because people will judge me based on what I say. It's unnerving. But I asked for it. Careful what you wish for.