Nick Blood has a permanent record. He’s got a few, actually. There are the tattoos, for starters. One, shared by his brothers and sisters, is the alchemical symbol for blood, inked in a suitably violent red. A second, on the inside of his arm, reads ‘Still Ill’, a nod to The Smiths’ seminal track — and another of Blood’s records: a permanently spinning vinyl collection of The Stone Roses, The Cure and more.

And his third record? That’d be Blood’s career: a rap sheet of enforcement-adjacent roles that have seen the actor flit between cop and criminal often enough to fill a whole stack of police blotters.

His first professional acting role came back in 2009, as a kidnapper on The Bill. But Blood’s been on the right side of the law — mostly — in the years since, in Slow Horses, Babylon and The Day of the Jackal. He’s just finished up playing a coercive police officer in Sting at the Young Vic, “very, very heavy and quite dark — but brilliantly written,” and you can currently catch him as a detective with the Met in new thriller series Hit Point.

A cocksure six-parter, the show rakes up the dirt of the London underworld with tight jokes, needle-drops and a strong double act from Blood and his co-lead, Top Boy’s Saffron Hocking. It’s a pacy-but-playful watch and, Blood reckons, as far from ‘cosy crime’ as you can get. “I love stuff like this,” he says, “that tonally sits in a slightly heightened world, but have these very rich characters. You get it in Breaking Bad. We had it in Slow Horses.

“Because, in most cop shows,” Blood adds, “everyone is so slick. In this, though, there’s a scene where we’re lugging a very heavy object down a canal towpath. In an action movie, that’d be one guy with it over his shoulder, running down the towpath. Here, it’s three guys, out of breath, having to take breaks. It feels a bit more believable.”

Before the series aired, Blood and the team hosted a special screening at BAFTA, attended by some real-life ex-police detectives. “And they specifically said that the show got it right, especially how it feels like to be on a stakeout — shooting the breeze for four hours, eating food, then you throw the kebab out of the window and you’re off!”

The first episode, especially, is practically one long lunch: burgers, fries, noodle soups, milkshakes and a carton of double-yolk eggs. On-screen eating can be a curse, Blood says — something he learnt on one of his earliest acting jobs. “We were shooting in Shoreditch, all eating breakfast,” he laughs. “I decided, as a phallic reference, that I’d eat a sausage. But, as the newbie, I didn’t realise there was going to be 40 takes. So, by the end, I just had this bucket of chewed up sausage next to me. Definitely learnt my lesson.”

The sausage trauma hasn’t put him off food, though. A current favourite restaurant is Homies on Donkeys, a Mexican spot in Leytonstone and, for Blood’s money, the best taqueria in the capital. “The chef’s from Tijuana. It’s legit.” For many years, Blood lived in Los Angeles, where he worked on shows including Euphoria and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. He met his wife, model Emory Ault, while in LA, “and one of our favourite things to do there was go to Highland Park, get tacos from this little food truck, then walk down York Boulevard to Donut Friend.”

Blood loved his time in LA — despite his name having a habit of causing confusion. “Growing up, it was a blessing and a curse, because people don’t forget it. But when I first moved to the States, someone started following me on Instagram. And every one of their photos was blocks of cash, or stashes of weed and guns. I was like, what’s all this? But then I realised he was a Blood — a real Blood.”

“It’s a blessing and a curse…”

It’s not the first time Blood’s surname has been mistaken for a gang reference. His stateside driving instructor told him he had “some cousins who would not like that,” and he once met skateboarder Antwuan Dixon — “quite an intimidating character, well over six feet and face covered in tattoos” — who introduced himself as “Antwuan Dixon, OG West Coast Crip.”

“I was like — woah, you won’t like my name then! And his face just went cold. He said: ‘What’s your name?’ I thought, show no fear, so I said Nick Blood. He starts getting in my face, going: ‘Blood? You’re a Blood?’ It was like that scene in a movie where everyone else goes quiet. He asked to see my ID, so I pull it out and he starts saying: ‘You coming ’round my hood?’ He was just having me on, and started laughing, but I was just there, sweat dripping down my back.”

After the pandemic, Blood moved back to London, which meant more stage work — including Much Ado About Nothing for the Royal Shakespeare Company last year — as well as big-budget series like Andor. Hit Point is perhaps his most blatant love-hate letter to the city, with London locations and institutions doing plenty of the heavy lifting. But, if the food runs the length of the counter, so does the music. Nina Simone kicks things off, with the Ezra Collective and a steady stream of soul following close behind. Blood’s character is even described as a ‘soul man’ in the first episode. Does the same go for the actor?

“My tastes are pretty broad,” he says. He recently saw The Streets live, as well as Geese — “who I love. They’re the first new rock band for a while I’ve got into.” But Blood’s first musical obsession came when he was six, and Elvis first swivelled into his life. “I became slightly obsessed, started putting my hair in a quiff and stuff. But when I was 11, just before Kurt Cobain died, I really got into Nirvana.”

Blood’s brother was into heavy metal, so that found its way into the mix — alongside a streak of punk. And then came the Beastie Boys. “Which, I think, for a white kid from the suburbs, was huge. I actually met [drummer] Mike D a couple of years ago. I told him that he was responsible for me, and probably a hell of a lot of other people, being opened up to a whole new world of music.”

During summers home from university, Blood worked in a small independent record shop near Aylesbury, where he grew up. “It was just everything. But that’s why my tastes are broad — I even remember, as a kid again, listening to a lot of The Beatles with my dad in the car. He was from Liverpool.”

In 2011, Blood played “fifth Beatle” Stuart Sutcliffe in the play Backbeat. “When that came up — my agent said it was in the West End — and I said, is it a musical? Because I don’t sing or dance, and I didn’t play the bass. But then I had a word with myself, because my dad had died less than a year before, and he actually grew up two doors down from Stuart Sutcliffe. His claim to fame was that he used to play football with a Beatle. So I dived in.”

Now, Blood is expecting his first child — who’ll no doubt have some great dad stories, too. “I’m taking some time at the moment,” he nods. “I couldn’t wait to finish the play, so now me and my wife can just nest, and I can talk to her belly.”

New Blood aside, there’s one final family story the actor is keen to sneak in: that the family tattoo gang may soon be gaining another member.

“You know the alchemical symbol tattoo? The one I said all my siblings and I have?” says Blood. “Well, my mum turned 75 last week — and she thought we were going to get her the same one! I said, wait, you actually want to get a tattoo? So I think we’re going to book her in!”

Another permanent record, then. The good news is, after 15 years of building a career that’s taken him from London to LA and back again, with cops, criminals, Shakespeare and superheroes along the way, Nick Blood’s record is far from closed.

Hit Point is airing on U&Dave and U now. For more actor interviews, check out our chat with Tom Blyth…

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