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Why Paul believes the time is now right to reveal all ...

Reckon you haven't seen enough of Paul Nicholls lately? Well, not for much longer you won't.

Last seen meeting a grisly end as City Central's PC Terry Sydenham, the former EastEnders heart-throb is back on our screens this fortnight in a steamy new three-part BBC1 drama called The Passion - and for the first time in his career, he will be baring all.

Paul plays Daniel, a young actor who drifts into a small community in North Devon and lands a role as Jesus in the village Passion plays.

It's not long, though, before the performance being rehearsed on stage takes a back seat to the drama going on backstage as Daniel embarks on an affair with a married costume designer, played by Gina McKee.

"Before The Passion, I'd always been a bit sceptical about doing nude scenes," says 20-year-old Paul. "People have wanted me to play strippers or things like that in the past, and I've thought, 'Oh yes, you're just looking for something to boost the ratings.'

"But the more I read The Passion, the more I realised every scene was relevant, and that taking my clothes off was essential to the plot."

Older and wiser since leaving EastEnders, Paul looks back on his time as troubled teenager Joe Wicks with mixed emotions. While grateful for the opportunities the role gave him, he has still not fully come to terms with the pinup status it afforded him.

"I have days when I really think I can't act," says Paul. "I think people only want me because of my face or because I'm a name. I look around me an think there are so many more talented actors out there."

It would seem though, that there are plenty of casting directors out there who would disagree. Having already impressed with his roles on television and stage, Paul is now venturing into films, playing a soldier in the World War One drama The Trench, and starring opposite Joan Collins and Nigel Hawthorne in the Restoration comedy A Clandestine Marriage.

"When I was a little kid, my dream was always to get into films," says Paul. "I never thought I would actually achieve it, though. I couldn't believe it when I got these two films. If I never work again, at least I will have done what I've always wanted to do. I must admit I've had an amazing year."

From being the EastEnders heart-throb, Paul Nicholls has gone to playing the ultimate in 'pure love' figures. Victoria Coren talks to the BBC's gorgeous new Jesus

"PERHAPS I'm a hog," says Paul Nicholls. "A big, fat. hairy, sexy hog." Nicholls is looking at a newspaper article in which the comedian Simon Fanshawe describes him as "a very sexy puppy". Paul is sceptical: "I can't say I've ever looked in the mirror and thought 'Ooh, sexy puppy'." Hence, casting around far a more appropriate description, he ends up at the pig farm.

Fair enough. What self-respecting teenage boy (as he was when that article appeared; he's since turned 20) dreams of being described as a puppy? But Nicholls really is ridiculously cute. Floppy hair, big blue eyes, button nose. If he has aunts, I bet they're always chucking him under the chin.

"I am incredibly hairy, though." insists Nicholls, with stern machismo. "I have hair everywhere."

The great news for Nicholls fans -- and he won a legion of them when he first ranted to fame as mad Joe Wicks in EastEnders -- is that his body will be revealed in all its hairy splendour this weekend.

In The Passion, a three-part BBC drama, Paul does his first nude scene. Playing an actor who is drafted in to be Jesus in a village Passion play, Nicholls even has a loincloth scene.

I heard a whisper that his hairiness manifested itself to such an extent that a certain element of waxing was required. Nicholls is horrified,

"It's a f***ing lie! Who has been saying this? I do not wax! All right, I was worried about the hair, but vanity takes away from a performance. You can't be standing there playing Jesus and thinking 'ooh, my arms could do with a shave'. You can see for yourself - here I am, hairy."

Only love, not fame will make me truly happy.

At the height of his Eastenders fame, Paul Nicholls was receiving 500 fan letters a week. But the 19 year old says stardom in Britain's biggest soap nearly drove him as mad as his character Joe Wicks.

"I never want to live like that again" says Paul Nicholls of his days in Albert Square. "All the attention made me so paranoid that I wasn't making any friends for fear they might sell their story."

But despite offers to stay on at EastEnders, earning £75,000 a year as schizophrenic Joe Wicks, as well as an £850,000 incentive to become a pop star, Paul turned his back on all the attention to purse more low-key roles. "The writing in EastEnders wasn't changing and I felt a bit stale, I just wasn't getting any enjoyment out of playing that person anymore."

The teenage heart-throb took the same step when he asked to be written out of cop drama City Central for fear a part in a long running series would become too restrictive - no matter how tempting the salary. Rookie copper Terry Sydenham was killed off last month.

But despite this, Paul does admit his acting wasn't of the highest calibre when he played the title role in the stage comedy Billy Liar last June. "I know I wasn't very good in it. Actually I was rubbish," admits Paul.

Paul's latest role in new three-part BBC drama The Passion sees him take on his most ambitious role - playing Jesus. He stars as an actor cast as the son of God in a rural village's traditional play.

But off stage, he gets up to all manner of sinful behaviour with a bored housewife, which leads to explosive confrontations in the sleepy community.

Paul says his own private life isn't half as steamy and dreams of the day when he finds Miss Right. "I feel something is missing," he admits. "It would be nice to come home to someone, In fact, the only thing that could make me truly happy is to be with someone I love."

But despite being settled in London to be closer to his work, Paul prefers life in his home town, Bolton, Lancs., where he stays with his dad, Paul and sister Kelly.

"London's nice, but Bolton's where I'm from and it's always going to be best."

Lonely Paul Nicholls has even been to New York in search of the love that could heal the torment left by EastEnders

Paul Nicholls is so exhausted from jet lag he can barely stay awake He's just returned from a week's holiday in New York and was so tired he cancelled yesterday's interview. Today he's having the same problems with his eyelid management and only speaks between yawns, head nestled on his arms at the table where we sit.

"I'm sorry about having to cancel, I was just dead," he says yawning at the same time. If he weren't quite so sleepy he'd probably appear more excited about his starring role in The Passion, a three-part BBC drama for the Bank Holiday weekend. He plays Daniel, a hopeful young actor who is chosen to play Jesus in the local Passion Plays enacted by the community of a West Country village. An outsider he finds himself falling for an older woman, Ellie (Gina McKee) who makes the costumes and also happens to be married with children.

For Paul it's a huge departure from playing Joe Wicks in EastEnders, not to mention his more recent role in BBC1's City Central as rookie PC Terry Sydenham, who was shot dead in the first episode of the current series.

"I'm not really bothered about my career, I just want to do good work," he says. "I'm only ambitious in the sense that I want to be the best actor and get respect for what I do, but not admiration. I don't want to be known wherever I go. I couldn't handle that."

The actor, 20 last month, has already had to handle more attention than he could cope with. One minute he was just a young unknown ... with little experience except for acting parts in children's TV. The next he was being regularly seen by 16 million viewers as he tried to stay sane both on and off the set as young schizophrenic Joe Wicks.

Every week. as his army of fans grew, more than 500 letters would be delivered to the EastEnders set. More than once he won the title Sexiest Actor an TV and there was constant tabloid speculation about his relationships with co-stars and other young actresses.

So how did this teenage adulation leave him feeling? "Like I never want it again. I don't want it ... Ever. I just remember being 17 and lying in bed on a Saturday night about three in the morning and not being able to sleep because I'm thinking there might be a story about me in the Sunday papers.

"I try not to let it worry me what people write about me but I still do. I still get paranoid."

About What?

"The way people think about you because of who you are. I wish I didn't care what people thought about me, but I do. It's just me."

Dressed in denim shirt and black trousers, there's still a boyish, vulnerable quality about him, even though he's a little older and a lot wiser.

At least playing Daniel in The Passion gave him the chance to relax in North Devon where the drama was filmed. "It was beautiful. I used to wake up in the morning and there was nothing outside the window except hills. It was completely peaceful. When I was there I didn't have one bit of anxiety about anything. I was completely chilled."

And he isn't worried about a possible backlash from moral crusaders about a drama linking Jesus and adultery.

"I can't believe anyone could find it offensive. I didn't get anything from that because it wasn't really Jesus I was playing, I was playing a young actor playing Jesus.

"Daniel isn't like me. He's stronger than me and has a maturity beyond his years. His background living abroad and not putting down any roots has made him very independent minded."

So what about passion in his own life? Is there any?

"Absolutely none! I hope that passion exists, that there are people out there that you just can't help but fall in love with and make you so happy when you are with them. I hope that woman exists out there for me ... I've always been looking for the one. Well I have been for sometime now.

"I really want a relationship. I don't know ... I just feel if anything can make you happy it's got to be love."

Would he like to have had someone special to take to New York?

He hesitates for a while, then suddenly owns up. "Yeah, that's why I went there, to find her. But she just wasn't there."

It didn't stop him from enjoying himself. "The most amazing sight was when I went up the Empire State Building at night and just stood there. It's like magic, it doesn't look real, it looks like a dream. I didn't get recognised once which was great.

"In New York I was lonely, that was the only thing wrong with me there. But I felt a sense of freedom that I have not felt in a long time. Just something about being. Not having other people's ideas about you making you what you are. Being anonymous, that was the best thing you could be."

A Passion for Paul

In a three-part holiday special, Paul Nicholls and Gina McKee fall in love against the backdrop of a Passion play set in a Devon village. All seems perfect, but there's a shocking denouement in store.

The arrival of a TV film crew is a big deal in rural north Devon. And this isn't just any old film crew: this one contains youthful demi-god Paul Nicholls. To some, Nicholls, 20, may be little more than an ex-soap actor. But for evidence of his star status, witness the reaction of the local people to his presence. It's not just the girls, either.

"There was a lot of interest locally right from the start," says Miriam Segal, producer of 'The Passion', the three-part drama that is the cause of all the excitement, "but when they heard Paul was going to be in it, they went wild."

Nicholls was followed everywhere by parties of teenage girls, and one pub barmaid was so enamoured she could barely carry his lunch to his table without dropping it. ("Pull yourself together," cried the landlord. "He's just a lad. He needs his food.") The only outbreak of Bacchic frenzy, however, came after a charity football match, when the victorious girls' team attacked Nicholls with water and pinned him to the ground.

Asked how he reacts to the fan-worship, he gets tongue-tied and stares at his feet. "I don't really like it. I don't understand it." He's kept himself out of the way as much as possible. "My character's an outsider, so I wanted to keep a bit of distance. I'm staying in a lovely cottage, out in the middle of nowhere. I've not seen anyone. I've not been back to London. I've not even brought my mobile phone with me."

The Passion's storyline has been heavily embargoed by publicists, determined to keep sensational reports out of the papers - after all, they're mixing the highly volatile ingredients of sex and religion here.

In fact, the religious content was something of an afterthought. Segal originally conceived 'The Passion' as a study of emotional obsession after observing how the female cast and crew of 'EastEnders', which she also produced, reacted to Nicholls. "They all wanted to possess him, to love him, to have sex with him. That gave me the idea for a drama about the effects of that kind of attraction on a small community."

High Flyer Paul a home bird ...

THEY might be calling him the British Leonardo and fêting him as a heart-throb on the Côte d' Azur, but at heart he is still a young lad from Bolton, riddled with self-doubt and uncertainties.

At the drop of the nearest hat, or anything else for that matter, actor Paul Nicholls, just 20 years old, would happily return to the North-west to live and to hell with London. "I'm Only down there because I couldn't face the thought of that train journey three or four times a week", he says. "Already I come home every weekend and I am seriously thinking of moving back for good. Why? Because it's home, of course. It's my roots."

And exactly how important roots are to him, not only in his personal life but also in his art becomes clear the minute The Trench opens. It's the story of a group of adolescent soldiers in the two days leading up to one of the most horrific battles of the Somme. "The lads don't know what they are in for. They are raw and innocent and totally unprepared," he says. "So I made a point of not reading anything about that period and trying to keep the character Billy, as much in mind as possible. He's a very ordinary lad who only really enlisted because his older brother was going off to war, He only wanted to go with him. He's not a soldier, He's a 17-year-old kid."

The fact that the film succeeds brilliantly and gives Paul his best part yet, is due not only to a fine script, but also to the claustrophobic atmosphere of the filming.

It is the morning after his first Cannes screening and Paul is sitting at a beachside table looking slightly bewildered by the fuss. A Scandinavian journalist wants to know how he is coping with being so young and having so much success. "What do you mean?" he asks, astonished. "You can't get a much higher profile than EastEnders, after that I can cope with anything, even Cannes."