Article: Toby's second act; The son of Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Robert Stephens, Toby Stephens was born to act - and to drink. He tells Rebecca Fowler how he nearly squandered his talent, but then made a spectacular recovery with a happy marriage and a role as a Bond baddie.

Byline: REBECCA FOWLER

In 1996, Toby Stephens was living on his own in a rented flat in Westbourne Grove, West London. It rattled with vodka bottles and he rarely went out.

As a young man of 26, he was both good-looking and talented - the year before he'd won the Sir John Gielgud best actor award for his performance in Coriolanus, the youngest ever actor to play the part. And yet he was expending most of his energy covering up his miserable double life as an alcoholic, a disease probably inherited from his father, Shakespearean actor Sir Robert Stephens, who had died in 1995 of cirrhosis of the liver.

Even his mother, the actress Dame Maggie ...

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