MOST people would be worried if they found out they were being watched by MI5 — but Rupert Penry-Jones takes it as a compliment.

The affable, handsome actor plays secret agent Adam Carter in Spooks, which returns to our screens this autumn.

Ever since Lisa Faulkner was thrust face down into a chip fryer in the first series, Spooks has had a reputation as being one of the BBC’s grittier productions. 

But realistic? Taking a leaf out of his character’s book, Rupert errs on the side of caution.

“I imagine that real officers must see the series as amusing, but completely ridiculous,” says the 36-year-old son of actors Peter Penry-Jones and Angela Thorne. “The things that we do in an episode take years in reality to come together. 

“Also, we get paid more to pretend to be them than they do — which must be pretty galling! 

“What those guys have to deal with every day is totally extraordinary. Sometimes you’ll read a script and think it’s too far-fetched, just unbelievable. Then the next day you open the paper and there it is, actually happening.

“Real people putting their lives on the line in the most bizarre and extreme situations.” 

With the real world proving every bit as frightening as the one Spooks portrays, the new series, the sixth, promises to be more explosive than ever.

Growing mistrust between the British, American and Iranian governments culminates in a series of high-risk operations at home, pushing Section D to its limits. 

As Iran’s race to become a nuclear power impacts on British and American security, the distinction between friend and foe becomes ever more blurred. 

Harry (Peter Firth) and his team start to question exactly whose agenda they’re working to and whom they can trust — both on and off the Grid.

Meanwhile, the electric atmosphere between Adam and Ros (Hermione Norris) comes to a head, but things are complicated further by Adam’s ongoing and dangerous affair with a key asset inside the Iranian Embassy.

“Hermione is a fantastic actress and a real asset to the show,” Rupert says of the former Cold Feet star. “Her arrival had a brilliant effect on the cast and writers.

“Adam’s character needed an equal and it’s great for me, as Adam was a bit isolated before. Ros can tell him where to go and get him out of trouble too. 

“She feels she’s his equal — which she is — and so she hates having to take orders from him. But there’s definitely a spark there. If they’d met under different circumstances I think they might have got together!”

Rupert is no stranger to setting the pulses racing with a bit of on-screen romance, having appeared earlier this year as the dashing Captain Wentworth to Sally Hawkins’ Anne Elliot in Persuasion, which was the pick of ITV’s Jane Austen season.

“The first time I saw it I had tears flooding down my face. I thought it was a gorgeous film. 

“I wasn’t sure if period drama still had a place on TV but Persuasion was made accessible for all ages. 

“Basically, it’s about two people who fancy each other and I think everybody can relate to that. Everybody has been in love with somebody who doesn’t love them back. What is great about the story is that both of them are in love with each other, and neither of them thinks the other one loves them. 

“Just because they are wearing flouncy shirts and dresses, that shouldn’t detract from the fact that people can relate to the situation, and that’s how we made it. 

“Captain Wentworth is your classic Austen hero, a young guy in knee-length boots who all the girls are fighting to marry. He couldn’t be more different from Adam Carter.

“Carter is a man I would like to be, but am not allowed to be!”

Presumably by ‘not allowed’ he means by his partner, former Ballykissangel star Dervla Kirwan. The couple met while touring in a play called Dangerous Corner six years ago and have two children together, Florence, three, and 18-month-old Peter.

Having grown up in an acting family himself — one of his first acting roles was alongside his mum in the BBC film Cold Comfort Farm — Rupert says he wouldn’t have any objection to seeing his children on the stage.

“Florence has already had her first part as a sheep in the nativity play,” laughs Rupert. “She didn’t have any lines but it was very funny and we were laughing one minute and crying our eyes out the next. It was very moving. Seeing all the kids standing on the stage before an audience for the first time and the look on their faces was adorable.

“I wouldn’t have a problem with my children becoming actors. If they are any good at it and they wanted to do it, then fine. It would be dreadful if they were rubbish at it and still wanted to do it — I wouldn’t know what to say. 

“If it works out, acting is one of the best ways of life because you get so much time to spend with your family, do other things, live a free life, yet when you are working a lot of the time you are doing really exciting stuff.

“I’ve been filming in Madagascar, Iceland, South Africa, some incredible places. You get to live a life that most people can only dream of. I am a great believer in letting my kids do what they want to do and what they are good at. I wouldn’t want to force them to go to university to study for a degree they are not interested in, and 10 years down the line they give it all up.”

Rupert’s own education always leant itself towards acting — he left Dulwich College to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Having always looked younger than his age Rupert found it difficult to get cast in the sort of serious roles he was looking for but, ironically, his breakthrough came at the age of 28 portraying a university student. And a pretty special one at that, as Rupert was The Student Prince, a film in which he was a fictional royal prince studying at Cambridge. Robson Green played his police protection officer.

In 2003 Rupert found himself back in the halls of learning, this time playing a young Don Maclean in the excellent dramatisation Cambridge Spies.

It was round about this time that he landed the part of a more modern, and honest, spy in Spooks, a role that has given him a level of recognition he can enjoy.

“It’s at the perfect level where I can go in somewhere, be recognised and people will be nice to me but it’s not at a level where I feel the need to hide,” says Rupert, who saw first-hand what life in the public eye can be like when he briefly dated Kylie Minogue in the late ’90s. “Any more than this would be too much. I can still move around, and if I put my hat on nobody knows who I am.

“I can remember being on jobs when crowds would gather to watch the filming and be pointing at somebody else, never me. It’s quite nice that it’s now me.”

Refreshingly candid and humorous to speak to, fame — or Rupert’s version of it — doesn’t look like it will change him. That can’t be said, however, for the arrival of tiny feet.

“The children have changed my life dramatically,” he admits, “but they have done it without me noticing really. I thought it would be a real shock, but actually if you are not sleeping much at night then you don’t want to stay up late. 

“When you are awake from the early hours of the morning, life changes and before you know it you are three years down the line, and suddenly you don’t stay up beyond half-past nine in the evening.

“I do miss going out on the town and having a laugh. I still do it once or twice a year!”