James Murray, or Jim as he likes to be known, is a phenomenon. He’s a celebrated actor, a talented artist, a gifted angler and a conservationist and campaigner who is truly making a difference in the murky waters of river management. When he was recently awarded the MBE, along with his wife Sarah Parish, rarely was a gong more richly deserved.

Many will know Murray for his varied roles on television: Colonel Harding in Masters of the Air, Prince Andrew in The Crown and Colonel Spencer in Lee constitute only a fraction of his screen career. Murray, however, plays down his success, commenting only that “it pays the bills”. This is probably because he is primarily an outdoorsman and it is by the water where his heart lies.

“I grew up in rural Cheshire and then Herefordshire. I had freedom and independence, and there were huge adventures to be found,” he recalls. “Summer holidays were spent in North Wales, which anyone will tell you means mackerel fishing in the rain. If you can find joy in that, the rest is gravy.” It was in Wales that Murray’s paternal grandfather recognised his angling passion and introduced him to fly-fishing for sea-trout in the rivers around Betws-y-Coed.

Chasing an acting dream meant a life in London but his first move there was to rescue a dog called Jake from Battersea Dogs’ Home. “Together we would go in search of fishing ponds and then we discovered Syon Lake in Kew, which gave me my introduction to fly-fishing for stocked rainbows,” says Murray. “I’d stick my headphones on and could be back in the countryside. I had found my sanctuary away from bar work and auditions.”

His growing acting success soon meant that Murray could travel further afield for his fishing, and Scotland’s salmon rivers became his Mecca. Wherever he’s headed, though, he invariably packs a travel rod “because there’s always fishing to be found somewhere. Fly-fishing for leopard shark in Los Angeles is a favourite of mine along with steelhead in British Columbia and salmon in Iceland.”

Murray met Parish when she was his co-star in the BBC drama Cutting It. They married in 2007 and the following year their daughter, Ella-Jayne, was born. Devastatingly, she would die from a congenital heart defect less than a year later. This tragedy led to the couple raising funds for the paediatric intensive care unit at Southampton General Hospital where their tiny daughter had spent half her life. Later they set up the Murray Parish Trust, which has gone on to enhance paediatric emergency care services in southern England.

The mental turmoil that followed this tragic loss led Murray deeper into the world of rivers and of fishing. “Casting a line has been the remedial escape I cannot live without. Fly-fishing and rivers have helped me iron out a lot of the mental creases, and for that I give thanks every day,” he explains, adding that this time made him acutely aware of the state of our rivers. “After a while your eyes are opened to the abuse our rivers suffer at the hands of polluters. You see how little action government and regulators have taken to alleviate this. I have done what anyone in my position would do: shine a light on the dysfunctionality of it all.

“I don’t subscribe to yelling into the abyss without also offering solutions of how people can help the cause,” Murray says. “There has to be hope, a target to aim at, or apathy reigns supreme.” To this end, he has taken the lead in Activist Anglers, set up to promote anglers’ status as guardians of our rivers and hold polluters to account. “Fishing is global. It has never been timelier for our vast community to rally together to fight for the future of our waterways. We are many and if we all unite and become more active, we will surely force the changes our rivers and oceans are screaming for.”

The Wye means a great deal to Murray. Earlier this year he shot a video featuring him standing in that river, wearing a suit and tie and addressing Mark Standish, chief executive of Nando’s, about chicken farms and the pollution of the Wye (in which the chain denies playing any role). “It went viral, with millions of views,” he reveals. “Thousands on social media said they would boycott Nando’s and that alone should convince the Government that it needs to protect our rivers. This really is what the people want.”

Murray is especially engaged with a new initiative: Project Whitehart, a collaborative campaign to restore the southern chalkstreams. “This is a collective salmon restoration partnership rolled out across my local rivers: the Test and the Itchen,” he explains. “Saving their threatened salmon populations will require significant coordinated effort involving the local community, riverkeepers, landowners, angling and conservation groups, regulators and the water industry.”

This commitment to rivers spills over into Murray’s artwork, which has proved a powerful way to reach another audience: “I started experimenting with abstract painted canvases and sinking them into targeted salmon rivers around the UK. I used natural pigments and each painting was unique to the river, which then worked its own magic on the canvas, shaping it and colouring it before retrieval a few months later.” The resulting works were shown at Murray’s exhibition ‘Creatures of Light’, held at the Royal Watercolour Society last November, and won widespread acclaim.

Artist, actor, angler, activist: Murray is a true water warrior and thanks to him and others things are slowly, thankfully, beginning to change for our rivers. Select paintings from the ‘Creatures of Light’ exhibition are still available to purchase, with a percentage of sales going to river conservation causes.

You might also like to read The Field’s interview with Feargal Sharkey.