What training have you received?
Life! I never went the conventional route of drama school. Most of my training was learnt working. From the age of fourteen I was a member of the Everyman Youth Theatre in Liverpool. We would take part in plays and musicals that would show on the Everyman main stage or would do small North West tours. Also, I was in the West End for nearly ten years in different shows and I suspect I learnt most of what you need to know to be a good performer there, whether it be acting or singing.

What kind of roles attract you?
Definitely dark and complex roles. Parts where the character has lots of unseen, inner turmoil. I think what is unsaid can say far more than what is scripted sometimes. I like to get into a character’s psyche; what makes him tick, why he moves in a certain way. I think once you can inhabit a character’s inner thoughts, everything else should come naturally. I would also love to play the conventional action hero.

What’s the best advice that you’ve been given as an actor?
Hit your marks! When you’re on set with a crew for eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, people are getting tired and there is nothing worse for the crew, as well as the other actors, if someone can’t find their marks. This other piece of advice I picked up third hand in a magazine but it is good advice for film work: “Talk low and slow.” This was something that John Wayne said many years ago and I have always liked that.

Most significant moment in your career so far?
Being cast in my first lead role in THE HIDE was a pretty incredible experience for me. I had not worked for four years prior to getting that role so to be suddenly on the lot of Pinewood in a two-hander was scarily exciting. I will always be very grateful to Marek Losey, the director of THE HIDE, for giving me the opportunity in this movie. Also to go to the Dinard British Film Festival with said film and have Philip French, the Observer film critic who is a hero of mine, come over with his wife and gush over a film I am in? Surreal!

You’ll die happy when…
I will never die happy. I want to live forever… ■

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