A trip to the mainland was a big event and happened maybe once a year, although now you can get across in a speed boat in seven minutes but then it was a long way away.
What I try to do as an actor is constantly find that, find ways to risk, find opportunities to fall on my face if it’s going to be worth it, and then maybe I’ll surprise myself.
At age 10 or 12 he’s going to boarding school in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is, of course, down at the bottom of England just off South Hampton.
I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.
However, I wasn’t very good at the sciences, or didn’t have a lot of help in the sciences or something but certainly didn’t set science for my A level. And when I came to take my A levels I didn’t get a good enough result to go to University.
I constantly experience failure in that my work is never as good as I want it to be. So I live with failure.
My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.
I envy children who know that they’re going to become doctors, know they’re going to go into the forces or whatever. I think choice is one of the hardest things, but that’s what I try to give my children, to say you can do anything.
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.