Tag Archives: Acting

Naomi Watts: I Was Ready To Quit Acting

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acting, acting advice, quit acting, Naomi WattsSome actors find success easy and others struggle for years. Naomi Watts definitely falls into the latter category. The Oscar nominated actress used to drive for hours to pick up bad scripts people refused to send her. She regularly doubted that she would ever have a career after moving to Los Angeles as things were so tough.

“[I went from playing leads] to being someone who had to drive for two hours to get two pages of really bad dialogue in some TV movie, just because they couldn’t be bothered faxing me the pages. And I did that for pretty much ten years. When it was like, you know what, I can’t handle it, I’m giving up. But every time my bags were packed, I’d get a call saying, ‘You’ve got this part.'” she told InStyle magazine.

The 46-year-old actress took anything she was offered when she moved to LA.

“Oh, listen, I did not have any snobbery about anything. I just wanted to work. I always had the attitude that work begets work and one thing would roll to the next, I think I knew I had something. But I certainly had plenty of doubt.”

The star did not get her big break until David Lynch cast her in Mulholland Drive solely from her photograph.

 

If you are an actor then check out How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon. 

 

 

Why The Best Thing You Can Do For Your Acting Career Is To Quit

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acting tips, acting career, acting, advice, book, how to be a successful actor, quit, Catherine BalavageI know what you are thinking: what? That makes no sense. But bear with me. I have been acting for a long time. Since I was a teenager and in that time I have had some amazing parts, met amazing people and worked on projects that I was proud of. Also in that time I worked with a lot of jerks, had some terrible auditions, worked on awful projects and had some really awful experiences. My hair was always in a state of recovery because some over-zealous make up person had gone to town on it, my breasts were always being taped down by gaffer tape because costume people ‘didn’t know what to do with them’ and I was working too damn hard in an industry where the pay had not only not risen, but was actually the lowest in fourteen years. I kept almost getting the life-changing parts but lost out at the final hurdle. To put it frankly, I had had enough.

The last straw was working on a film on which I sustained a serious back injury. I damaged a disc and also had nerve damage. Over a year of painful physiotherapy followed. It was a nightmare. It was the last straw. ‘I quit’ I told my husband. ‘I just can’t do this anymore’. But it was only then the moment of clarity came; ‘Don’t quit’, my husband said, ‘You are too talented and have too much to offer. Take a break and then go back to it’. Cue the previously mentioned moment of clarity. He was right. Quit, but then go back.

The truth was, I just wasn’t into it anymore. I hated auditions, I hated working, I hated all of the BS that came with acting. So I quit, wrote my acting book, and by the time I was ready to go back I was in love with acting again. I wanted to make films again. I wanted to be on a television set. The break gave me the distance needed to realise why I had become an actor in the first place. I rediscovered all of the things I loved about working in the entertainment industry, which is the only way you can deal with all of the stuff you don’t love about it.

When your heart isn’t in something it comes across. You just have to take a break and go do something else for a while. Get a good-paying job and build up your bank account, travel, learn a new skill. Do anything but quit acting. It just might be the best thing for your acting career that you ever do.

 

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon. 

 

 

Stupid Things People Write In Acting Casting Breakdowns

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Stupid Things People Write In Acting Casting Breakdowns, acting, auditions, castings, acting advice, acting book, casting breakdowns Ah, casting breakdowns, audition notices. Whatever you want to call them, they sure can frustrate. An actor will generally spend more time applying for acting roles than acting or even attending auditions. Acting is a game of numbers and applying to casting calls can be soul destroying indeed. Especially when they include any of the criteria below. Luckily I can find the humour in it. Like my dad says, ‘If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.’

 

Must be able to convey emotion. Jeez, that will be hard, it’s not that actors are trained in conveying emotion or anything.

We want real people, not actors. Really? Then why advertise on an ACTING JOB SITE. Idiot.

Nudity is required. All of the time but generally only for women.

Payment for lead actor only. Great, everyone else can just live on fresh air and pay their rent with fairy dust. That’ll work.

Female wanted. Character name: “The Girl”. Because in real life women are not known by their names, only by their gender. Oh, and they are ‘girl’ no matter how old they are apparently. Which is fine, because most of the people behind these castings want an 18-year-old. I wrote an article on this problem in the acting industry here.

Must be able to act. Really?

For women: Must be slim. Because a persons body mass impacts directly on their acting talent apparently.

For women: Must have long hair: Read: must be fuckable. So many castings just suit a stereotypical male ideal of female beauty. It is so sad

No acting experience needed. Because why hire actual actors when you can just hire someone off the street? It is not like we are trained professionals or anything.

 

These came just off the top of my head. I will continue to write about silly things in casting breakdowns in the hope that they improve somehow. Please add your own casting breakdown fails below or email them to frost magazine@gmail.com and I will include them in the next post. Let’s try and change the industry, even if we have to use tiny baby steps.

 

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon. 

 

 

 

 

Amanda Seyfried: Being ‘Overweight’ Has Affected My Acting Career

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Want to know how hard it is to be an actress? Then just look at how slim Amanda Seyfried is and then read her tweet below.

The Mean Girls actress went on to say in an interview with Elle UK.: “I don’t have to look like a supermodel. I don’t have to have those abs, the camera doesn’t see that. But because we have all been designed to want these things, I’m a victim of this stuff, too. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t constantly aware of what I’m doing with my body.”

Amanda_Seyfried_2009

It is very disappointing that Hollywood, and the media in general, cannot get over their cookie cutter one-size-fits-all view of beauty. Amanda Seyfried is not ‘overweight’. I understand that you have to be in shape and healthy to act and the camera really does add 10 pounds, but the world would be a truly horrible world if we all looked the same. Hollywood: take note.

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon. It has had 5 five star reviews. 

Russell Crowe: Female Actors Should Act Their Age. Meryl Streep Responds

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There has been some uproar after Russell Crowe said that female actors should act their age. Meryl Streep came out in support of him and The Guardian did a great quiz on actors and playing age.

Russell said in an interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly: “To be honest, I think you’ll find that the woman who is saying that [the roles have dried up] is the woman who at 40, 45, 48, still wants to play the ingenue, and can’t understand why she’s not being cast as the 21-year-old, Meryl Streep will give you 10,000 examples and arguments as to why that’s bullshit, so will Helen Mirren, or whoever it happens to be. If you are willing to live in your own skin, you can work as an actor. If you are trying to pretend that you’re still the young buck when you’re my age, it just doesn’t work. I have heard of an actress, part of her fee negotiation was getting the number of children she was supposed to have lessened. Can you believe this? This (character) was a woman with four children, and there were reasons why she had to have four children – mainly, she lived in a cold climate and there was nothing to do but fornicate all day – so quit arguing, just play the role!”

Russell_Crowe female actors should act their age

Unfortunately that is not right at all. While some women will not want to play older, I have met a few, the roles for women are usually terrible when under 40: girlfriend, stripper, ‘the girl‘, a whore or merely window-dressing. When a women is over 40 the roles do not realistically reflect women’s lives. We are usually the mother, grandmother, crone or witch.

Jezebel blogger Rebecca Rose had this to say: “ALERT: Hollywood movie actor person Russell Crowe is fed up with all the old ladies who dare to want to be cast as something other than old spinsters or whatnot. Quit complaining that you’re cast in a role where your character has ‘nothing to do but fornicate all day’ and make a bunch of babies. Stop demanding that film-makers try to expand the depth of your character beyond ‘broodmare’. Just play the role, OK? Funny how Crowe doesn’t bother to offer any opinion about the mind-boggling legacy of Hollywood men playing romantic leads to women 10, 20, 30, and sometimes 40 (!!!!!) years younger than them,” Rose added. “Because it’s clearly the sad old women daring to pretend they are outside their actual birth ages that are ruining Hollywood … Thanks Crowe for reminding us, yet again, that women are always held in contempt for doing anything remotely similar to what their male counterparts do without reproach.” Very good points. Men do not tend to ‘play their age’ and their on-screen wives are usually significantly younger than them.

 

Amy Gray wrote on Junkee.com,  “The ‘ingenue’ roles Crowe refers to are the only ones readily available for women; on the flip side, the majority of male characters in film and TV are aged between their 30s (27%) and 40s (31%). That could be because we’re more likely to want to watch lead characters based on their fuckability – and the older a woman gets, as any executive will tell you, the less faceable she becomes.” Crowe is 50 and also said “The point is, you do have to be prepared to accept that there are stages in life. So I can’t be the Gladiator forever,”

 

What do you think?

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon. It has had 5 five star reviews. 

 

 

Sharon Horgan Interview for Catastrophe

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We love Sharon Horgan at Frost. Funny and endlessly talented, we can’t wait to catch her new show, Catastrophe. Find out more in the interview below.

Explain a bit about Catastrophe. What’s the concept of the series?

It’s an unromantic look at a romance, I think. It’s about a couple who meet on a one night stand, and end up spending this great week together, and that should be it. But she gets pregnant, and he decides to do what he thinks is the right thing and stuck around. And she’s happy for him to lend a hand, as she can’t really be on her own. So they have this speed-life version of a relationship, where everything starts going to shit from the moment they get together. But the way it differs from a normal relationship is that they don’t really know each other, they’re just getting to know each other while all this shit’s happening. Going to have a pregnancy scan and getting bad news is hardcore enough with someone you’ve been with for years. But having to do it with someone who’s almost a stranger to you… And as the series progresses, more and more catastrophic things happen to them. And they’re slowly falling in love while all this shit’s going down.

 Catastrophe_RobDelaney_SharonHorgan--(None)_A2

Where did the idea come from? Why did you want to write this?

I guess because of my situation, and Rob’s situation, and the fact that you kind of want to write about what you know. I knew what sort of material he did with his stand up, he knew the kind if stuff I did, and we just figured this subject matter would suit our styles the best. And we both had a series of shitty things happen to us in our relationships or in our experiences as child rearers, and we felt like it would be nice to bring people a warts-and-all picture of a relationship. Still romantic, still a love story, but a real version of it.

Am I right in thinking that you and Rob met over Twitter?

Yeah, that’s right. I started following him because Graham Linehan had retweeted him a few times, and I found him extremely funny. And totally filthy. And then I noticed he was following me, and then he got in touch on a private message saying he liked what I did. I thought that was sweet, and when I was over in the States we decided to meet up – it’s always interesting,meeting people who kind of do what you do but in a different medium.And then we just kept meeting up, over the years, and eventually found the right thing to collaborate on. But that was kind of scary when we started writing – you never know whether these things are going to be a disaster or not. It can be really hard to write with someone, it’s very intimate and exposing. But the relationship worked immediately, it felt fun and easy.

How did that process work? Presumably you were separated by the Atlantic?

Yeah. For the Pilot, we talked a lot across the Atlantic, and then I was in America working again, and we grabbed what time we could. And then, for the second episode, Rob was over here for a while, and then we went back and forth over Skype. When Channel 4 said they wanted to do the full series, we wrote all the first drafts on Skype. We Skyped each other the whole time. But then we kind of realised that you need to be in a room, reading the script aloud, making changes as we’d go. So we did a lot of rewriting when I was over in LA. But now he’s moved here, he lives here now, which makes it much easier.

Did you find that you each tended to write more for your own characters?

I don’t think it did pan out like that. Maybe a little bit initially. What we did end up doing was rubbing our corners off a bit. If I’d write something that sounded a bit harsh, for either character, he’d give it a bit of California sweetness. And if he wrote something that I thought sounded too warm and American, I’d write a bit of Irish acerbic into it.

Judging from the trailer, your character isn’t going to have the most pleasant pregnancy. Is that partly based on your experiences? What were your pregnancies like?

I would say pretty tricky. But it wasn’t just mine that we based it on. We used mine and Rob’s wife’s experiences, we mixed it all in. Any shit that happened to me we multiplied by two, because we had another pregnancy to steal from as well. But you ask any woman who’s been through it. There won’t be too many rosy stories in there. I got knocked over by my dog and broke my knee. My pelvis parted, so I was on crutches for most of it. My second one, my ribs felt like they were splitting because My baby was so massive. A lot went wrong – the same with Rob’s wife – which is why we were able to throw that all in there. I know there are women out there who loved being pregnant, but that wasn’t my experience.

While you were filming, did you have to wear a bump that grew steadily bigger throughout the series?

Yes. I had three or four bumps over the series. It was good, because it genuinely felt incredibly uncomfortable, especially the really big one. It was really heavy, and it did make me relive it, because my back was fucked at the end of it, and I remember feeling exactly the same at the end of the pregnancy. But it worked – whenever I needed to be grumpy and fed up in character, I generally was.

The show’s got a great cast, including Ashley Jensen and the great Carrie Fisher. That must have felt so exciting, getting them on board.

Yeah, it was. It kind of felt like that for everyone who came on board. Every time we got the person we really wanted, we were pinching ourselves. Everyone in the cast is phenomenal, top of their game. But we did end up feeling “Shit, why weren’t they in it more?” with every supporting character. They’re all actors you want to see more of.

Carrie Fisher’s a legend, isn’t she? We were madly excited when she came down on set. We were all acting like dicks. We were running around like grinning weirdoes. I was going over her lines with her, lying on a bed by her side because she was a bit jet-lagged, and I felt like “Yeah, this is it. I’ve reached the heights now.” And Ashley is just incredibly funny, and great to be around. She’s a lovely,. Funny, warm presence all the time. Mark Bonnar, you can’t take your eyes off him. I can’t wait for people to see it, just for the supporting cast.

In the past, you’ve done a couple of factual programmes for Channel 4. Is that something that you’d like to do more of in the future?

No. I really loved that they asked me to do it, and allowed me to make documentaries on whatever I wanted. I hooked up with my friend, Chloe Thomas, and we went out and talked about the stuff that we were interested in, and our own experience. And at the time, that was motherhood, and mid-life crises, and marriage, so those were the three films we made. But it’s not really something I want to pursue any further than that for now. I said what I had to say. And it’s hard work! It’s tough, because you’ve got no script, and a lot of it is built in the edit, and a lot of it is down to chance. These are real people that you’re dealing with, you have to tread carefully. I had a great experience, and I’m glad I got to do them, but I think I’d rather just watch that sort of thing from now on.

In your body of work, what are you most proud of? And where does Catastrophe sit within that?

I’m still very proud of Pulling. It was the first sitcom I ever made, and it was a situation where someone took a leap of faith, and let us have a go. So we ended up making something that we really liked, and had enormous fun doing, with the people that we wanted to do it with. And Catastrophe, for me, feels very similar. I felt with Pulling that I couldn’t have made it at any other time, and I think with Catastrophe, I couldn’t have made it even three or four years ago. It feels like the perfect thing for this moment, for the stories that I have to tell. It’s the same thing, just being given proper creative scope by Channel 4 to make the show that we wanted to make. I guess we’ll have to wait and see now what people think, but it was an enormous pleasure. I felt as emotional at the end of filming as I did at the end of Pulling, just the feeling that I’d really, really enjoyed it and I was very lucky.

Catastrophe starts on Monday 19th January at 10pm on Channel 4

 

 

Sienna Miller: ‘Having a Baby Saved My Career’

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SiennaSienna Miller, Outhouse , NecklaceWhile some people say having a child ruins your career Sienna Miller has told the Observer magazine that having a child improved hers. A combination of showing up for meetings with executives underprepared and an affair with married actor Balthazar Getty in 2008, which was reported in the tabloids in excruciating detail, all affected her career.  “Quite chaotic,” is how Miller sums up her 20s. 

Studio decision-makers read papers and care about how actors come across to the public. The article says: ‘The thinking among certain casting agents, Miller once said, is that “People don’t want to see films with people they don’t approve of in them.” She took a break from screen work, performing in plays in London and New York.”

She was the heroine of hackgate and then hooked up with actor Tom Sturridge. In 2012 the couple had a daughter, Marlowe.

“And I think having a baby really changed everything, if I’m honest, I think that’s where it began.” Miller says. “The stakes are higher. You have someone that you want to be proud of you eventually.” And on the other hand she says: “You’re aware of your own mortality. For me, as soon as I had a baby I had a vision of my life – and what was left of it.”

Miller also says that executives and casting directors think differently of her now “I’m sure that factors. People who read the negative things [about me], the people who need persuading, are probably ignorant enough to assume, ‘Well she’s got a kid so she’s serious now.’ Which, of course, isn’t the case. I’m still whoever I was. Maybe more mature, but the same. So amongst that ignorant, ridiculous area of my industry, I’m sure opinions of me have changed because I’m a mother now.”

 

What do you think? Do you agree with Sienna Miller?

 

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon.

 

 

Interview With Game of Thrones Star Maisie Williams

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Most of us know Maisie Williams from her excellent turn as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones but she is also in excellent new Channel 4 show Cyberbully. Here she is interviewed about her new role.

Interview With Game of Thrones Star Maisie Williams

At 17, Maisie Williams has probably achieved more, seen more than most of us will in a lifetime, yet the star of Game of Thrones remains a remarkably modest, unaffected, eloquent young woman. Here, she discusses her new project, Cyberbully, a remarkable one-off drama for Channel 4 about the dangers lurking on the internet.

Cyber Bully airs on Thursday 15 January at 9pm on Channel 4.

Your new project is Cyberbully. You play Casey. What’s her story?
Casey begins as a young teenager who’s struggling to express herself, and the only way she feels safe is to do that anonymously through the internet. She finds that, using a fake name, she can post honestly about things that annoy her, things that make her laugh, things that make her happy and sad. That’s the way she gets teen angst out of her system, I guess. When we meet her, she’s battling with sharing her best friend with her best friend’s boyfriend, which is a common issue for a lot of teenagers. We see that first-hand in the first few minutes. As the story picks up, she realises that, through hacking and whatever, people can take anything that you’ve written, anything you’ve recorded, pictures you’ve taken, anything like that, and they can turn it into something you never meant it to be. Really, anyone with the power of their computer taken away from them and used against them, even the nicest and most genuine of people can be portrayed as something they’re not, which is something extremely current at the moment. It’s something we’ve seen a lot of, with phone hacking, computer hacking, iCloud hacking, in the news recently. That’s something that really attracted me to the project.

Explain a little more about that. Why were you attracted to this role?
I feel like Cyberbully is a really honest representation of interactions between teens and their parents, and each other. A lot of the time things aren’t always at they seem. Teens get it hard for being grumpy and being rude, and this shows the other side to that, and actually what could be going on behind closed doors, I guess. In a pretty extreme way. She battles with anxiety, and that comes into its own story arc during the hour. We never leave her, we never cut away to anything else, we only see her in her bedroom, and other characters are only referred to through shadows or video clips or pictures and Skype calls. Apart from that it’s just her, in a room – that’s something that’s very different to other things I’ve done.

The fact that it’s really just you, on your own, on screen for the whole time – has that made it quite an intense experience filming it?
Yeah, of course. It’s been one of the most intense two weeks of my life. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’s come with its difficulties. For the first week I was quite ill, so that didn’t help at all. But it’s been really exciting, and I’m so glad to have done it. As a young actor, you’re constantly looking for things that are going to push you out of you comfort zone, and show different emotions. With this, I feel like it’s got everything all in one. Such a range of emotions. That’s something you really look for. There’s not very many good, honest teenage roles written, without them being just a platform for the lead character. Teenagers are written pretty poorly, and this was such a good representation of a normal teen, who doesn’t have some extreme family issue or mental issue, or is a drug dealer or something. She’s just a normal girl who gets her life completely changed.

Have you been acting against a blank screen, or have you been interacting with stuff that’s happening on the screen?
We’ve got a full package, which, when you load looks like your home screen and your Facebook page and whatever, but isn’t. That’s really been helpful, actually being able to type, and being able to send messages and minimise browsers and all sorts, all within this one package. It’s been really, really great, and was something that, for our director Ben, was really a must. To really be reacting to a computer screen that’s actually using these words and photos.

Have you even met the other people who have acted in this [appearing on skype calls and in videos etc]?
We had a big rehearsal about a week before we started shooting, which was very beneficial, and we did a big run-through of the whole four acts. That was great, to meet everyone, but apart from that, during shooting I haven’t seen anyone. It’s been intense for that reason, but also necessary.

The story is pretty frightening, in terms of how much a person can hack into and destroy someone’s life. Is everything that happens genuinely possible?
Yeah, of course. There is no one story that Cyberbully is based upon, but everything included is very much possible, or has happened to various different people.

Has it made you think about internet security and what you do online?
Yeah, definitely. From the age of 12 I’ve been on the internet, on Twitter and Facebook and things like that, and I’ve had a very different experience of it from most teens of my age. But I can very much see the difficulties it presents, and the difficulties it has caused some of my friends and things like that. I think people always assume that it’s going to happen to someone else. It may not all play out the way it does in Cyberbully, but just because someone isn’t there hacking you and talking to you and manipulating your screen doesn’t mean they’re not there looking at you. In America, for example, everyone always puts a sticker over their webcam, little things like that, which really makes you stop and think. It’s something we’re all very new to. In the grand scheme of things the internet is still so young, and we know nothing about it. So it’s something we need to all think about. You think something’s safe just because it has a password on it, but that’s not always the case.

You mention being on Facebook and Twitter and stuff. With your profile, does that mean you’ve experienced negativity and trolling?
Yeah, of course. Trolling is the biggest thing that anyone faces, and it’s easy to dismiss, but it does hurt. As much as we like to say we don’t care, of course we do. People laugh at me when I try to stop people from behaving like that. Just in my followers, not on the internet in general. But I don’t want that. I don’t want Twitter to be that sort of place. People laugh at that, saying “If you’re trying to teach manners on the internet, you’ve got another thing [sic] coming.”

69 per cent of young people say they’ve experienced some form of Cyberbullying. That’s an extraordinary statistic, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is. Everyone I know is on Facebook, and if they’re not it’s because they’ve had a negative experience with it. That’s just awful. People turn a blind eye to stuff like that until someone’s gets really fucked up and goes too far.

One of the things that struck me about the script is that Casey has inadvertently done a bit of cyberbullying herself. Is that part of the problem, that people just don’t really realise the damage they may be doing to others?
Exactly! You don’t even realise that what you’re saying really does hurt people. And it kind of spirals out of control. “Oh, she’s saying it, so I can say it too.” That’s what was so interesting about it. It’s not all that straightforward. There’s not just an honest victim and an honest predator. We all say things that we regret, and especially on the internet. That was an eye-opener for me. You need to ask yourself “Would I ever say that to somebody in person? Would I be happy for my mum to see that I’d just written that?” Just because you’re hiding behind a fake name doesn’t mean you’re not talking to real people.

Your first ever professional acting role was as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, a lead in one if the biggest dramas ever on TV. How has your life changed in the last few years?
Completely! But it’s like I’ve never known anything else, really. I was a child, and then I started doing Game of Thrones, and now all of a sudden I’m growing up, I’m nearly 18 and I’m nearly officially an adult. It’s been a brilliant experience for me, I couldn’t really have asked for a better opportunity. So many kids of my age are struggling to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives, or what subjects they’re going to take, or what they’re going to do at Uni. I’ve been so lucky to have been given the opportunity to do something I love for the rest of my life.

Do you get recognised a lot? What’s that experience like?
I get recognised a lot, and it’s usually very lovely. People are always really nice, and it’s the price that you pay for doing this job. It’s still awfully strange. People forget that they don’t know you. Sometimes people get a bit – particularly when its parties or festivals and people are a bit drunk – it gets very intense, and people forget that you’re actually a person, and they’re not allowed to just grab you and pull you by your arm and grab your t-shirt. They’re never trying to be nasty, but sometimes that’s really overwhelming. Sometimes that’s not okay. But usually it’s a very, very positive experience. I’ve got more used to it.

How have you kept up with studies? Are you going to continue with studying, or carry on with acting full time?
We tried to juggle school and film, but it was very difficult. My school weren’t very supportive of it all. So we decided to drop that and do home tutoring, which went well for a few years. It came round to my GCSEs and I landed a role in an Irish movie called Gold, and I ended up not doing the exams and doing the film instead. So to this day I haven’t got any GCSEs, because I haven’t stopped, and that was a conscious decision. We decided that I was going to do acting, and school will come later. I’m still very happy with that decision. At the moment it’s going so well, I’m getting to do so many fantastic roles, I’d rather just stay doing this. That doesn’t mean in the future I’m not going to go back. I’d love to be treated normally as other kids, and not have horrible things written about me because I didn’t do this exam or haven’t got that qualification. But at the moment it’s the decision that we made, and it feels like the right one.

What one message would you want young viewers to take away from the drama?
Some people on the internet are never going to be satisfied with any reasoning. The answer is just to close your computer and walk away, because it doesn’t matter. Don’t try reasoning with the trolls or the bullies, don’t engage with them, just walk away. You can’t win, so just walk away, and find people who really care about you.