Curtis Brown Actor (on the roster with Tom Holland) | Lead in ITVX’s Platform 7 | Apple TV | National Theatre & BFI/Warner Bros | Drama School Prep , Self-Tape Mastery & Career Coach, Accent coaching

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• When did you start practising? How did this passion find you?

  Before I even knew I wanted to become an actor, television was my professor.
  
  As a neurodivergent child, I found myself observing, absorbing and adopting the personalities of people around me, particularly the characters I watched on television. Long before I understood what masking was, I was already doing it. In a sense, the performance never stopped.
  
  When I was about four, my household graduated from the traditional five television channels to the wonderful world of Sky Digital. Suddenly, I had an extraordinary catalogue of personalities to study. From Johnny Bravo to SpongeBob, Uncle Phil to Mr Moseby, I was absolutely fascinated.
  
  And I stole. Shamelessly.
  
  Voices, mannerisms, expressions, behaviours. I’d observe something, replicate it and incorporate it into my own repertoire. I was effectively building an entire cast of characters inside one very enthusiastic little boy.
  
  But my relationship with acting went beyond imitation.
  
  When my parents separated, my father would often take me to the cinema in Wood Green adjacent to the Woolworths. I vividly remember watching Batman Begins. When I left that cinema, I wasn’t simply a child who had enjoyed a superhero film. In my imagination, I’d become Bruce Wayne. For months, I viewed the world through the eyes of a vigilante. London became my Gotham. What probably didn't help was the toy Batman samurai sword and batarangs my dad bought me in that very Woolworths right after the film.
  
  But overall, that’s something I’ve carried into my understanding of acting ever since.
  
  Some children played pretend. I played believe.
  
  At nine, Islington Community Theatre, now known as Company Three, visited my primary school to deliver a workshop. I joined their Saturday sessions and remained with the company for over a decade, developing my understanding of theatre-making, ensemble work, expression and performance.
  
  Interestingly, we rarely approached acting through conventional techniques. We explored, experimented, created and played.
  
  Eventually, during a showcase at The Yard Theatre, I was spotted by an agent. That opened the door to professional representation and a career across television, film and theatre.
  
  So, when someone asks when I started acting, I find it difficult to give them a date.
  
  I think I’d been practising for years before I even realised it was a profession.

• Which artists or works affect you the most?

  I’ve always been fascinated by actors who seem to possess an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour.
  
  Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams and Benicio del Toro are wonderful examples, each for very different reasons.
  
  Hoffman had an astonishing ability to make even the most uncomfortable or contradictory aspects of a character feel profoundly human. Williams possessed a remarkable freedom and spontaneity, effortlessly navigating humour, vulnerability and emotional complexity. Del Toro fascinates me through his stillness, unpredictability and ability to communicate an enormous amount without appearing to do very much.
  
  But I’m equally fascinated by child actors.
  
  Henry Thomas in E.T., Dakota Fanning in Man on Fire and Jaden Smith in The Karate Kid remind me of something fundamental about performance.
  
  Children can possess an extraordinary capacity for belief.
  
  Watch children playing. They don’t necessarily stop to intellectualise every choice or manufacture an emotional response. They’re absorbed in the circumstances they’ve created.
  
  Of course, professional acting requires technical discipline, preparation and consistency. But I think some of our greatest work happens when we’ve developed those skills without losing that childhood freedom.
  
  The artists who affect me most are those who make the extraordinary look entirely effortless.
  
  They remind me that acting, at its finest, isn’t about demonstrating how convincingly you can pretend.
  
  It’s about making us believe.

• What are the qualities and skills required to succeed in this area?

  I’d begin with observation.
  
  I believe actors should be insatiably curious about the world around them. How people behave, speak, move, conceal their emotions, contradict themselves and respond to different environments.
  
  As a child, I was constantly collecting these observations, although I didn’t recognise their artistic value at the time.
  
  That curiosity must be accompanied by empathy. We have to understand characters without necessarily agreeing with them. Even the most unpleasant individual believes there’s some justification for their behaviour.
  
  Then there’s imagination.
  
  I often encourage actors to remember how they played as children. The imagination is an extraordinary instrument, but as we grow older, self-consciousness can begin to interfere with it.
  
  Another essential quality is listening. Genuine listening, not simply waiting for your next line.
  
  Acting is an exchange. Your circumstances, objectives and relationships give your character direction, but the person opposite you should still be capable of surprising you.
  
  Finally, discipline and courage.
  
  You need the discipline to prepare thoroughly and the courage to abandon a predetermined performance when something truthful and unexpected happens.
  
  My philosophy is simple: prepare like a professional, observe like a detective and believe like a child.

• What is the most valuable advice you can give to help someone stay focused on creative projects?

  Remember why you started, and don’t lose the ability to play.
  
  As children, we could become completely absorbed in something for hours without worrying about whether it was productive, impressive or worthy of recognition.
  
  Somewhere along the way, adulthood teaches us to become preoccupied with outcomes.
  
  I think creativity suffers when we’re constantly judging the work before we’ve allowed ourselves to explore it.
  
  That doesn’t mean abandoning discipline. Quite the opposite.
  
  Set clear objectives. Create a routine. Break ambitious projects into manageable tasks. But give yourself permission to experiment and discover things you hadn’t anticipated.
  
  I also encourage actors to recognise that their development doesn’t begin and end inside a rehearsal room.
  
  Observe people. Read. Experience life. Be curious. Every conversation, relationship and unfamiliar environment can contribute to your understanding of human behaviour.
  
  And don’t confuse being busy with making progress.
  
  Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is step away, reassess your objective and return with a fresh perspective.
  
  Ultimately, focus becomes easier when you’re genuinely invested in the process, rather than constantly measuring your distance from the destination.

• How would you describe your passion; how does it make you feel?

  It’s difficult to separate acting from the way I’ve experienced the world.
  
  For much of my childhood, observing people, adopting behaviours and imagining different realities was simply how I navigated life.
  
  Acting eventually gave those instincts a creative home.
  
  What fascinates me is our capacity to inhabit circumstances we’ve never personally experienced and discover something truthful within them.
  
  There’s an extraordinary feeling when a scene stops resembling something rehearsed and begins to feel like something genuinely happening.
  
  When you’re no longer thinking about how to deliver a line, how your face looks or whether the audience will be impressed.
  
  You’re simply there, pursuing something you desperately want, responding to another human being.
  
  I find that exhilarating.
  
  Teaching has introduced another dimension to that passion.
  
  I enjoy understanding how different people think, identifying the obstacles preventing them from performing freely and finding ways to help them overcome those obstacles.
  
  There’s something incredibly rewarding about witnessing someone discover an ability they didn’t realise they possessed.
  
  Acting allows me to investigate humanity. Teaching allows me to share that investigation with somebody else.
  
  Both continually challenge the way I understand people, including myself.

• What creative achievements are you particularly proud of?

  One of my proudest achievements is having built a professional acting career without following the conventional drama-school route.
  
  My foundations came from over a decade with Company Three, formerly Islington Community Theatre.
  
  Those years were invaluable. I developed an understanding of ensemble work, theatrical expression, storytelling and the importance of creating something collaboratively.
  
  Being discovered by an agent during a showcase at The Yard Theatre was an important turning point.
  
  I subsequently secured representation with Curtis Brown and went on to work professionally across television, film and theatre.
  
  My credits include Platform 7, The Essex Serpent, The Lazarus Project, Wolfe, The Bone Sparrow and Brainstorm.
  
  Each production exposed me to different creative environments, directors, performers and ways of approaching the craft.
  
  But I’m also particularly proud of how those experiences have shaped my work as a writer, director and acting coach.
  
  My career has taught me that there isn’t one universal route into acting, nor is there one technique that works for everybody.
  
  I now have the privilege of passing that understanding on to aspiring and established actors, helping them develop their own approach and navigate an industry I know from personal experience.
  
  For me, that represents a different kind of creative achievement, and one I value enormously.

• Have you ever been surprised by a student; by their ability or quick progression?

  Absolutely. One of the most fascinating aspects of teaching is discovering how much ability can exist beneath someone’s self-consciousness.
  
  I don’t believe an actor’s first attempt necessarily tells you very much about their potential.
  
  Someone might initially appear uncomfortable, disconnected or emotionally restrained. It’s tempting to attribute that to a lack of confidence or natural ability.
  
  But sometimes the actual obstacle is surprisingly simple.
  
  Perhaps they’re concentrating so intensely on remembering their dialogue that they’ve forgotten to listen. Perhaps they don’t understand what their character wants. Or perhaps they’re trying to manufacture an emotion instead of pursuing an objective.
  
  Change the circumstances, introduce a playable action or help them redirect their attention towards the other person, and the performance can transform.
  
  What interests me most is the moment a student surprises themselves.
  
  That sudden recognition that they’re capable of something they previously believed was beyond them.
  
  However, one successful performance isn’t the finish line. I want students to understand what changed, why it worked and how to apply that understanding independently.
  
  Because the real achievement isn’t getting an extraordinary performance out of someone once.
  
  It’s helping them recognise that the ability was theirs all along, and teaching them how to access it consistently.

• Being a Superprof is an art! What is your secret?

  I take the craft seriously, but I never want my students to lose the joy of playing.
  
  My childhood taught me the importance of observation, imagination and belief. My professional career taught me the importance of preparation, discipline and technical understanding.
  
  My approach to teaching brings those two worlds together.
  
  I don’t believe in applying an identical formula to every student. Everyone arrives with different experiences, instincts, strengths and obstacles.
  
  My responsibility is to identify what each individual actually needs.
  
  I use a practical framework called P.A.E. — Preparation, Action and Ending.
  
  Preparation establishes the circumstances, relationships, objectives and stakes.
  
  Action focuses on what the actor is actively trying to achieve through the other person.
  
  Ending examines what’s changed, what has been gained or lost, and what the character carries into the next moment.
  
  This gives students a dependable structure without dictating how a performance should look or feel.
  
  I also encourage experimentation. I want my students to make bold choices, discover things unexpectedly and feel comfortable getting something wrong.
  
  An actor who is constantly afraid of making mistakes will struggle to discover anything genuinely original.
  
  And although I bring professional experience into my teaching, I don’t want students simply imitating my approach.
  
  I want them to develop their own.
  
  My ultimate ambition as a coach is to make myself progressively less necessary to my students.
  
  If they leave with the confidence, understanding and independence to approach a scene truthfully without my intervention, then I know I’ve done my job.