The first time my mum and dad went to the theatre was at my drama school in third year.
I never wanted to go to drama school. I thought that was too many eggs in one basket.
We studied so much Shakespeare in drama school and I’d like to go back to that. I’d really throw myself into something that would probably petrify me. Tennessee Williams. Something juicy.
When I was at drama school I wanted to do classical theatre. It just so happened that I did a film when I came out and I moved that way.
I really feel like the first day I went to drama school and I went up on stage, that I found my vocation. It’s kind of a cliched thing to say but I really feel like it was what I was meant to do.
I tested on a lot of TV shows and films after I finished drama school.
I moved to New York to go to Julliard Drama School. Didn’t sing a single note of music.
When I was auditioning for drama school and looking for a monologue, it was all, ‘I’m whinging about my period or my baby that has died or my boyfriend…’ Why can’t you have a normal girl, talking about ideas?
Because I didn’t go to drama school, I didn’t start in the business with any toolbox apart from enthusiasm and instinct. I’d throw everything at a part and sometimes realise that I had hit my limits.
I was hellbent on going to drama school, but my mother, rightly, panicked and persuaded me to go to university on the grounds that a degree would be ‘something to fall back on.’ Whilst at college, I realised I wasn’t good enough or robust enough to be an actress.
When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I really admire and whose work I really admire were English and English trained. I felt there was a real vocational feel to work in the U.K.
When I left drama school I was prepped to be in shows and tour around England by van.
I had been working in England since 2005 when I left drama school.
Because when you’re in drama school, you’re playing multiple characters at once. You know, in the morning you’re doing a Chekhov play, and then you’re doing a Shakespeare workshop midday.
But to do it professionally is a quantum leap difference and my father had to be persuaded by these kind of Ivy League professors that I should go to the Yale Drama School, another one of the stories in there.
I worked as a clerical assistant at the Department of Health and Social Security for about three months before I went to drama school.
I knew I wanted to be an actor when I was growing up, really. So when I decided to go to university instead of drama school, it was with the intention of becoming an actor afterwards.
When I went to drama school, I knew I was at least as talented as other students, but because I was a black man and I wasn’t pretty, I knew I would have to work my butt off to be the best that I would be, and to be noticed.
You have to be able to hold up a mirror to your personality at drama school and recognise the flaws. That’s hard to do as a 17-year-old. But it’s easier to cope with when you’re a little bit older.
‘The Good Wife’ has actually been something, ironically, that I’ve watched since episode one, season one in the U.K. because it came up when I was in drama school. I always watched it. It was kind of like an actor’s show.
The thing a drama school can’t give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can’t be taught, and you have to have intuition. It’s an essential ingredient.
I didn’t really enter into the real world until I was probably at drama school.
When I got into drama school, that’s when I knew that I could safely say that I wanted to be a professional actor.
I never went to drama school.
I failed my exams and my driving test. I failed to get into the Foreign Office and drama school. The big F was dominant in my early years.
Drama school was a lifeline for me, it saved me. I found it very nurturing – I just clung on.
I know the fact I’ve worked continuously since drama school means I fit a stereotype – the ingenue.
I wrote a play at drama school, which was a dark comedy – people laughed and cried. And then my script of one of the shows was picked up by a comedy sketch company… so then I had to write comedy.
The only thing at the back of my mind is longevity, and I’m really lucky that I’ve constantly been in work since I left drama school.
I played old men back in drama school. It’s just now that I’m drawing level with the age of the characters I play, but I’m fine with that, and I’ve certainly never envied people who became hugely famous when they were young.
One of the first jobs I did out of drama school was a panto at the Magnum.
I wasn’t one of the ones voted most likely to succeed when I was at drama school, but I persevered and concentrated on the acting rather than going to the right parties and getting the right agent. Eventually, after ten years, it paid off.
I’d had to grow up pretty quickly, and going back to drama school gave me a chance to be with people my own age and do normal things, like going to a pub on a Friday night and just hanging out.
I was incredibly nervous about doing a period drama. I thought that to play period, you had to be English-looking and blonde and very well spoken, and have gone to drama school.
When I was at drama school, I wanted to change the world, and thought I had some great wisdom to impart to people about humanity. Now that I’m older, I know enough to realise that I know nothing at all.
It’s a good time for me, but it’s only recently I’ve become comfortable in my job. At the start, it’s hard having the nerve to call yourself an actor, let alone doing it. I gave myself two years after drama school, and if I didn’t make it, then I’d give it up.
I went to drama school and it didn’t prepare me for the ruthlessness of the industry at all, or the reality of it.
I went to drama school in England, and you spend your first year working on the muscles surrounding the vocal mechanisms. You learn how you support it and create characters through your voice so that became an obsession. So I went to Hollywood thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to be one of the great voice-over artists.’
My auditions for drama school were miserable, but one thing I had on my side, although I had no experience or skill or training, was that I wanted to learn everything.
At drama school, a casting director asked the class to walk round the room one at a time, and we had to imagine who they might be. The two before me were described as a doctor and a businessman, but when it came to me, they said homeless person. That was when I thought I’d better do something about my appearance!
We are the only school in America, drama school in America that trains actors, writers and directors side by side for three years in a master’s degree program, and we want them – to expose them to everything.
My acting career began when I walked into a drama school class run by Anna Scher in Islington. Anna discovered a lot of people: Linda Robson, Pauline Quirke, Gary and Martin Kemp, and Dexter Fletcher were among my contemporaries.
I never went to drama school. It’s a brilliant thing for the right type of person, but I threw myself in the deep end.
I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. But then a lady at the youth theatre asked me if I’d ever thought of going to drama school.
You know how there’s always the one girl in drama school who can cry at the drop of a hat? She has that emotional well she can tap into in a second? I’m not that girl. It takes a lot to get me to that place.
I think the point to be understood is that we’re all different. I’ve never been a fan of theories of acting. I didn’t go to drama school, so I was never put through a training that was limited by someone saying, ‘This is the way you should act.’
The only thing I think I can be accused of about paparazzi is being really naive. I didn’t think about it coming along with the job and I never, during my three years at drama school, fantasized about one bit of it.
My favorite play in drama school was ‘The Bacchae.’ It’s about a king who literally gets eaten alive by all the women in the play in a kind of orgy – it’s related to the word ‘bacchanal’ – and I loved that idea of animalistic chaos and following our own desires.
There’s a huge gulf between people who can afford to go to drama school and those who can’t.
I did apply for drama school when I was 17, and I didn’t get in; I had a really bad audition.
I’ve always said that with kids’ TV that people get stuck in it from drama school but that’s not fair because I know myself that when you go in creatively, kids are so much more open to ideas. You’re so much freer to mess about and try things.
The most pressure I’ve ever felt to be brilliant was in drama school – those were the toughest auditions. I really wanted to prove myself.
I carried on acting during school holidays and was all set to go to drama school when I was offered my first professional job appearing in ‘King David’ with Richard Gere.
Drama school can’t make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years – you’re not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop.
I had the training at drama school where I studied Shakespeare and Brecht and Chekov and all these period historical playwrights and I think that I responded to the material.
