Richard James | Actor | Three Days In The Life

Days In The Life Of An Actor...

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be an actor? Or wanted to be one yourself? Have you been entranced by dreams of bright lights, fame and fortune? Well, being an actor is ninety percent disappointment and ten per cent reward - if you're lucky! Good days are rare, but I've had a few. Here are some examples of what such a day might look like for an actor - days that I have lived in my thirty year-plus career.

• I was in my first year at drama school and, frankly, I was struggling. I had lost faith in the course and I had lost faith in myself. Did I really have what it took to be an actor? I was doubtful. Haunting the Barbican Centre one day, I happened to see an actor I recognised walking across the concourse. His name was Peter Wight and I had recently seen him play Claudius to Mark Rylance's Hamlet with the RSC. I stopped him and asked him if he had a few moments for a chat. He explained he was about to perform in that day's matinee, but he would happily meet me for a coffee following the show. He was true to his word. Over a drink, I explained my feelings and fears; that being an actor was beyond me and that I should drop out of my course and get a proper job.

He cautioned me against so rash a decision. 'Finish the course,' he advised. 'If you leave, there will be no going back and you'll never know what might have been. Better to have the training under your belt, then make your decision later.'

He was right, of course, and 16 years later - now as a professional, working actor - I was able to tell him that.

At a readthrough for a film featuring, among others, Burt Reynolds, Derek Jacobi and Imelda Staunton, I spotted a familiar face across the table from me. Peter Wight. After the reading, I reminded him of the young actor he had met and the advice he had given all those years ago. 'It's thanks to you I'm here, Peter. And I wanted to say thank you.'

Ever the professional, he pretended to remember.

• Work is hard to come by. Only once have I had an unbroken run of employment with no annoying gaps in between; going from job to job to job. I had recently completed a year at Pinewood Studios filming 24 episodes of Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct - then billed as the most expensive TV show ever made. That job had rescued me from a rocky start to my career. Having graduated just eighteen months before, I had found the going hard. But Space Precinct changed all that. Towards the end of filming the series, a fellow cast member asked if I would consider joining a tour of a two-man show he had devised, Thunderbirds FAB. It would be a continuation of my connection to all things Gerry Anderson, and it sounded fun.

With a month's rehearsal under my belt, I found myself on a short tour in the late spring of 1995. As we set up in the Theatre Royal Plymouth, I got a call from my agent to audition in London for a film version of The Wind In The Willows. A couple of frantic train journeys later, I was back in Plymouth in time to perform the evening show and, before the week was out, I heard that I'd got the part.

With the tour finishing in Leeds just a couple of weeks later, I was on a coach back to London in time to attend a readthrough at the Atheneum Hotel in Mayfair.

I found myself in illustrious company. Terry Jones had adapted the screenplay from Kenneth Grahame's famous book and was set to direct and play Toad. Eric Idle was Rat and Steve Coogan was Mole. Anthony Sher was to play the Chief Weasel and Nicol Williamson, Badger. Even the smaller roles were played by famous faces, including John Cleese and Michael Palin (making it an almost-Monty Python movie), Stephen Fry, Nigel Planer and Victoria Wood. A galaxy of stars.

We filmed over the hot summer of 1995 in locations including Kentwell Hall in Suffolk, Chiddingstone in Kent and Shepperton Studios. It marked for me, an unbroken run of eighteen months' work. Something that wouldn't happen again for twenty years.

• I had been on a theatre tour for almost two years when a very unusual thing happened - I was offered another job with the same company. It would mean touring the country again for another eighteen months, playing all the local 'number one' venues I had got to know so well previously. And it was due to start directly the current one finished.

We were, at this time, performing the first production on the stage of London's Garrick Theatre eight times a week. So, accepting the next part would mean having to leave rehearsals early every day in order to have a decent break before that evening's performance. And it was even more complicated on matinee days.

For the only time in my professional career, I was working two jobs at once; rehearsing during the day in a church hall in Kennington, South London, then performing during the evening in the West End. It was exhausting, but exhilarating. Oh, and ultimately, it led me to the Royal Albert Hall for the Olivier Awards, 2018 (above). And I still have my pin badge.