Richard James | Actor | Three Days In The Life

Three 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 three examples of what such a day might look like for an actor - days that I have lived in my thirty year-plus career.

• 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.

• Having been picked up by my driver at 7am, I was whisked away to a complex of sound stages on the M4 near Reading. I had auditioned for my role some weeks before and now, after an afternoon's costume fitting, I was due to start the first of three days' filming. It was a small role in an up and coming movie adaptation of A Christmas Carol featuring a very starry cast - and me!

Having been shown to my trailer and given some breakfast, I was taken to makeup where I found myself next to Rupert Grint. Looking in the mirror, I could see pictures of other cast members stuck to the wall behind me; Daisy Ridley, Ian McKellen, Johnny Depp.

A couple of hours later I was on set. A complex of snowy Victorian streets had been built on a sound stage now populated by horses and carts and lots of extras. On the call of 'action', I walked down the street towards Scrooge and Marley's shop, a camera mounted on a crane swinging down to follow me. Dodging the supporting artistes and horses, I found my mark while delivering some improvised dialogue - then had to do it a dozen times more.

After lunch, I was back out in the snow to film my moment with Johnny Depp. We stood eye to eye together as the scene was lit and blocked for camera then, after several takes, it was in the can. With the camera turned round on me for some background action, I was rewarded with some words and a hug from my costar, before being sent back to makeup and costume to return to my civvies.

After dinner, the car was ready to take me home again, with an appointment being made to pick me up again at the same time the following morning to continue with my scenes.