How did you first get into acting, and how long have you been doing it for?
I first got into acting towards the end of my last year at school – left it a bit late. All my best mates at school were actors and studied it throughout their school careers. I guess I was always fascinated by the idea of performing, despite have a crippling shyness of performing in front of others that repelled me from ever auditioning for a part. A year before I had taken up music and sung in front of other people for the first time since I was in the choir aged 10. That gave me a bit of a buzz and in effect I think urged me to try out for the school production of Guys and Dolls. The audition process went very well and I got down to the last two to play Sky Masterson, the lead role, eventually being pipped to the post by my best friend (well-deserved). As an ensemble member I didn’t have the pressure of learning lots of lines but was simply able to enjoy the experience in a raw and stress free way. Having had so much fun in the play, I chose to go audition for the Young Pleasances’ adaptation of Spring Awakening, which was being taken up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The company was loosely connected with my school and my friends from school had been involved in the past few years so it seemed like a fun thing to do. Even then I was petrified by the notion of performing in front of people. I remember standing outside the building on the phone to my dad saying ‘I can’t do this, I’m completely out of my depth, they are all proper actors in there’. Eventually I managed to goad myself in a got one of the main roles playing a boy who was in a clandestine relationship with his best friend, also a boy, very taboo at the time. I had such an amazing experience in Edinburgh, but despite feeling exhilarated after every show, acting never seemed like a career option to me. The actors of today are so defined that becoming one seemed a whole world away. Towards the end of the run I was contacted by a couple of agencies about signing with them and suddenly I was opened to a world, which had never been a reality to me before. Shortly after signing with Curtis Brown I got my first audition script called The Beat Beneath My Feet and here I am a year and a half later.