I’ve been an actor for 16 years and made a decent living from just acting for about a dozen or so of those years. I admit I’ve not done much acting in the last 3 years or so but that has been mainly because I’ve been so busy with my second job, writing.
When I wrote series 1 of Benidorm I was trying to decide whether I wanted to play Mick or The Oracle. In the end I bottled out and decided I wanted to play neither. The main reason for this was my fear of it becoming a mainstream hit. Yes, you read that right, a strange fear for a television actor but I’ve never wanted to be a recognisable face. People asking where they know my face from embarrasses me greatly. There is no right answer. I usually say, “I’ve just got one of those faces” or “I live around the corner” or I sometimes turn it around and say “I know your face too” and try to get more annoyed about it than them. On the rare occasions I have said, “I’m an actor, I’m on the television sometimes”, it’s often met with a slow shake of the head and a ponderous, “no, that’s not it..”.
I’ve been trying to think where this worry of recognition or ‘over exposure’ comes from and I think there’s only one answer. When I was in my mid twenties I was drinking in an after hours pub in the east end of London when I noticed someone on another table looking at me and seemingly talking about me with a less than appreciative look on his face. I was used to people looking at me quizzically, trying to think where they knew my face from as even at this early age I had already appeared in at least half a dozen UK tv commercials and a tv series (Pie In The Sky) but usually folk never worked it out and I was left in peace. Suddenly this skanky looking rat boy leapt to his feet, smashed his beer bottle on the edge of his table and with a bizarre shout of, “YOU’RE NOT EVEN FUCKING FAMOUS” pushed the end of the shattered bottle into my face. Luckily I wasn’t the lolloping lard arse I am today and I moved quickly, turning my head so the glass didn’t take out my eye but only left me with a medium sized scar on the left hand side of my face.
In A&E I tried to go back over the evenings events prior to this attack. Was I loudly shouting anecdotes of how I had been at Judi Dench’s house the night before? Was I standing on a chair giving my drama school audition speech from Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter? Maybe I was subconsciously singing a medley of songs from Annie Get Your Gun while giving a rogue vulgar wink over the footlights? No. I was just sitting having a drink with a couple of friends. I don’t know why this kid was annoyed that I was on the telly (maybe disgusted that I had failed to make myself a household name). Whatever the reason I’m absolutely clueless why it filled him with such frustration and hate.
Now I’m not saying this is a regular occurrence, actually nothing like it has ever happened since. But maybe, at times when I’m asked by my agent if I want to go for a recall to play Caroline Quentin’s husband in a new BBC sitcom or I think of giving myself a part in my own show that has more than 4 lines, somewhere in the back of my mind I’m worried about some dribbling mental pushing my face through a plate glass window because I’ve never managed to appear in a hollywood movie. Hopefully I’ll never know.
*Actually I now remember why I didn’t want to go for a recall for the Caroline Quentin sitcom, it was shit.
