Monday 24th August

A late start to the day - I woke up feeling a little low today and couldn’t shake it off for most of the morning. Maybe it was the comedown after a beautiful weekend. I hesitate to say too much because I’m planning to write a whole article about the experience, but I went to The River Cafe for the first time for a pre-birthday meal, and it was sensational. The whole experience, from start to finish, was the Rolls-Royce of restaurants and, hands down, one of the best culinary experiences of my life. But I woke up today feeling less than myself. I thought a strong coffee might help with the morning blues, but sadly, it didn’t touch the sides.

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It seems odd now to reflect on my journey towards being in The Phantom of the Opera. It has been nearly three years since I last wore the mask and stepped onto Marie Björnson’s timeless set, yet I still find myself thinking about that mask most days. Not obsessively, but more as an acknowledgement of how it changed my life.

To explain, we have to return to a time in my life that I have rarely wanted to revisit. But years have a way of softening the blow, and during the last three years, I have finally begun to embrace the stitched tapestry of my life.

At the age of sixteen, I truly believed that setting off on my journey to Phantom was a pilgrimage. Although the word is usually associated with sacred and holy places, I, too, was on a quest for faith, healing, and peace. I believed that all those things would be achieved if I could step onto that stage wearing the iconic white mask.

My face was rewritten at the age of sixteen following a car accident that left me with severe lacerations down the right-hand side of my face. Half of my nose was brutally removed, but with such precision that the scars run directly down its centre. Quite literally, you cannot see any of the marks when looking at me from the left. The right-hand side reveals everything.

I woke up in hospital without knowing the full extent of the damage to my unique facial tapestry. A looming sense of heartbreak surrounded me. Doctors stood around my bed alongside my lead plastic surgeon, who suggested that it was time to remove the bandages. The drenched patches resembled something decaying, carrying an aroma of skin, adhesive and methanol - a smell that immediately returned me to both events that had brought me there.

They removed the bandage mask and left me in front of the mirror.

I stared, half believing that this was some sick joke the world was playing on me. I remember the faint internal screams rising through my body like a deep, demonic soul stretching its wings, slicing and carving away at whatever self-esteem, happiness, or joy remained inside me.

For days, I sat internalising my pain, unable to cry out or beg for help. The roots of so much of the pain that followed were born during those days. Shyness, guardedness, aloofness and a lack of self-worth - all those modern buzzwords attributed to people’s personalities - grew inside me like boils.

I could feel myself slipping deeper and deeper into depression; I did not know what depression was then, but it felt as though the final embers of light inside me had been extinguished. I remember it so vividly: the faint internal smoke, the darkness - and there, standing within it, was a figure wearing a white mask. Even though the scars have healed and slowly faded over the years, the phantom pain continues.

I knew then that perhaps the light emanating from the mask would lead me towards the end of the tunnel.

And so, with quiet determination, I began plotting the journey to The Phantom of the Opera.

To be continued.

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Monday 17th August

A slightly later start today, so naturally I snoozed through most of my alarms. I eventually woke up and had breakfast in bed: two poached eggs, avocado and sourdough from Gail’s. I know, Gail’s has got the better of me, and I now only buy my bread from there. I’m sticking to making coffee and everything else from scratch at home. Considering the small fortune I’m spending on this beautiful Nordic-inspired apartment in West London, I should really be chained to the kitchen.

Time was ticking by, and I knew I had absolutely no intention of cycling the whole way. I consulted Citymapper, made my way to Stamford Brook and took the Tube all the way to Bromley-by-Bow. The train was so full that I couldn’t get a seat. I’d imagined a relaxing journey spent reading my book and looking through my script, but instead I spent the entire hour navigating my bike around people and trying to work out whether the doors would open on the left or the right. I eventually reached my destination, hopped back on the bike and followed the canal route to rehearsals.

Today was the first day with the full cast, so it felt like the official first day. I could feel myself becoming stressed and anxious before I’d even arrived. I still find first days genuinely terrifying. I’m chronically shy and have very little self-worth, so finding myself in a room where I’m expected to introduce myself to a large group of people is my worst nightmare, particularly when someone calls for a circle. I milled around for a while and eventually plucked up the courage to introduce myself to a few people. The whole cast seemed lovely and welcoming, Kate Fleetwood especially so. I managed to restrain myself from talking to her about the production of the Scottish Play she did with Patrick Stewart, which I still think is one of the best adaptations I’ve ever seen. It was directed by her husband, Rupert Goold, whose work I admire enormously. I thought it was probably best not to unload all of that within the first five minutes of meeting her.

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Once upon a time, there was a young boy from Wales who managed to get a job at his local Tesco while at college. I thought I’d be running the place within a week. Sadly, no such promotion came my way, but I did spend a very short period working on the checkouts.

My pre-work ritual was watching Into the Woods, from a copy my then-girlfriend had lent me, to educate me in musical-theatre royalty. She was very musical-theatre-obsessed; I was less so.

It blows my mind that, nearly 19 years later, I’m joining the West End transfer cast of Into the Woods and, lucky for you, you can read my diaries over the next 5 months.

Careful what you wish for…Into the woods we go!

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Selfishly, when my Gran passed away suddenly in 2022, my immediate thought was: Who is going to feed us now? And can anybody remember the recipes?

Arguably one of the best restaurants in the Garw Valley, I never managed to stump her with a lunch order. She was like the Amazon of restaurants; she always managed to have everything your taste buds could possibly want.

I would often test her. When I was running my own graphic design company, I’d call her and say, “Gran, can I have a sirloin steak with homemade chips?”

Not a second of hesitation.

“Yes, it’ll be ready at twelve.”

A little early for me, but you know what? They always had something on, whether it was a trip to Porthcawl for fish and chips, M&S at Culverhouse Cross, or the gigantic weekly shop at Sainsbury’s.

Whatever the weekly plan, she was always there to deliver a stupendous lunch. Sometimes I even went there for dinner. Cheeky, I know, but we bonded over food. I’d like to think it was her love language, and I was more than happy to ensure it was met.

Every Sunday, without fail, there would be a Sunday dinner prepared. It was so sought after that there would be first, second and third sittings. You’d have to call to confirm your sitting.

Honestly, if I’d had half the entrepreneurial mindset required to build an empire, I would have bought a local café and put her to work. We could probably have retired to the Tuscan hills by now.

But there was one dish that not even Marco Pierre White would argue with: my Gran’s corned beef plate pie.

It sounds pretty grim, but I can assure you that the delicate balance of onion, tinned corned beef, potato and pastry, served warm or cold, would have had the Michelin Guide running.

I’m about to divulge an heirloom recipe here, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. But I’m no gatekeeper, and I think your taste buds should experience the Welsh delight of this classic dish. No doubt there are variations ringing around the Welsh mountains from countless other Welsh grans’ kitchens.

The ingredients

• 1 white onion

• 1 tin of Princes corned beef

• 3 large potatoes

• 2 sheets of savoury shortcrust pastry

My Gran made her own pastry - traditionally, savoury shortcrust made with a 50/50 mixture of butter and lard.

The method…more or less

Cook your potatoes as you like. Look, don’t expect a highly executed Mary Berry recipe guide here, OK?

My Gran passed before I could pin down the recipe, or even bother to watch her make it. Sometimes you were banned from the kitchen.

Once the potatoes have cooked and cooled, combine them with the raw onion and corned beef, mixing everything together well.

Place one sheet of pastry on a large plate. Add the mixture and spread it evenly, then top it with the second sheet of pastry.

Now for the best part: using a fork, work your way around the plate, making lovely patterns as you seal the pastry together. Then cut a cross into the top.

I don’t know why. My Gran did it. Am I assuming it allows some air into the pie? I don’t know; consult Google or ask your gran.

Trim the pastry around the edge of the plate and pop it in the oven at 200°C for about 30 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and cooked through.

You can also brush the pastry with a little milk. Don’t ask me why, but it’s obviously a secret part of the cooking process.

Gran, if you’re reading this from the high heavens, send me a message; I’d like to know.

And there you have it.

Serve it warm or cold, with a dollop of tomato sauce on the side and maybe even a slice of Brace’s bread with lashings of butter. You’ll be in food heaven.

I think I’m going to call it Christine’s Plate Pie.

The sad reality is that very few of my Gran’s culinary delights trickled down into my mother’s skill set. Perhaps there’s truth in the well-known adage that there simply isn’t enough time when you’re working.

My Gran was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at a young age and wasn’t fit to work, so she had time to hone her cooking skills. My taste buds still miss sampling her food.

She was a complicated character at times, and I think, on reflection, she may have struggled with her mental health for a few years. The pain of arthritis and watching your body break down couldn’t have been easy.

But she was a fierce character. She never let it stop her from being on her feet in the kitchen, even when, no doubt, she would rather have been lying down or putting her feet up.

For that, I’m forever grateful.

Welsh cakes, scones, Yorkshire puddings, trifle, fish cakes - the list is endless. These are the dishes by which all others are judged.

They may be good, but they aren’t as good as Gran’s.

ARL

I’ve never kept a diary!

Not properly, anyway, apart from writing the odd doctor’s appointment and payment reminders. So, I’m not entirely certain what convinced me to write a diary following my rehearsal journey and life in a new show. Maybe the fact I’ve always been fascinated by reading other people’s diaries. Although admittedly they tend to belong to actors rather more famous than I am. Alan Rickman, Richard Burton and Anthony Sher spring to mind. There is something so compelling about reading somebody’s thoughts as events are actually unfolding before they know whether the job will be a success or if the whole process will be a disaster.

I can’t share what it is yet (maddening, I know), but I did drop a little hint with a lyric from the show in my latest article, ‘Stay Open, Lighting Could Strike.’ Top marks if you can spot it! As you lovely people have subscribed and helped me build this new venture, I will be releasing my diaries to paid subscribers only, and you will get deep insights into how I approach the rehearsal room and ultimately survive my next job.

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I don’t know why I always feel the need to set the scene before writing one of these articles, but I think it helps you picture the environment this embryonic writer is working in.

I’m sitting here, tapping the keys with very little precision, while listening to Thomas Newman’s resplendent score from Meet Joe Black. I would urge you to rush to your respective music-streaming platform and listen along while reading this article. And no, I have not yet reached the stratospheric heights of securing a brand partnership with any of the titans of the music platforms. I wish more than life itself that this were the case, but lightning hasn’t struck there… Yet.

I’m also nursing the remains of some tuna pasta mayonnaise, which I wolfed down several hours ago. The leftovers started calling my name from the fridge, and I was powerless to resist.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah, yes. Mr Joe Black.

I have only ever recommended Meet Joe Black to a handful of people - those I regard as genuinely receptive to a great romantic drama. If I were a guessing man, I would say I have probably watched it around 47,000 times. That figure may be a slight exaggeration, but it cannot be far off.

A brief who’s-who detour, if I may.

The film was directed by Martin Brest, who was also responsible for two other incredible films: Scent of a Woman and Midnight Run. Don’t get me started on Scent of a Woman. An entire article could be dedicated to the brilliance of that film and its score.

Interestingly, the screenplay for Meet Joe Black is credited to Bo Goldman, Kevin Wade, Ron Osborn and Jeff Reno. Four writers! It is something of a miracle that the dialogue works as beautifully as it does. It could easily have become a mishmash of different tones and ideas, but the film remains remarkably cohesive throughout. Then, every so often, it offers you a sentence that makes you completely reevaluate your life.

One line in particular has always stayed with me:

“Stay open. Who knows? Lightning could strike.”

When I first heard it, I thought it was simply about falling in love - which is what Anthony Hopkins’ character, Bill Parrish, is trying to convey to his daughter. But as I have grown older, and various wise and spiritual giants have bestowed their wisdom upon me (I jest), I have realised that it applies to almost every part of life.

So much of our happiness depends on whether we remain open.

It sounds simple when you say it aloud or write it down, but staying open becomes harder as we get older. Life happens. People disappoint us. Chances don’t always pay off, which can make us feel, and occasionally look, rather foolish.

So, slowly we begin to close ourselves off.

We stop applying for jobs because we have already decided we won’t get them. We avoid situations in which we might be rejected or hurt and stop meeting new people or pursuing a fresh chapter with someone. We only say yes when we know exactly what we are agreeing to and can be reasonably certain that the road ahead is safe.

Well, not on my watch!

Let’s make a pact with one another right now.

Stay open.

The problem is that when we close the door on the possibility of disappointment and heartbreak, we also close it on everything else.

When I look back at the moments that changed my life, most of them didn’t arrive with an announcement or a perfectly formed set of terms and conditions. On reflection, those days seem just as ordinary as any other.

An acting job I almost didn’t pursue. A conversation that appeared unimportant at the time but became the beginning of something new. Even a chance meet-cute when I wasn’t looking for anything, but my heart and mind happened to be open. You understand the importance of those moments much later - sometimes years later.

Looking back, you realise that your life changed direction without asking your permission.

That is the strange thing about lightning: you never know where or when it will strike.

Sometimes, it even strikes twice.

Of course, not every lightning strike is a welcome one. My cycling accident changed my life too, and it certainly wasn’t something I would have chosen. Still, it led me somewhere I could never have imagined for myself. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be writing this article now, sitting beside a tupperware container littered with shards of leftover tuna, had my life followed a route I originally planned.

Even the things we would give anything to undo can carry us towards unexpected places. Staying open means saying yes to something new. At other times, it means having the courage to admit that something old has ended - and letting it go.

Have you ever been with someone and been unable to explain why, but being with them simply feels like home?

Not because you have known them forever or because everything is perfect, but because something in your heart recognises something in them. You feel safe. Understood.

But not every home is somewhere we are meant to remain forever.

Sometimes a person enters our life to awaken something in us. To show us how deeply we can feel. To give our life a meaning we did not expect - and then to leave us more alive than we were before.

Perhaps that is why the Pelican became such a powerful ancient symbol of love.

It was once believed that, when her young were dying, a mother pelican would wound her own breast and feed them with her blood so that they might live. She came to represent the most selfless kind of love: one willing to suffer rather than prevent another from living.

Joe Black eventually understands this. If he truly loves Susan, he cannot take her with him and has to return her life, even though it means leaving without her. His love becomes real the moment he stops trying to possess her and finds the courage to let her go. Perhaps staying open is not only about allowing lightning to strike, but about keeping our hands open when something we love can no longer remain in them.

I’m not saying remain open, or be recklessly optimistic, or start trusting everyone and believing that everything will work out. I simply mean don’t allow disappointment to colour your future decisions. Don’t settle for something that doesn’t feel right simply because wanting more is frightening or feels unattainable.

My advice for what it’s worth?

Leave a little room in your life for something you haven’t planned.

Most of the time, nothing extraordinary will happen. The opportunity may lead nowhere, or the conversation you had huge hopes for remains just a conversation, and the person never becomes more than a passing acquaintance. But every so often, one of those apparently ordinary encounters will become the dividing line between the life you had and the life you were meant to have.

And when that happens, you feel the rising euphoria of why it was so worth staying open through all those days when nothing seemed to strike.

Disappointment will always encourage us to risk less and feel less to protect ourselves. But I would rather risk being surprised by life and remain open to receive the great gifts of the world.

Maybe that is why this line has stayed with me through all 47,000 viewings.

Maybe lightning really does strike if we are fortunate; a person or an opportunity comes along and makes the whole world feel different.

But try not to desperately hold onto whatever arrives; have the courage to receive it, whatever it may be; allow it to change you without judgement; and, if the moment comes where it no longer serves you, release it with gratitude. The great loves and experiences of our lives don’t cease to matter simply because they are no longer in our lives; they should become part of us and lead us onwards.

Towards the ending of the movie, all central characters realise this. Bill lets go of his daughter, Susan lets go of her father, and Joe Black lets go of the first person who made him understand what it meant to be alive. None of them lets go because the love has disappeared. They let go precisely because it hasn’t.

As Bill and Joe prepare to cross that final bridge, Bill asks:

“It’s hard to let go, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is, Bill”

“That’s life. What can I tell you?”

ARL.

As I sit here contemplating writing this article, I start to think I’d have been better off never starting to write a memoir about my car accident and the emotional and physical scars that followed. There is a chapter in my memoir that I keep opening and closing. I try to move a sentence here, delete a paragraph, then procrastinate on an Olympic level and distract myself with a cup of coffee or suddenly feeling like inhaling Viakhal and cleaning the bathroom; I’ll try anything to avoid returning to the page.

The chapter is about my mother. Not the uncomplicated version of her or the polished version I would sometimes present to myself and others, but there is one sentence I have been avoiding for nearly twenty years.

My mother wasn’t driving the car that hit me. But her actions helped put me in front of it.

Even typing that makes me want to close the laptop. It looks brutal sitting there in black and white. Far more brutal than it ever sounds inside my own head, where I can soften it, qualify it and surround it with twenty years’ worth of understanding.

On the page, there is nowhere for it to hide.

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We all know that one person who has been branded a gossip. Most conversations about them are prefaced with: “Don’t tell them anything. They’re a gossip.”

Some people seem to wear this as a badge of honour.

Really?

I can’t help but feel deeply sad for those individuals.

I have a rule: if the first five minutes of our conversation were spent dissecting somebody else’s life, I already know we’re probably not going to be great friends, and I’ll make sure I sit at a table for one next time.

I also have a nickname for people who spread gossip or make other people the focus of every conversation. They are known to me as The Gazette. Depending on where you live or work, you might be The Gazette of London, The Gazette of the Tour or The Gazette of Number 42, Nosy Street. You get my drift.

Talking of drift, following on from my previous article about The Odyssey, gossip in the Bronze Age probably served a rather more useful purpose than it does today. In a world without newspapers, phones or rolling newsfeeds, how else would you know whether a war had been won, an army was approaching or whether a fleet of battle ships had been spotted on the horizon? Gossip travelled from person to person. It could warn a city, protect a family or stop someone wandering directly into a cave inhabited by the mythical Greek Gorgon, Medusa.

Somewhere along the way, however, gossip was twisted from the sharing of useful information into talking an enormous load of waffle about people whose lives we know absolutely nothing about. And beware the most dangerous Gorgons of all: the person who begins a conversation with, “He’s a really close friend of mine, but have you heard…?”A Gorgon (Maybe this is my new nickname; I like it) of the highest order. Run for the hills. Lock the door and block them. Because anybody willing to betray a “really close friend” for five minutes of conversational excitement should be banished from your tables. I would say notify the “close friend”, but you’d be perpetuating the same behaviour, and honesty without compassion is cruelty in my view. Let’s hope the ‘close friend’ realises soon.

Now, I have engaged in gossip myself over the years. But it has always left me feeling worse. The older I get, the more I value people who leave conversations lighter, not dirtier. The ones who make you think rather than making you suspicious and paranoid. Life is complicated enough without turning other people into tonight’s entertainment.

If you want to know whether someone is worth keeping around, listen to what they talk about when they have complete freedom to choose the subject. It tells you almost everything you need to know. Why do some people need to borrow somebody else’s life to make their own conversation interesting?

I yearn for the people who can sit in a cafe for two hours and talk about books, films, travel, ideas and life. Other people can’t get through ten minutes without dragging someone else into it. The most interesting people I’ve met have rarely seemed desperate to narrate the downfalls of other people’s lives.

So here is the real question:

If gossip were taken off the table completely, would your conversations still be interesting?

When I started out in my career, I paid very close attention to the people who seemed incapable of removing gossip from the table. I quietly tiptoed around them. I’m sure my vague and rather cold aloofness came across as arrogant or miserable, but if that is the price I have to pay to avoid those outstanding members of civilisation, I’m perfectly fine with it.

I often wondered what would happen if I became the central point of the rumour mill. What if I ended up as the lead story in the daily gossip column?

Well, a few years ago, I did. I was clearly having my midlife crisis early and very confidently pressing my own self-destruct button. I became the fresh fish-and-chips paper of the day.

Weirdly, it was one of the best things that could have happened to me. A very bright and exposing light was suddenly shone on my life, but it also illuminated the people around me. People I had believed possessed some level of integrity seemed perfectly happy to add to an already painful situation. I had made mistakes and caused somebody else pain through my own failings. I knew that. I didn’t need protection from the consequences of my actions. But watching and hearing those consequences become entertainment, I decided from that moment I would try not to add to somebody else’s pain through idle gossip. It is a stance I would like to think I have managed to uphold.

There is nothing more powerful than the sound of silence when you are in the company of a few head editors from the gossip gazettes. I rather enjoy keeping quiet and using my vacant expression to highlight their cheap-seat approach to conversation. Because here is the thing: if someone happily gossips with you, there is a good chance they will gossip about you.

Now, I’m no Freud. Most of this is very well documented and has been written about by people far more qualified than I am. But from conversations with a few spiritual giants, I think we often confuse gossip with intimacy. We believe we are creating some kind of hot-wire connection, where sharing secrets means we are building closeness. Let's call a spade a spade; what utter bollocks. There is nothing close about sharing somebody’s private information with another person.

None.

My life gives me enough to think about without carrying around everybody else’s business as well.

Working in theatre, you realise how quickly stories grow legs. A comment made backstage on a Tuesday somehow returns on Friday wearing a completely different costume. By the time it has completed its journey around the company, it bears absolutely no resemblance to the original story. Even the person who first said it probably doesn’t recognise it. It is one reason I have become very careful about relaying things I did not actually witness.

The people I admire most are curious. They stay open and want to discuss the beauty and absurdity of the world. They ask questions, recommend books and get excited about ideas, thoughts and little pearls of wisdom. They will spend twenty minutes discussing why the ending of a film worked or why it didn’t. They’ll tell you about a tiny coffee shop they discovered on the way to the theatre or an article that completely changed their perspective (This is one of them, right?).

Look, I know I maybe should have mentioned this sooner. We have all gossiped; if you tell me you have never said, “You ‘ll never guess what happened…” then you are either lying or you have lived an extraordinarily sheltered life.

I envy you.

But I am talking about the people for whom gossip is not an occasional detour. It is the M4 all the way to the Scottish Highlands, across a ferry, on a country road to the upper echelons of Gossip-Ville. Every conversation eventually arrives at somebody else's marriage, divorce, weight, career or terrible decisions. It is as if they have been permanently employed by the department of Other People’s business.

I have never walked away from one of those conversations feeling better, and I have certainly never wandered home thinking, what an enriching exchange of ideas.

I have usually walked away wondering what they will say about me the moment I leave the table.

If a conversation starts with, “Why does Greece have the best tomatoes?” then we are off to the races, baby. I will probably order another coffee and happily wile away the hours.

But then there are the conversations that begin with:

“Did you hear about…”

and suddenly you are knee-deep in the romantic failures of a person you have never met and know absolutely nothing about.

If gossip disappeared tomorrow, would your conversation survive? I am not suggesting that engaging in gossip automatically makes you a terrible person. We all do it occasionally. But being genuinely intrigued by the world is a skill.

Curiosity is a skill.

Wonder is a skill.

Good conversation is a skill.

Anybody can discuss another person’s mistakes. It takes a far more interesting person to make you excited about an idea. I don’t want to leave lunch knowing who cheated on who. I would much rather leave with a new book recommendation, somewhere to visit, or a question I have to think about on the walk home.

Life is already extremely noisy. I have spent years trying not to let people live rent-free in my head. I equally do not need to rent out space to people who are not even in the room.

So, a word of advice from Guru Lewis. This is a joke. I am in no way qualified to give advice, but here you are; take it or leave it.

Pay attention to the opening few lines of a conversation. You can tell an awful lot about someone by the first thing they choose to discuss.

The people I admire build stories and share ideas, and the people I would rather avoid spend their days retelling somebody else’s. (Mic-drop).

ARL

If you’ve been completely consumed by the hype of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, I can confirm it’s all true, and you should rush to your nearest cinema and watch it. Word of advice: make sure you go for an emergency leak and snacks run before settling into your seat. Further warning: if you haven’t watched it yet, this article may contain spoilers. Spoilers which might, on reflection, help you digest the plot more successfully. (This comment hasn’t been endorsed or authorised by Christopher Nolan nor Universal Studios). Always good to be a legal eagle.

After watching the film, I was left with one question: How much control did Odysseus ever really have?

Towards the end of the 2hrs and 52 minutes, Calypso asks Odysseus to do the one thing he has spent his entire journey refusing to do: stop fighting and let go of control, let Poseidon take you and trust that Zeus will not allow any harm to come to you. This sounds like very bad advice if you ask me: to trust a God who has tormented you, destroyed your ships and placed obstacle after obstacle between you and your home, Ithaca. Surrendering to Poseidon appears to mean trusting the very force trying to destroy you, but perhaps that is the entire point of the story.

Odysseus has spent years trying to overpower his circumstances through intelligence, strength and sheer brute force. Those qualities ultimately save him, but they also prolong his suffering. That really connected with me and I thought about it all through the film, not because I have blinded a Cyclops recently (I’m sure some exist in the Welsh mountains), but because I understand the desire to try and control the outcome of my life.

Actors in particular are very good at trying to do that.

We prepare obsessively because that’s really the only thing we have control over. We learn the material, study the character, keep the voice warm and decide what outfit will not make a weekend of over-consuming show, and arrive early so that we can calm the rising panic. Sound familiar? Then we walk into a room, perform for a few minutes and without saying anything, we hand our future over to somebody else. There is something slightly deranged about the whole process.

You can give the best audition of your life and still not get the job. You can sing every note correctly, understand the character and feel a genuine connection with the people behind the table of opportunity. Still, no call. No explanation. No useful lesson and sometimes not even a rejection email. Just silence…

Wouldn’t happen at Tesco!

Acting asks us to present ourselves as the product, but with that said, it’s almost impossible not to take anything personally. It feels as though they have rejected your face, voice, instinct and the strange collection of personality ticks you have spent years honing.

If you are anything like me, I often leave the auditions and immediately begin imagining the life that will follow. I picture the rehearsal room, telling my friends and family. I feel the relief of knowing where the next pay cheque is coming from before anyone has offered me the job. Then the offer never comes. Bollocks! I knew day-dreaming as a child would come back and bite me in the arse!

That disappointment can feel like grief because, in a small way, it is. You are not only losing a job. You are losing an entire future you briefly allowed yourself to believe was happening. Then when the rejection email finally comes, you search for control. You replay the audition, question the song and wonder whether you spoke too much, seemed too confident or made one badly timed joke that destroyed everything. I did this recently and spent the whole day calling several friends, several times to replay the scenario. I’m a hoot to be friends with, honest!

Usually the decision has very little to do with you. Someone was taller, already known to the director. Someone looked better beside the person already cast. Maybe the production changed direction, or maybe they couldn’t afford you (HA!). Or just maybe you reminded the producer of an ex-boyfriend.

Or the producer was your ex-boyfriend. You get my drift… Get it!

Entire careers can turn because of details the actor will never know. That is the Poseidon of the acting profession. Timing, fashion, money, luck and decisions being made in rooms to which you have absolutely no access.

As Homer no doubt said (I don’t know…I’m guessing). You can prepare for the voyage. You cannot command the sea.

Still, I have spent most of my life trying.

I’ve told myself that if I had worked harder, sung better, been thinner, sent another casting director email and kept the momentum, the outcome would be different. Look, there’s nothing wrong with a strong sense of discipline. You cannot survive as an actor without it. But control is often fear in disguise. We try to keep rowing because stopping would force us to admit that we don’t know where we are going. We would rather exhaust ourselves travelling in the wrong direction than consider that the current might be carrying us somewhere else.

That is what makes Calypso’s words so powerful. “Let Poseidon take you.”

I’m not saying for a second that Poseidon hasn’t earned the right to revenge, and I say this not because suffering should be welcomed or romanticised, but because there may come a point when fighting what has already happened only keeps us trapped inside it.

Perhaps surrendering to our dealt hand is not the same as defeat or failure.

I think instead it simply means letting go of demanding that life follows the route you have planned for it.

I’m wary of the phrase “Everything happens for a reason.” It is too easily offered to people in pain and usually said by people who are sitting very comfortably outside it. Some things are simply terrible, and losses remain losses, and some wounds don’t become beautiful just because we managed to survive them. But there is a difference between believing the Gods are responsible for every terrible thing, and believing that even powerful Gods must obey the rules of fate.

Perhaps pain and suffering and joy and happiness go hand in hand. Perhaps even the closed door, the unanswered prayer and the role we were certain belonged to us can become part of a better direction we don’t yet understand.

That doesn’t make rejection less painful, I might add.

Not getting work as an actor affects money, stability, identity and your belief that all the sacrifice has been worthwhile. Eventually, you begin to wonder whether the rejection and silence are trying to tell you something.

The thoughts I have endured during that period vary between: ‘Am I no longer wanted? Was I ever as good as I thought? And at what point does my persistence become denial?’

There is rarely a divine voice echoing through the clouds with a helpful saying or prophecy about your acting career. Where is Athena when you need her?

I suspect you’ll have to find your own Athena of the acting world… Maybe that’s one of your friends who always manages to soften the blow when a job doesn’t go your way. Maybe they are a God in disguise? I hope you honoured Zeus’ Law when inviting them in!

Yet, perhaps the job we don’t get is not always proof that we are failing. Sometimes the ‘no’ is a redirection towards a better future.

Looking back, I can see moments when the things I so desperately wanted would have taken my life down an entirely different path. At the time, I thought I was failing at my career. Now, I realise I was being redirected.

My own work has begun to move beyond acting. Writing and other forms of storytelling have entered the space that was once entirely consumed by the pursuit of the next role. That doesn’t make acting a mistake or no longer my priority. Perhaps it means there’s more to discover on my journey.

We assume divine guidance will feel like being handed the thing we prayed for. Sometimes it may feel like having it taken away. God closes one door gently to guide you through another.

Now, I must take a slight pause in this article and say that I use the word GOD more as an acronym than my belief system. I do believe in a power greater than myself and that can be whatever you want it to be. But I use the word God in the sense of ‘Good Orderly Direction’.

Ok, where was I?

Poseidon tears the entire ship apart, but eventually Odysseus reaches Ithaca, just not in the way he intended. He returns without the ships, men and certainty with which he began. And although Poseidon was successful in delaying his return, inevitably he had to bow to the power of fate.

The acting profession will break your heart. It will make you doubt your talent and question whether the sacrifices were worthwhile. It may also close doors you believed were essential to carving out the career you want… But perhaps those doors were never going to lead you to where you need to be. We still have to do the work. Which is not an excuse to become passive; Odysseus must still build the raft and step onto it to allow whatever fate may bring.

But once he is at sea, he cannot just believe that survival depends entirely on his ability to control the waves. He must trust that something larger can see the shore even when he cannot.

I’m not very good at that. I like plans, proof and the measuring illusion that hard work creates outcomes I want.

The acting profession has spent years teaching me the opposite. You can do everything correctly and still not receive what you wanted. You can also find yourself being carried towards a life you never thought to ask for and maybe that isn’t failing; maybe it’s divine guidance.

The frightening part is, we cannot know while we are inside the storm in our heads.

We only realise when we loosen our grip, keep faith and allow ourselves to be carried. Whatever the dream may be, the figurative sea you have spent years fighting is trying to navigate you to where you should be.

Right, that’s enough philosophy for one week. I’m off to eat copious amounts of popcorn and watch Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts on repeat.

Oh and maybe, just maybe, I’ll go to my local bookshop and buy The Odyssey.

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I am aware that there are decades of Phantoms who could be consulted on this very subject, however I have decided to self-certify as an expert. I don’t know if any actors who played the role before me experienced a sudden change in their face.

The Phantom lived with his appearance from birth; my experience was somewhat different. I knew what it was like to be perfectly happy with the face I had and then, at sixteen, to have the face changed.

Sixteen is not an ideal age for facial reconstruction. It is supposed to be a time of flirting, frolicking and discovering the birds and the bees, not learning how differently the world can respond to you because of the way you look.

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I’m reminded of the acerbic Elaine Stritch’s departure from New York, when she put it in that unmistakable Stritch-ness, ‘I’m getting out of here. I’m tired of New York.”

I think I’ve reached the same conclusion: I’m tired of London.

I think I’m finally ready to retire from the central nervous system of Theatre Land, pop-up restaurants and people saying, “We must catch up” with absolutely no intention of ever doing so.

I’ve had it! Give my regards to London!

I grew up in a tiny village outside Bridgend, South Wales, which felt for most of my young life, like a prison. It didn’t look like the places I had fallen in love with in films. There were sprawling hills, endless grass, countless sheep and very little else. Now, don’t get me wrong, there was music (there was always music). The tradition of male voice choirs and bass bands echoed through the valley with great patriotic force and that did stir something in me. But I needed more.

I wanted to be swept up in culture, lights, noise and smells that didn’t bring on violent hay fever each year, (being surrounded by grass will do that to you) and after a while, when you’ve spent your formative years being spooked by the odd sheep, you do begin to worry that conversation outside the two mountains might prove a challenge. At that point, I just wanted out.

Films became my escape route from the confines of the valley. Fortunately, my parents would occasionally take me beyond the mountains to experience the exotic glamour of cosmopolitan cities like Cardiff or Bristol. Sometimes we even ventured as far as Hertfordshire! But returning home always filled me with dread. I would daydream constantly, trying to convince myself that America was just over the mountain, or that London was only a short journey away.

Leaving Wales became a lifelong ambition; London seemed like the holy grail. It was where I thought I could finally be unapologetically myself and for a long time that was true, but you have to be ready for London. It’s life in the fast lane at Grand Prix speed, take your eye off the road for a second and you’re in trouble.

For years, London seemed to hold all the answers. I could eat out until six in the morning, drink coffee in independent cafés, see all the theatre I could afford and breathe in the intoxicating smell of Shaftesbury Avenue and the National Theatre. It felt like a playground and I was energised and ready to attack like a cat with a mouse between its teeth. If you know where that saying comes from, you’ll get a free coffee on me. (Not in London, of course).

But over time the pace that once energised me began to exhaust me in equal measure.

Tube journeys were the biggest drain of all. Crowds becoming infuriatingly difficult to navigate. Perhaps I became disillusioned with London over time and maybe London became disillusioned with me.

After my last acting job finished and my marriage fell apart, I packed my bags and moved back to Wales. I cried for the first three weeks. It felt as though I had been dragged back into the very place I’d spent my life trying to escape from. But once I surfaced, something really unexpected happened: Wales became a place of solace. Whilst I’ve long envied those who could achieve the calm of meditation (I’ve tried but I am too restless to ever quieten my mind), the landscape of Wales and the mountains outside my doorstep became a personal form of meditation when I put on my hiking boots and got walking.

The valley I’d once viewed as confinement became my peace. It rested my mind in ways London never could. It felt like I was discovering the place all over again and for the first time, I truly fell in love with home.

Even now, I still travel to London for auditions. Every time the train pulls into Paddington, I feel that familiar excitement. I still love catching the smell of theatre land, that strange place which cocktails ambition, desperation and luck.

But after a day or two, I feel my body aching to leave.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work all over the world, travelling to places that many people dream of calling home. Yet somehow, every road eventually leads me back to South Wales. For years I believed happiness was always somewhere else. It turns out that happiness was always in the valleys waiting for me to realise.

Elaine Stritch was right…

Sometimes you simply wake up and realise you’re tired of the city that once made your heart race.

So, on that note London, ciao for now!

Or if my higher power has anything to do with it, I’ll probably book an acting gig and be back in Blighty before you know it… Infuriating!

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I’m sure some people are lucky enough to inherit a nice portion of an estate and a clean bill of mental health. Sadly, the more I read and the more I experience, the more I realise that the traumas we inherit from the people who came before us leave scars that won’t heal on their own. If we don’t break the cycle of inherited behaviours, we simply continue the line of succession of what I like to call ‘Barbaric Forms of Parenting’. That’s a self-help title for a book if I’ve ever heard one.

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There’s nothing quite like a Central London newsagent that has decided serving coffee somehow elevates it into a place where people gather to discuss current affairs. I simply sit there on Chiltern Street and people watch, which in my opinion, is a far more entertaining use of the outdoor furniture.

I was on my mission that day to find a copy of American Vogue to see how Chloe Malle was settling in under the famously watchful eye of Anna Wintour. I’m fascinated by her and all things Vogue (More on that another time). Instead, I found myself distracted by this month’s ‘Home & Country’. Firstly because Stanley Tucci was on the cover and secondly because I’m now comfortable enough in my masculinity to announce publicly that I have a rather sizeable man crush on Mr Tucci. I started flicking through the very slim edition when I started reading an article by Joel Stein called ‘Mean is the New Peptides’, an excellent article but one sentence in particular caught my attention:"You know things have gotten bad when even therapists are saying there's too much therapy-speak."

Now you’re talking. Pull up a chair…I have much to say.

I resisted therapy for nearly twenty years. Looking back, I probably could’ve got my shit together a little sooner had I gone but a friend once gave me the best advice on the subject,“Everyone can tell you to go to therapy. You’ll only go when the time is right.” Turns out my (right) time came after twenty years of avoidance and repeatedly slamming my own hand onto life’s self-destruct button. I’m remarkably talented at that. Life will be ticking along beautifully, I’ll be happy, content, making sensible decisions and then somewhere deep inside my brain a little voice whispers,

“Go on. Press it.”

If you’re anything like me, find your own self-destruct button immediately, hand it to a responsible adult and don't ask for it back.

The strange thing was; one of the reasons I avoided therapy wasn’t therapy itself. It was social media. Every time I opened Instagram or TikTok, my algorithm seemed convinced I’d enrolled myself in an online psychology degree. Every difficult partner was apparently a narcissist. Every disagreement was trauma. Every awkward conversation was gaslighting. Every ex had become someone’s case study. It felt as though we had started discussing personality disorders with the same confidence we discuss ice cream flavours, “Ooh…he’s defiantly a covert narcissist with a hint of avoidant attachment.”

Really? I thought he was more pistachio.

Somewhere along the way, genuine psychology language escaped the therapist’s couch and ended up in instagram reels.

It started to affect me. I found myself wondering…What if I’m the narcissist? After all, I’d made mistakes, I’d hurt people, I’d been selfish, I’d reacted badly, I’d said things I regretted. Surely, that’s what narcissists, do?

The more I read, the more convinced I became that every flaw in my personality must have a clinical label attached to it. Which is ridiculous when you think about it.

Human beings are wonderfully inconsistent creatures. We’re generous one day, selfish the next. Patient until someone drives at twenty miles an hour in a forty, then suddenly we’re auditioning for The Fast and the Furious. Social media has become obsessed with categorising every uncomfortable human behaviour into a diagnosis when sometimes people are simply being people. That’s not to dismiss genuine mental illness or personality disorders, they absolutely exist, but not every difficult person has a disorder. Sometimes they’re just difficult. Sometimes we’re the difficult ones and most probably, it’s a bit of both.

One thing I have learnt is that acting probably isn’t the profession to choose if you’re hoping never to overthink about yourself. We spend our lives asking people to look at us, judge us, approve of us, tell us we’re good enough. There needs to be a healthy ego involved somewhere. But having ambition isn’t the same as having a personality disorder. Unfortunately, social media rarely leaves room for that sort of nuance. Everything now has to fit neatly into a thirty second video complete with subtitles, dramatic music and someone pointing at floating text explaining why your ex wasn’t emotionally unavailable after all, he was a malignant covert narcissist with anxious-avoidant attachment who probably also folded towels incorrectly.

Eventually, life caught up with me. I hit rock bottom and I promised myself this time I was coming back up to the surface with a pearl. So, I went on the hunt for a therapist.

Choosing one was surprisingly difficult . At first I convinced myself I wanted someone older and maternal who would remind me of the sort of people I’ve always found comforting. Terrible idea. Instead, I chose someone much closer to my own age, a therapist who might look at my behaviour through a similar lens rather than simply nodding sympathetically while I unravelled my childhood (this is the image I had in my head, turns out therapy wasn’t like that at all).

Was that the right way to choose? Absolutely no idea. I’ve never heard anyone explain how they picked their therapist in a way that sounded particularly useful. It’s a bit like dating. You meet someone, hope they don’t think you’re completely unhinged, they don’t and you book another appointment.

In my first session I couldn’t stop talking. Twenty years of carefully avoiding certain conversations suddenly came pouring out of me. Things I’d never admitted, things I’d convinced myself I’d gotten over, but the more I understood myself, the less interested I became in diagnosing everyone else.

There was one question I kept returning to. “I think I might be a narcissist?” I asked it more than once and my therapist listened patiently before asking a question that completely stumped me.

“Everything you’ve just listed”

“You’ve been selfish.”

“You’ve hurt people.”

“You’ve said things you regret.”

“Why do those things make you a narcissist?”

I didn’t have an answer. Not like me…

Because the uncomfortable truth was...

They didn’t.

They made me human.

The answer should've been obvious but I’d spent months trying to work out who everyone else was.

Meanwhile, my therapist was trying to help me understand who I was. One of my biggest misconceptions about therapy was that it somehow absolves a person of responsibility, that once you’ve identified the right label, everything suddenly makes sense. You behaved like this because of that and they behaved like that because of this. Tick enough psychological boxes and apparently you’ve solved the mystery of being human. How wrong I was!

Life isn’t that tidy and we should embrace the grey.

One thing therapy taught me very quickly is that you can acknowledge your mistakes without needing to diagnose yourself in the hope of making sense of them. I’d hurt people, I’d been selfish, I’d lacked awareness in moments that deserved kindness instead of frustration. None of that required a personality disorder, it required accountability

As my therapist rather calmly pointed out, “They're awful things because…?”

I tried to think of an answer… Nothing.

Because they’re also very ordinary things, human things, the sort of things every single one of us has done at one time or another.

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” You’ll be waiting a very long time for that first stone…

There were two things my therapist said that have stayed with me ever since my first year of therapy. The first was beautifully simple: “You’re making yourself a prisoner in a room that is open.” That one took me a while. For years I’d convinced myself I was trapped inside situations that had long since finished. Friendships, relationships. regrets, conversations. All of which I’d replayed so many times I could probably perform both parts. The door had been open all along and I simply needed to let go and walk out.

The second lesson as even better. She asked me, “Adam, if a snake bit you, what would you do?”

“I’d go to hospital.”

She asked again and I gave a slightly more frustrated response.

“I’ve literally just said I’d go to hospital.”

She smiled.

“It sounds to me like you’ve spent most of your life chasing after the snake asking why it bit you. The chances are it’ll just bite you again.”

Well.. that’ll do it.

I’d spent years desperately trying to understand why people had behaved the way they had. Why relationships ended. Why people lied. Why someone said something cruel. Why this happened. Why that happened. Round and round and round I’d go.

Meanwhile, the snake had long disappeared into the grass.

Therapy didn’t stop me asking questions. It simply taught me to ask better ones. Not “Why did they do that?” But “What am I going to do now?”

Instagram, unfortunately, doesn’t make much money from that question. It would much rather convince you that everyone you’ve ever argued with has a diagnosable condition. Scroll for five minutes and you’ll discover twelve narcissists, three gaslighters, two emotionally unavailable attachment styles and someone confidently explaining your entire childhood while pointing at floating subtitles. I find myself rolling my eyes more than I probably should. Whenever someone starts casually listing clinical diagnoses for people they’ve fallen out with, I quietly add them to my imaginary little Moleskine notebook entitled Cheap Seat Thinkers (something I picked up from Brené Brown). It is getting rather full but before anyone writes to me, I’m not trying to become Zeus of the Therapy World. I’m sure I’ve made appearances in plenty of other people’s imaginary notebooks over the years, and quite rightly so.

Perspective is everything.

We’re all somebody else’s difficult person. But I’ve become increasingly suspicious of people who have endless certainty about everybody else’s mind whilst showing remarkably little curiosity about their own.

The internet rewards certainty, therapy rewards curiosity. Those are very different things.

One thing I learnt remarkably quickly was that the best therapists rarely spend much time talking about other people, they keep bringing the conversation back to you…

Annoyingly…

You’ll spend ten minutes explaining why someone else behaved terribly. They’ll nod sympathetically before asking, “And what could you have done differently?”

Infuriating.

Also incredibly useful.

Social media tends to offer us answers that confirm what we already believe. Therapy has a habit of asking questions we’d much rather avoid. Which is probably why one keeps us scrolling and the other actually changes us.

Then there’s the word triggered.

Ten years ago I’d barely heard of it.

Now it seems impossible to spend a day online without someone announcing they’ve been triggered by something. Real triggers absolutely exist. I’ve learnt enough through therapy to know that.

And if we can avoid unnecessarily causing people pain, we should. Kindness costs very little. But therapy also taught me something else. Ultimately, my triggers belong to me. They’re my responsibility to understand, my responsibility to work through, not everybody else’s responsibility to tiptoe around forever.

Every time I cross a road somebody inevitably says,

“Careful you don’t get run over.”

Given my history, you’d think I might dramatically clutch my chest and accuse them of insensitivity. Instead, I know exactly what they mean. They’re not trying to hurt me. They’re making conversation. Unless, of course, you’re one of my closest friends, whose surname bears an uncanny resemblance to a famous pottery company. He delights in reminding me of my accident. Whenever I mention anything remotely profound about it...

...he yawns.

Deliberately.

I’ve considered diagnosing him with something.

Mostly being an idiot.

Looking back, I think that’s the biggest gift therapy has given me. Not labels. Not clever terminology. Not an impressive vocabulary I can casually drop into conversations until I sound like Brené Brown after two espressos. It gave me ownership. It stopped me spending so much energy analysing people I could never change and redirected it towards the only person I have any real influence over.

Myself.

Social media encourages us to become experts on everybody else’s psychology. Therapy asks us to become students of our own. One made me feel clever, the other made me better. And if I’m ever bitten by another snake...

I’ll try very hard to stop chasing it through the grass asking why.

I’ll go to hospital instead.

Yet again, it’s Friday.

Ever since I rather confidently announced I’d be writing a weekly article, the weeks seem to disappear with alarming speed. I’ve had very little time to think about what I was actually going to write. In fact, I should confess that I’m writing this on Thursday evening. Should Vogue ever come knocking, I fear I’d spend every deadline in the same blind panic I’m experiencing now.

This week though, my mind drifted back to my teenage years.

Now, I’d love to tell you my weekends were spent captaining the rugby team, playing football or pursuing great romantic adventures. Sadly, they were far less glamorous. Most Fridays involved a visit to my Grandparents’ and Auntie Mac’s to collect my weekly pocket money. I didn’t just go for the money I can assure you - I adored spending time with my grandparents and Auntie Mac, and I’d find almost any excuse to escape my parents for a hew hours and be with them. The pocket money was just part of the ritual.

It started at five pounds a week, soon it became ten pounds. Before long it had grown to twenty pounds from my grandparents and another twenty from Auntie Mac. Looking back, they unintentionally gave me my first lesson in inflation. Had I understood Warren Buffett’s theories on compound interest, I might well be writing this from a villa somewhere overlooking Lake Como. Instead, I discovered something far more dangerous than investing.

DVDs.

(Well, first it was VHS tapes.)

Like most teenagers, I could quite easily have blown the lot on Strongbow or whatever questionable alcoholic concoction the local off-license was willing to sell to someone who looked vaguely old enough. Instead, every Friday became the beginning of another pilgrimage.

The destination was Cardiff; the mission was simple: find another film on my list.

I became obsessed with Actor’s filmographies long before everyone carried the internet around in their pocket. I’d print out IMDB pages and work backwards through an actor’s career, hunting down every film I could find. I wanted to know where they started, what their breakthrough had been, which performances changed everything.

The obsession really began with Hook by Steven Spielberg.

My first encounter with that film and Dustin Hoffman came courtesy of McDonald’s, who at the time were giving away VHS tapes with a Happy Meal. I ended up with Baby’s Big Day Out, which to my immense dissapointment, wasn’t Hook. I can still remember staring at Drew Struzan’s magnificent artwork on the VHS sleeve whenever I saw it in shops. Eventually, I got my hands on it and watched it so many times the tape was on the verge of bursting into flames. I was completely captivated. Not just by Captain Hook, but by Dustin Hoffman himself.

My Dad who possesses an uncanny ability to recall every other film an actor has ever appeared in, became my guide.

“If you like him,” he’d say “watch Tootsie”.

So off I went...

Then came Kramer vs Kramer, Midnight Cowboy, every weekend seemed to produce another discovery.

I didn’t simply watch these films, I consumed them. I wanted to know who directed them, who wrote them, who produced them. I devoured behind the scenes documentaries, DVD commentaries, making of features - anything that might reveal more about the magical art of acting and making movies.

Now, by the time my pocket money reached the princely sum of forty pounds a week, I was prepared to carry out my missions. I headed to Cardiff weekly, armed with my printed IMDB list like Frodo carrying the ring, the only difference being I was searching HMV rather than Middle Earth (I mean some HMV Stores can feel like middle earth). Every DVD felt like another piece of a giant puzzle, seeing an actor’s career unfold chronologically, telling me more than I realised at the time. You could see them growing, taking risks, making mistakes, finding collaborators, eventually producing the performances that won Oscars. I don’t think enough people appreciate that journey anymore. I was slowly becoming the Welsh equivalent of Andrew Bolton curating my very own great film collections. (If the name’s drawing a blank, Google it!)

I once mentioned Richard Burton to someone I was working with.

“Who?” they replied.

“Who?” I gasped.

I almost needed to sit down.

“Go and watch Becket,” I said. “Or Equus".”

“I don’t really like old films.”

At that point, I accepted that our friendship probably wasn’t destined to last. Perhaps that sounds dramatic and it probably is but I genuinely believe what came before makes you better at whatever you do, whether you’re performing in Musical Theatre, Shakespeare, Television or Film, great performances don’t expire because they’re black and white or forty years old.

Looking back now, I realise something I completely missed at the time. My Grandparents and Auntie Mac thought they were giving me pocket money but in reality, they were quietly funding my education.

Every Friday they handed me another twenty pounds and by Saturday, it had become another lesson, another actor, another performance to imitate in my bedroom mirror. Those weekends built a library but more importantly they built my curiosity.

My dad fuelled the obsession, encouraging me to watch film after film until my Dustin Hoffman fascination gradually evolved into an Anthony Hopkins one. Somewhere along the line, watching films became my study of endless performances where I’d rewind scenes, mimic voices, borrow mannerisms and wonder how they made it all look so effortless. Years later, I somehow became an actor myself. The funny thing is, shortly after graduating drama school I came agonisingly close to playing Captain Hook - the very character that started this whole obsession. It wasn’t to be and at the time it felt like a missed opportunity but a clash of jobs meant it slipped through my fingers.

This week, all these years later, I found myself walking into another audition for Captain Hook.

As I stood outside the room, I couldn’t help but think about that teenage boy printing an IMDB list, wandering around Cardiff with forty quid in his back pocket, searching HMV shelves for another film to add to the collection. He had absolutely no idea those weekend pilgrimages were preparing him for this life.

Sometimes I think the biggest joy in life is discovering something for the very first time. You never forget it: the room, the smell, the excitement, that feeling that your world quickly becomes a little bigger than it was yesterday.

So thank you, Mam, Dad, my Grandparents and my beloved Auntie Mac.

You thought you were buying me films.

You were helping me build a career.

P.S. In those days, £40 quid gave me:
a child’s return ticket to Cardiff;
one venti mocha with cream;
a ham salad baguette with extra mayo from the gastronomic delight, Le Rendezvous (sadly no longer exists);
and potentially, 2-3 DVDs.

That’s inflation for you!

When I started out as an actor, the biggest question I asked myself was, who would hire me with my facial scars? Wouldn’t they put people off? Wouldn’t I only ever be cast as villains or thugs?

How wrong I was.

It turned out the only real issue people seemed interested in was my body weight.

Who knew?

All those years spent worrying about my face, I should have been watching how many Pret A Manger meals I consumed in a day (I genuinely assumed they were healthy). And that innocent looking handful of Peanut M&Ms? Turns out they’re not exactly helping the calorie deficit either. But all that aside, it seems people had far more to say about my weight than I ever did.

My relationship with food has always been tempestuous one. I think my mum once considered putting a chain around the fridge. Not exactly the sort of thing that helps your self-image as a child and perhaps the first seed of what later became body dysmorphia. I laugh about it now...Just.

When I entered the industry, comments about my weight become one of the few things that kept coming up. Maybe it was because I had this bizarre habit of eating what I imagined the character would eat. I’d played a few dads over the years and somehow convinced myself that gave me permission to eat absolutely anything. No disrespect to fathers everywhere - perhaps it was just the excuse I was looking for. The irony is, I’ve also covered and played plenty of leading roles which in today’s world are often judged as much by how actors look as how they sound or act.

Now look, I get it.

When I stand in front of Michelangelo’s David in Florence, I can’t help but admire what most people would describe as physical perfection. We all have ideals, we all aspire to something. But equally, if i’m wearing three layers, a huge police overcoat and a thick belt for three hours a night, I’m not entirely convinced anyone is noticing the definition in my abs.

For a while it felt like the conversation around body positivity was everywhere. Brands proudly showed real people with real bodies, plus-size actors were finally being cast in leading roles. There was this sense that maybe we’d started judging talent a little less by waist measurements. And I was all for it. I was happily waving “love yourself as you are” flag. But - and I hesitate to write this because I genuinely don’t know the answer - it feels like the conversation has become much quieter. Why? Has the rise of weight-loss jabs changed the conversation? I could be completely wrong here and perhaps I’m opening myself up to online trolls. To be fair, I’ve never had one before, but I’ve heard wonderful things, come at me! But it genuinely makes me wonder whether the ability to lose weight more easily has altered what we aspire to. A few years ago the headlines celebrated body positivity. Now they seem to celebrate becoming smaller. Again, I don’t know. I’m asking the question.

I still applaud every brand that uses real people and real body shapes in their campaigns because, let’s face it, we can’t all wake up looking like David Gandy - trust me, I’ve prayed.

Now, my own relationship with weight wasn’t helped by the fact I understood absolute zilch about nutrition. Calories meant nothing to me. Lifting weights felt like something other people did. Discipline? Don’t even start. Willpower? I’d ban the word altogether. I have considered weight-loss injections myself because, if I’m honest, they seem considerably easier than counting calories, trying WeightWatches, giving Slimming World another go, attempting Keto, or fully committing to the Eddie Abbew lifestyle of eggs, rock salt and spinach. (Although Pret do a lovely little two-egg pot.)

But here’s the thing.

The first time someone in the industry asked me to lose weight, it felt like people almost enjoyed saying it. Oddly, they were often the very same people posting #BeKind every other Tuesday.

Funny, that.

Looking back though, I’m genuinely grateful. Not because I was told to lose weight, but because it forced me to educate myself. I finally understood calories; I learnt that small changes really do make a huge difference and most importantly, I realised that when I eat better and exercise consistently, I don’t just look healthier - I feel better in myself. My head gets a break. And that’s been worth every bit of effort.

Equally, I know people who are completely happy exactly as they are. And good. They should be! If someone loves how they look, who are we to appoint ourselves head of quality control for somebody else’s body? I can assure you there have been a few people who’ve taken that position in my life, and I don’t remember ever putting that vacancy out for advertisement.

Talking about weight is hard because food is everywhere, temptation is everywhere! You can be diligently tracking calories until you walk past a gelato shop on Old Compton Street on the first sunny day of the year, or convince yourself that one crisp pint in a beer garden is somehow medicinal, especially when one turns into four and you start calling it ‘Hydration for the Soul’.

That’s life!

Sometimes we comfort ourselves with food; sometimes food comforts us.

The important question isn’t what someone else weighs. It’s whether your relationship with food, or your relationship with your body is making you unhappy. If it is, I think we should talk about it far more than we do.

Ultimately, whatever your relationship with your body, remember this:

It’s your body. Not somebody else’s. So the next time someone starts a sentence with, “Can I be honest?” Tell them they’ll have to try again tomorrow. The ‘honest’ line is full today.

Maybe weight-loss jabs have changed the conversation. Maybe they haven’t. Maybe in ten years’ time we’ll all be talking about something else entirely.

What I do know is this: for years I genuinely believed the thing standing between me and an acting career was the scars on my face. Then I discovered people were far more interested in the size of my waistline. Somewhere along the way I realised neither of those things was the real battle.

The real battle was the conversation I was having with myself.

Learning how to eat better and look after my body wasn’t about becoming someone else. It’s wasn’t about fitting into a costume, pleasing a casting director or looking like the bloke advertising aftershave on a billboard. It was about finally feeling comfortable enough to stop fighting myself every time I looked in the mirror.

So if you want to lose weight, lose it. If you are happy exactly as you are, stay exactly as you are. Just make sure the decision belongs to you. Because trends change, fashion changes, beauty standards change but you’ll still be living with yourself long after they’ve moved on to the next one.

Whether you lose weight naturally, with the help of a jab, or whether you never want to lose a pound in your life, I honestly don’t think that’s the point.

The point is that your body shouldn’t become public property the moment someone decides they have an opinion.

Mine certainly did.

And if there’s one thing this industry has taught me, it’s that everyone has an opinion about how you should look.

The only opinion I’ve learnt to value is the one staring back at me in the mirror.

ARL

I’ve only ever been diagnosed with Mild Asthma by a medical professional and god only knows what others have diagnosed me as.

I have, however, diagnosed myself with ‘Nancy Meyers Syndrome’*.

It’s a condition that manifests itself in several ways: an unhealthy obsession with beautiful kitchens, an inability to walk past a lamp without considering where a matching one might go and regularly browsing houses that cost more than a small island off the coast of Tenby.

Oh, and buying more coffee table books than table space allows.

At first I thought I was just bad with money and bought these things to cure whatever emptiness I was carrying inside. But no, it turns out I have ‘Nancy Meyers Syndrome’.

When I first had the idea for this article, I googled threads on Nancy Meyers and it seems that one, I’m not alone and two, the symptoms are well documented from all corners of the Internet.

For those unfamiliar, Nancy Meyers is responsible for films like ‘The Holiday’, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ and ‘It’s Complicated’. Whilst she’s hailed as the undisputed queen of romantic comedies, I think her influence extends far beyond the screen. She’s essentially created the greatest series of Grand Designs episodes ever made and disguised them as films.

There comes a moment in every Nancy Meyers film when you stop paying attention to the plot and start wondering whether your living room would benefit from matching side tables. I doubt this was her aim and I’m not suggesting for a second that the script is weak, but I do find myself unconsciously drifting towards the question: do I need another lamp or set of scatter cushions?

Usually in my case, another lamp.

I can personally confirm that ‘Nancy Meyers Syndrome’ severely affects my ability to buy just one of anything: mugs, candles, throws, anything vaguely described as “artisan".

As I sit writing this, I’ve prepared my surroundings in the most Nancy Meyers way possible. My ‘Southwold Table Lamp’ is dimmed, a candle is lit (well, a tea light in a Mrs Hinch glass holder from Home Bargains, very artisan if you ask me - I suspect though that Nancy Meyers hasn’t ventured there yet) and to finish, my Nora Ephron & Friends playlist is on.

Upon reflection, the symptoms first appeared years ago when I developed a deep contempt for certain red wine glasses. They were either not deep enough or worse, didn’t have a long enough stem. More honestly, they didn’t resemble the exact glass Mel Gibson uses in ‘What Woman Want’ - and yes, I have danced around my living room while listening to ‘I Won’t Dance’ by Frank Sinatra, happy like a pig in shit with a deep, long stemmed glass of red in hand. (Sorry, Nancy for the profanity.)

If that wasn’t enough, the coffee table books became my gateway drug. Watch any Nancy Meyers film and you’ll notice that every available surface is adorned with impossibly beautiful books.

I wanted that life, and soon, I judged my whole interior tastes by her standards. I’d see glasses in restaurants and think “Nancy Meyers would never allow this.” It’s a terrible affliction by which sometimes one must veto a restaurant.

Nancy Meyers creates stories and worlds you simply want to jump into like the chalk drawings from Mary Poppins. Very much like Michael Banks, you start to feel that normal life is inadequate: a Friday night roast chicken dinner suddenly feels less appealing when you’re eating it with supermarket value cutlery.

I sometimes watch her films to artisanly dive into Cameron Diaz’ sprawling Los Angeles mansion or Diane Keaton’s beach house in the Hamptons in ‘Something’s Gotta Give’. Don't even get me started on Meryl Streep’s kitchen in ‘It’s Complicated’…Even her deli is somewhere I’d take refuge, spending hours nursing a lukewarm coffee.

That said, I have to make one slight observation. Not one of her character’s properties ever suffer from mould, damp or even a broken boiler. Practicalities aside, I won’t rest until every room in my house is a home to her vision of domestic perfection.

I believe Oxford University should offer a degree in Nancy Meyers Interior Studies. Entire dissertations could be written on her use of lamps alone and had my academic career stretched that far, that’s exactly what I would have studied.

Even the problems in her films seem attractive. If I had to navigate a midlife crisis, divorce or romantic misunderstandings, I’d much rather do it from a beautiful kitchen island surrounded by handcrafted plates and freshly baked chocolate croissants, it would all seem more manageable.

The closest real-life equivalent I’ve found is Ina Garten. For years I’ve watched her create the sort of life that looks as though it was personally approved by Nancy Meyers herself and if you haven’t seen any of her programmes, then stop reading this immediately, turn on the TV and navigate to the Food Network Channel, where no doubt the ‘Ina Garten Barefoot Contessa’ omnibus is on.

One thing I am grateful for is that ‘Nancy Meyers Syndrome’ has at least improved my taste. I’ve become obsessed with creating spaces that feel calm, welcoming and cohesive: grey, white, soft lighting… And a dab of colour.

As I reach the end of this article, The Temptations’ ‘Night and Day’ has started playing and I’ve again caught myself looking around the room wondering if it needs another lamp or scatter cushion.

Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m off to pour a glass of Amarone, rearrange some cushions, browse Rightmove for houses I cannot afford and watch ‘The Intern’.

The ‘Nancy Meyers Syndrome’ strikes again; the condition remains incurable.

ARL

Disclaimer* For legal reasons I should point out that ‘Nancy Meyers Syndrome’ is not a medical condition recognised by the FDA, although if it were, I would almost certainly be considered a severe case.

Attend the tale of Swe-…(insert dramatic ringtone).

Unlike the Demon Barber, I’m not chopping up my victims and baking them into pies, but I am (by the admission of friends) a demon when it comes to texting.

Some people are bad texters… I am downright demonic.

Where Benjamin Barker was an unreliable barber seeming to ‘nick’ more customers than complete shaves without injury, I similarly struggle to provide a satisfactory texting service. If texting were a trade, I’d be on gardener’s leave.

It is, in my opinion, the most soulless form of communication ever invented and for a generation that has overused the word ‘ick’ to describe virtually anything they dislike, this is one occasion where I reluctantly agree.

Texting gives me the ick.

There, I said it.

Ick. Ick. Ick.

I know the accepted definition involves suddenly losing romantic interest in someone but if your preferred method of communication is endless texting and you refuse to ever call or FaceTime, then whatever friendship, romance or acquaintance you hoped to build with me, is likely to be dead.

Not Sweeney Todd dead… Just dead to me.

Mostly…

Now, if anybody owns a copy of ‘The Texting Etiquette for Functional Adults’ I’d love to borrow it. Apparently, replying to a heartfelt text message about a friend’s dog being put down with a single heart emoji is deeply frowned upon.

Who knew?

Apparently it can come across as psychotic, unfeeling, but I can assure you that Hannibal Lecter wouldn’t be indulging in this texting nonsense.

“Hey, Clarice. You text me things, I’ll text you things.”

Just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?

The truth is, that heart emoji has usually gone through several stages of consideration before I sent it. I’ve thought about writing a long response, I’ve drafted one in my head. Sometimes I’ve practically composed a BAFTA-winning monologue but eventually text boredom descends.

The heart wins.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly energised I’ll follow it up with a smiley face. If I’ve had a caffeine hit maybe even a GIF. At that point we’re practically in a deep and meaningful conversation, a flawless exchange, the sort of communication that built empires, conversation so rich in detail it could have been written by Hemingway.

The strange thing is I don’t hate writing.

I’ll happily write an email or instagram captions. I’ve even somehow managed to write this entire article. Yet, the moment it becomes a text message my brain immediately starts looking for the nearest exit.

I’ve decided it must be the expectation of speed. Texting feels urgent. ‘Reply now! Keep it brief! Keep it moving!’ So I rush… And because I rush, the message usually makes no sense whatsoever, requiring another four messages to explain what I was trying to say in the first place.

Maddening.

People always ask why I don’t just slow down or take more care and the truth is I genuinely don’t know. I seem incapable of believing a text message deserves more than 3 seconds of my attention.

It isn’t that I hate communication, I actually love conversation. I love hearing people’s voices. I love all the little things that disappear in text: tone, timing, laughter, sarcasm, awkward pauses and the occasional accidental overshare.

Which is why I think FaceTime is one of humanity’s greatest inventions.

Forget the combustion engine.

Forget The George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Grilling Machine.

FaceTime.

God bless you, Steve Jobs, the Tech Messiah!

If you FaceTime first instead of texting, you immediately get a gold star.

That said, there is a special place in hell reserved for people who answer FaceTime while pointing the camera directly into their ear canal.

You know who you are.

So yes, this has become my very own Victor Meldrew article. Here I am, standing at the window, shouting at modern life. Of course, no one can see me as they’re nose deep in a text. They can’t hear me either, they’ve plunged over priced cotton buds into their ears.

I promise I’m not opinionated about everything.

Just this…

On this occasion I remain unwavering.

Warm regards,

The Demon Texter of Fleet Street.

P.S. On reflection, if anyone does have any tips for improving my texting game, my overpriced cotton buds will be rammed so tightly into my ears, tinnitus will be singing sweet nothings.

❤️

I’ve always known why I love wearing thick, oversized glasses.

They’re armour. Plain and simple. They hide parts of my face that, following a car accident, I’ve never been entirely comfortable putting on display. But long before I needed camouflage, I wanted glasses.

At school, I was fascinated by them. Years before I’d ever heard of the word “Manifest”, I was quietly manifesting a pair of my own. Well, I say manifesting - the reality was that my parents took me to the opticians because my grades weren’t great and they needed something to blame. Meanwhile, amidst endless daydreaming, I was wholly convinced glasses would unlock hidden reading powers or somehow make passing exams easier.

For the record, after many years of wearing spectacles, I can confirm that no superpowers have been bestowed upon me. And yes, I have absolutely jabbed them dramatically into the sky and declared, “I have the power!”.

Nothing.

Still, like Prince Adam searching for Castle Grayskull, I was drawn to the Masters of the Specs.

There was Anna Wintour with her signature Chanel sunglasses, Jack Nicholson in his tortoiseshell Ray-Bans, Iris Apfel and her wonderfully eccentric collection of oversized frames, and then there is the undisputed king of thick-rimmed glasses: Jeff Goldblum. Whatever your profession if you have a fondness for oversized spectacles, I’m fairly certain we’ll get on.

I’m sure Anna and I would be great friends; like a cerulean sweater in a clearance bin. Anna, if you’re reading this, I can recite whole sections of The September Issue. I promise not to wear black. I know the rules. Call me.

As I’ve immersed myself in the rich history of these thick-framed legends, my own glasses have become increasingly thicker. Looking back, I can see what was happening. Every frame covered a little more of my face. A little more of my nose, a little more of my scars. Of course, they were never just a fashion accessory.

If I have any advice, it’s this: If you’re going to hide, hide behind a great pair of glasses. Me? I wear Jacques Marie Mage. And just like that, I embarked on a torrid love affair with a designer I’ve never met. Designed in Los Angeles and crafted in Japan and Italy, they gave me exactly what I thought I needed: beautiful camouflage - I wouldn’t wear anything else.

And the obsession doesn’t stop there. There are the sunglasses too. Countless pairs. Officially, they’re for protecting my eyes; unofficially, every purchase is carefully calculated to conceal the parts of my face I’ve spent years trying not to draw attention to.

I know what you’re thinking… Surely, I’ve got over it by now?

The truth is, I am learning to let go.

Slowly.

The scars aren’t going anywhere and neither is my love affair with glasses. Maybe one day I’ll stop using them as armour. Maybe I’ll even take them off indoors.

Then again, if it’s good enough for Anna Wintour it’s good enough for me.

ARL

Carrie Bradshaw, Oliver Sacks, Fran Lebowitz, Anthony Sher and Richard Burton are collectively responsible for this.

I was a late starter when it came to both reading and writing. Like most paths in life, particularly in my case, they are usually influenced by something I’ve watched, seen or become mildly obsessed with.

I remember seeing a photograph of Richard Burton at his house in Céligny. Beside him sat a tote bag overflowing with books. For some reason that image stuck with me. Here was a local boy who made good and perhaps more importantly, clearly read. Ferociously, by the look of it.

I thought, if Richard Burton reads, perhaps I should read too.

School hadn’t exactly helped my reading or writing career. A lack of discipline coupled with an even greater lack of retention saw to that. To this day my internal critic still likes to pipe up from time to time and ask:

“So, you think you can write?”

A fair question.

The photograph of Burton, however, stayed with me and so I read.

Reading, reading, reading.

As good as Tennyson?

No?

Okay. I’m dying, dying, dying here.

Anyway, who cares?

I’m writing and perhaps for the first time, I’m writing entirely for me. I seem to be in my Eat, Pray, Love phase of simply doing things because I want to do them. If I have an idea and my internal critic tells me not to do it, then I’m probably going to do it.

Admittedly this approach has influenced other areas of my life previously and not always to great success but perhaps more on that another time.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah yes. Writing.

Having spent the last two years travelling the world, I’ve found myself reading more than ever. Airports, trains, hotel rooms, dressing rooms, long-haul flights. Books have become companions in a way they never were before.

And somewhere amongst all that reading I started to wonder whether I might have a book in me.

As they say, there’s an Oscar for every actor. You just have to find the right script.

Well, I think there’s a compelling story in all of us. The trick is finding the courage to tell it.

Now, I pause here, dear reader, to say that I’m under no illusion that I’m about to become the next Fran Lebowitz, whose storytelling I greatly admire. Nor am I expecting to suddenly develop the wit and insight of Anthony Sher or Carrie Bradshaw.

What I do hope is to exercise the writing muscle.

Which brings me back to the original question.

So, you think you can write?

Or perhaps the better question is:

Can I write something people will actually want to read?

You see, there’s that old friend again. Validation. We should probably talk about that at some time.

In my true melancholic temperament, I’d probably answer the question by saying:

“Probably not.”

But I’m going to write anyway.

Writing.

Writing.

Writing.

And perhaps that’s the whole point.

ARL