claytoncast

All in a days work. Like most actors, my first television job was “doing a day on something”. Not a regular member of the cast,  but just booked to do one day’s filming and a couple of scenes. I say a couple of scenes,  but these days with the advent of two camera shoots, the workload can be much heavier. My first two guest appearances in “Doctors”, the esteemed BBC1 soap, each consisted of one filming day of between 22 and 27 scenes. A whole plot line. In today’s cut-price world of television, schedules often ensure that guest artists spend as little time on set, but doing as much work as possible.  So how do you make sure that this day goes well? You've no time to get to know anyone, and you’re stepping into a unit that runs like a smoothly oiled machine, it can be hard to find a comfortable place to be.From the minute you step out of the “non-exclusive transport”  that your agent has managed to negotiate for you, you need to fit in. The second assistant...

In the early eighties I had the great joy and honour of being cast in "Mother Courage" at the RSC opposite the person whom many of us feel is one of our greatest ever actresses, Dame Judi Dench. She's one of the people about whom you will never hear a derogatory word said. Her spirit shines out as a person, and when you are opposite her on stage, you are in no doubt that you are working with a true great. Rehearsing opposite her, although nerve wracking at the time, was a joy. Her immense sense of fun is something that is undeniable, and at no time when you were working with her did you ever feel that she was acting. In fact, I began to wonder when she was going to "turn it on". When would the big performance that Mother Courage demanded start coming into play. Every time I stepped onto the stage opposite her, I was talking to the same Judi with whom I would share a cup of tea in the green room. The Thursday afternoon of our first full run through arriv...

A new experience this week. Performance by phone and internet. Usually when travelling abroad on a job, I advise whoever I'm working for that its dangerous for me to travel out on the same day as the job. If flights are cancelled or delayed, the job can be screwed and the client still has to pay once they have confirmed my booking. This particular client had decided that starting a job at 2pm in Amsterdam meant that I could fly out the same morning at 9:25 AM from London City. That flight lands normally at 11:40 AM Amsterdam time giving me around two hours to get to the office which is perfectly reasonable. The next flight from London City however is of course one hour 15 minutes later, and London City airport is notoriously the first to be fogbound when the weather is inclement. And inclement it was on Wednesday morning. I had started out early in order to defeat the tube strike, and actually the journey by overground  and Docklands light Railway was probably even better ...