claytoncast

What with domestic moves and shoulder surgery, my blog has had to take a little bit of a back seat for the last couple of months.  Even my new book has been slightly delayed in getting the first draft of the publishers. It might also be the time of year. I have long since understood the delights of hibernation for the bear.  Many is the day in late November or early December when I can imagine getting home, particularly to our new flat,  and not going out again until February. This last week has probably been the busiest week work wise I've had since we moved house in late  October, and yet I can already feel myself winding down for the year-end. It's definitely been, to misuse football analogy, a year of two halves. It started as a semi regular member of the cast of "Hollyoaks", followed by two months on "Wolf Hall, moving into a month off to write my new book  and then lots of corporate events. It's ended doing what I do mostly. Being an independent fr...

I haven't been hospitalised very much in my career - professionally speaking.  I am one of the few members of British equity who've yet to step into the environs of the city of Holby. On a visit to Letherbridge  to see the "Doctors" at lunchtime, I had a father with pigeon fancier's lung whose antics resulted in me sawing through my hand, and on a second visit I had acute angina (no really!). A third visit as an international handbag designer of dubious sexuality lasted for two weeks, and mercifully involved no kind of treatment at all. Unless of course you call my first screen kiss at the age of 53, a course of treatment! Real-life has, for once, mirrored work. I have not been hospitalised since I had chronic pneumonia at the age of 18 months, something for which I'm very grateful. I have had visits to A&E, and two minor procedures on my eyes, but nothing really serious. This year  I have found an increasing amount of pain in my right shoulder. S...

For most of us who act, the job is our life. It's what we live for and we count ourselves lucky that we live to work. Many have been the days earlier in my career when there's been nothing to keep me occupied, least of all acting, and I am always grateful when there is something in the diary. The prospect of retirement, while looking attractive on a damp day, is not one that I would really relish. My partner is well aware of this and has no plans to let me retire gracefully. He fully intends to keep sending me out to earn my keep, probably until I drop, or certainly until I'm old enough to play Firs in The Cherry Orchard, A summer of writing, and then an enormously busy September and October directing two major conferences, and doing quite a few individual training sessions, have also had to fit in a major house move. After nine years in sunny Sydenham, we've moved to Shortlands, between Beckenham and Bromley. The flat is absolutely delightful, and from the moment ...

Reading Ben Miller's article in today's Sunday Times about the joys of a shared house when he was a student and starting out in the world of comedy, I'm reminded of my own experiences of mixed domiciles. Throughout my years at drama school in Manchester I lived in a shared house but, mercifully, we all had our own bedsits. So we had a door to close against the world when we needed to, and yet company was call when a shoulder was required for crying on.  The great thing about that house which stood in what was once the red light district of Manchester, now more fashionably known as West Didsbury village, was that the rent was so low that on completing my training I didn't have to head back to my parents. With a two room £5.95 per week bedsit as my major asset, I could hang onto it all throughout my 16 weeks touring for the Royal Exchange Theatre Company, and then come back to it for our run in Manchester. Indeed it proved a handy haven for other actors less prepared...

My partner and I are very lucky to be invited out on many occasions to enjoy corporate hospitality. With my experience in the corporate world, and quite often working with the companies who are providing it. In order to give people a happy corporate freebie, I have acted in whodunits on the Orient express while travelling from Milan to Geneva. I have been shouted down by a group of boozy accountants in a pub in Henley. I have appeared in a costume that would only have graced the stage of the worst of pantomimes as a grand vizier at a major London nightclub complete with dubious accent. I can only hope that all the guests of these various functions had a fabulous time. Usually alcohol ensures that they do. The main feature of the successful event is to ensure that everyone is catered for. Now as a  non-alcoholic drinker, I frequently despair of the imagination of the organiser who provides water as the only non-alcoholic alternative. Given the rise to fashion of the elderflower...

Even though my school days  are now nothing but a distant memory, this time of year always feels like a new beginning. September brings a new term with new hopes and new targets. I've just taken the whole of August off to work on my new book, and  other than one days corporate training in mid August, it's been a month of tracksuit bottoms and typing. Next week sees me get back to work. The suits will have to come out of the wardrobe. A trip to Amsterdam for a job, a two-day corporate training programme, and an Actors Centre board meeting, and a voice-over if I'm lucky. I'd like to think that the next year will be like a new term. Lots of new things to learn, and new experiences.  "I like to think I learn something new on every job" is a phrase that has probably become slightly hackneyed. Most of the jobs I do I'm given because I know how to do them. Yet I would hope that I learn something new about human nature, people, or which car park not to pa...

 lt's always difficult when I haven't blogged for a little while to work out what to talk about. Lots of things going on, yet are they things that might be of interest to other people? Well, it's August, and holiday time, and as I'm having a month off from work to buckle down and write my new book "The Working Actor", it would seem the appropriate time to take a little respite from giving advice, and to have a little indulgence. We just had what for me was a trip down memory lane. A weekend away in Stratford-upon-Avon to see two shows and catch up with several people who I know  in the company down there at the moment. Eliott Barnes Worrell has been mentioned by me before, as I had the great pleasure of mentoring him two years ago as winner of the Alan Bates bursary award at the Actors Centre. Joan Iyiola was a gorgeous National youth Theatre assistant director who worked with me in 2010 on a less than happy production and who has  stayed a firm friend an...