ACTING | Dad, Loner, Workman, Banished Uncle, Dead Cop

If I told you I've just finished filming 5 short films and a TV Ad in 4 and a half weeks...

Being unemployed has been great for the acting career. And vice versa. The many auditions and roles coming my way since February have allowed me to expend and vent energy in a positive and creative manner. The only downside – having to return to the corporate workforce!!

I've always had confidence in my acting abilities, but I still always wondered if I really had the chops to 'act'. It doesn’t stem from doubt, merely an awareness that I hadn’t been tested. That question was mostly answered back in March when I was invited to be part of an improv session for a TV pilot. Faced with a story outline only, I also found myself alongside two actors I have come to know and have great respect for. I held my own opposite them and have not looked back.

I also flirted for 3 weeks with some acting classes – mainly to see what the fuss was about. I satisfied myself that I don’t need 'em. Not for now anyway. I feel that my life experiences are a big asset – I find ways to relate to the character I am meant to be.

In the meantime the auditions kept coming. I actually had some last year but for some reason, just didn’t land parts.

This last two to three months has been a whole other story. In fact it even got the point where I thought my job-hunting activities and potential new job were going to interfere with my acting. Not a bad dilemma to have at all really.

In mid-may I began filming 'Shortbread' (doesn't conclude for me until 20th June!). As of this week, all of a sudden I have completed 4 other films.

Today I can report that I have now been:

• Dad – to an intellectually disabled son
• Loner – socially isolated man who manipulates empathy from strangers by pretending his parents’ ashes are in an urn that he carries about with him
• Construction Site Worker – a bloke busting for a piss on a building site in a short film with no dialogue, but features a six minute steady-cam shot and a cast singing a Waylon Jennings song mournfully around a gravesite
• Banished Uncle – a man who made the mistake of entering into a sexual relationship with his niece, encounters her unexpectedly on a deserted train platform late one night in the city
• Dead Cop – who appears as a figment in the imagination of his murderer