25

BEYOND THE WAND

or

LONELY IN LA-LA LAND

Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a one-off. It was the first time I’d ever been offered a major part without auditioning for it, and it wouldn’t happen again for a long while. A lucky break that wasn’t to be repeated any time soon.

If I’d been left to my own devices, it might well have been my last film. I lacked the drive to assert myself and fulfil the potential that, according to Jason and others, I’d shown towards the end of the Potter project. I even found myself wondering if I wouldn’t be happier ditching the acting to become a professional angler. Jade, thankfully, had other ideas for me. Had it not been for her encouragement, I wouldn’t have a career now. When it became clear that I would have to throw myself back into the world of auditioning, we set up a mobile camera rig (this was pre-iPhone, people) and wherever we were she would read with me—crucial, because without someone to read with, you’re hitting a tennis ball up against the wall. At her instigation, we recorded countless self-tapes, for which the strike rate was about one in a hundred. In the meantime, an old schoolfriend managed to blag me a part in a miniseries filming in Cape Town called Labyrinth, a historical fantasy with John Hurt and Sebastian Stan.

My part was that of Viscount Trencavel. The character couldn’t have been more different to Draco Malfoy. It required a Braveheart-esque wig (fortunately I was no stranger to weird hairdos) and a suit of chainmail and, as part of the performance, a grand entrance into his castle to deliver a heroic speech in front of a vast crowd. In fact, there were two heroic speeches in this film and the prospect of both terrified me. I knew Draco so well. Throw me into any kind of scenario and I knew how he would react. To create something from the ground up, without meeting any of the cast or crew in advance, was daunting. And while I was used to productions of a certain scale, I was no longer in my comfort zone of Leavesden Studios, of my trailer and Door 5. When I turned up on set I gave myself a good talking-to. You’ve got this, Tom. Just relax. I met the director for the first time on set that morning and a couple of hours later I was striding through a crowd of chain-mailed background artists ready to deliver my first monologue.

Here’s the thing about background artists: some of them are into it and some of them are not. Some maintain their focus, others struggle to hide their boredom. So when I stood in front of them on my first take, ready to say my piece and slightly bricking it, I saw, looking back at me, a sea of focused faces, except one. This face stood out: a teenager, younger than the rest of them, with an expression that reminded me of myself back in the day. He looked at me with total, Draco-like disdain, just as I would have done. I could almost hear his thoughts: Oh yeah? Matey in his little wig is going to go up there and belt out a bunch of thees and thous? What a nobhead!

He didn’t know it, but he’d tapped into all the insecurities I was feeling. And so I made a decision on the spot: I was going to deliver my monologue directly to him. Instead of my eyes darting around the rest of the crowd, I was laser-focused on him. And I was going to take a leaf out of the Ralph Fiennes playbook and let silence do my talking for me. I stared at him. I let the awkwardness build. I saw him look from left to right, clearly wondering: is he looking at me? Gradually, I could sense that he, and the rest of the cast, were taking me seriously. And so, drawing a bit of confidence from the moment, I delivered my rousing speech the best I knew how. Whether it was any good or not is for other people to say, but with the benefit of hindsight I thank that cocky young extra. He gave me the rocket fuel I needed, and the impetus to put into action the lessons I’d learned over the years from many older actors about how to keep someone’s attention.

My second rousing monologue was a little less successful. Before offering me the part, the producer had gone through the standard procedure of checking various logistics with me on the phone. Are you available on these dates? Is your passport current? Do you have a driving licence? You learn, as an actor, that the correct answer to all these pre-shoot questions is: yes. Can you speak Swahili? Fluently! Can you manage a French accent? Mais oui, monsieur! So when the producer asked if I knew how to ride a horse, I naturally gave them the answer they wanted to hear. Mate, I was practically born in the saddle!

It wasn’t a total lie. Growing up, our neighbour kept horses and as a little kid I would occasionally be placidly led around on horseback. But I was actually quite scared of horses, and those childhood rides were very different to what was expected of me on this occasion. I was to ride up and down a line of a hundred knights, all in chainmail and holding swords and shields, as I declaimed heroically. At the climax of my speech, I was to dig my heels into the stallion’s flanks and gallop off, leading my army into battle.

The horse had other ideas. On my first take, as I reached the critical moment, shouting my war cry, sword aloft, about to lead my mighty army to glory, I urged him on with my heels in heroic fashion. The extras roared, ready to follow their fearless leader to death or glory. The horse, however, found my speech less inspirational. He showed about as much interest in galloping into battle as that teenage extra had shown on my first day on set. So we tried it again. “For honour! For family! For freedom!” For fuck’s sake… the horse could barely bring itself to trot. I saw the director and producer behind the monitor shaking their heads. This clearly looked ridiculous. We needed a solution.

The horse trainer on set was a petite lady and my character sported an enormous Snape-like cloak. The trainer sat behind me on the horse, covered by my curiously bulging cloak, holding on to my waist. The horse had rather more respect for her than it did for me. When the moment came, she gently nudged the animal’s flanks and my mighty steed bolted furiously. It was absolutely terrifying. I desperately gripped the reins and, wide-eyed and white-faced, did everything I could not to fall off as it galloped into battle. My expression, when I saw it played back, was one of abject terror. I wasn’t surprised when that moment didn’t make the final cut.

That was not my last unfortunate horse moment. In 2016 Kevin Reynolds, who had previously directed Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and was one of my favourite directors, asked me to be part of his biblical drama Risen. I was to play a Roman soldier alongside Joseph Fiennes, Ralph’s brother, who massively took me under his wing. An early pivotal scene involved us riding on horseback, through another huge crowd of extras, all pelting us with papier mâché rocks, to the crucifixion. Here, Joseph’s character was to have a conversation with Jesus, while I sat quietly on horseback to one side.

The horses had been rehearsing this scene for hours without us. But they didn’t know that the rocks were made of papier mâché, and were understandably skittish. What my horse most definitely knew, however, was that the plank on its back—me—was no jockey. As Joseph Fiennes delivered his fantastic performance, my steed refused to stand still. It rotated one way then the other, into the crowd then out of it. I was completely incapable of controlling the bloody thing. I heard Kevin shout: “Cut! What the hell is going on?” I gave a feeble apology and in the end we had to dress up one of the horse trainers in the garb of a Roman soldier so that he could hold the horse still while I sat sheepishly in the saddle.

That was the last time I tried to ride a horse on camera.

As a kid, I’d auditioned for a hundred different projects before Potter came along. I’d grown quite used to being told no back then. Now I was going to have to get used to it again. I found myself auditioning every couple of weeks, and being rejected almost as frequently. I was aware, of course, that some people were surprised that I had to audition, but in truth it didn’t really cross my mind that I would be offered anything. It wasn’t like I had a diverse showreel. It seemed crazy to me, now that I was faced with the prospect of developing a career as an actor, that I should have been handed Rise of the Planet of the Apes without anybody so much as checking my American accent. It felt more normal to be at the sharp end of the jobbing actor’s life.

Again, had it been left up to me, I might have remained in that state of limbo. But Jade was a driving force, and Alan Radcliffe had given me good advice: find yourself a good agent, go to LA and put yourself in as many rooms as possible. And so I did just that.

Someone once said that New York has four times as much work for an actor as London, and LA has four times as much work as New York. Do the maths and it’s easy to understand why so many thousands of actors from across the world find their way to Hollywood. It’s a town of contradictions: full of success and failure, wealth and poverty—it’s exciting and daunting in equal measure. I saw, in those early days, every side of LA. I would shack up in a nondescript Hollywood hotel for a couple of weeks at a time, try to read three scripts a day and have some face time with as many players as possible.

Some doors were open to me. An LA agency accepted me as their client. They took me to lunch at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and took great pride in telling me that this was where the film Pretty Woman had been filmed. I nodded politely but didn’t tell them I’d never seen Pretty Woman. I felt out of place, a kid from Surrey being wined and dined at one of Hollywood’s most exclusive and fashionable spots. Between you and me, I’d have preferred a box of chicken nuggets. Back in their office I found myself in front of six people looking at me with the eager light of enthusiasm shining in their eyes, telling me that I was going to be a Big Star and they knew exactly how to get me there. Every couple of minutes a new face would walk in, shake me by the hand and tell me what a huge fan they were, and how exciting it was that I might become part of their team. I thought, Great! Bit weird but I could get used to this.

Other doors were harder to penetrate. My first audition in LA was for the part of a teacher in a TV pilot. I didn’t realise it at the time, but they make thousands of TV pilots in Hollywood, for various series, most of which are never eventually commissioned. They are the disposable napkins of the film industry. I didn’t understand this. For me, everything was potentially another Harry Potter. So when I turned up at the studio for the audition, I was unprepared for what awaited me. It didn’t matter that a huge Harry Potter poster hung behind the security desk, I still had difficulty explaining who I was, why I was there and gaining access to the studio. Once I made it to the audition room it became clear that I was one of countless hopefuls. I was given a place to sit with at least a dozen others and waited for three or four people to audition before me. I could hear everything that was going on in the audition room—not the norm in the UK—and that did nothing for my nerves. My turn came. I walked into the audition room to see six people sitting in a line, looking bored and unimpressed. If they recognised me, they sure as hell didn’t show it. I gave them my brightest smile and said: “Hi! I’m Tom from England!”

They said nothing. I went down the line, shaking hands with them all, but when I got to number three or four, I started to suspect that this really wasn’t a shaky-hand moment. One of them confirmed my suspicion by saying: “Could you just go and stand on the X and say your lines?”

I looked over my shoulder and saw a gaffer-tape X on the floor. “Right,” I said. “Sorry.” And I took my place. As I stood there, they barely seemed to register that I was in the room. The reality of the situation clicked in my head. They’d been sitting here for hours. They’d heard this scene every which way it was possible to say it. It was for an unimportant character and they either didn’t know or didn’t care what I’d been in previously. On the contrary, they couldn’t wait to get rid of me.

As these pennies dropped, my nerves went off the scale. The part for which I was auditioning was a nervous character, but I’m not sure that helped. I bumbled my way through my lines in a highly perplexing American accent—one line from Texas, one line from New Orleans, the next from Brooklyn—occasionally repeating myself to ensure that I’d said my words right. I was cringing and they were cringing more. Halfway through, three of them were on their phones. Never a good sign.

It was my first disastrous audition in LA. It wouldn’t be my last (apologies once again, Sir Anthony…). I’d like to say it gets easier. Truthfully, it doesn’t. But I developed a strange kind of addiction to the process. Before each audition, I would stand outside the room and my nervous brain would try to enumerate all the reasons why I really didn’t have to be there, why I should just walk away. But afterwards, the relief of having done it was like nothing else. No matter how good or bad the audition was, the ecstatic adrenaline rush gave me a unique buzz. I might be back at square one of the acting world, but I was getting a kick out of it.

LA can be a lonely place, especially at first. There are few experiences more confusing than being in that crazy city by yourself, trying to figure everything out. Each time I went back, however, I found that I knew a few more people. The more people I knew, the friendlier the place became. The friendlier it became, the more I was seduced by the weather, the upbeat attitudes and the quality of life. Despite its quirks, or maybe because of them, LA started to call to me. Jade and I had several brief stints living there, and when the opportunity arose to audition for a new TV series created by Stephen Bochco and to be shot in LA called Murder in the First, I went for it. We made countless self-tapes in Jade’s parents’ living room in London (thanks, Stevie G) and I went through endless rounds to land the part. Eventually, though, they told me I’d got it, so Jade and I moved out to LA with my dog, Timber.

And life was good. Everything was bigger, brighter and better. We found a tiny wooden bungalow in West Hollywood, painted white with a small garden and a picket fence. Gradually, as my work started to pick up, the excruciating loneliness of LA receded and the pleasures of being a person in the public eye in that city started to show themselves. In England, nobody cared if you were famous. If they did care, they usually pointed and muttered to their friend, or at best they’d come over and ask: “’Ere, you that wizard geezer? You know, the one from that thing?” Plus a sarcastic comment, more often than not. In LA, as my face and name started to become better known, the initial coolness faded away and suddenly it seemed that almost everybody cared that I was famous, in a way that massaged my ego like never before. Effusive strangers claimed to love my work. My work? As far as I could tell, I’d never done a real day’s work in my life, other than back at the fishery car park in Surrey. But who was I to argue, especially when people started treating me like a bona-fide film star? I’d never experienced that before. Growing up I’d thankfully been kept firmly in my place by three older brothers. At school and beyond, I was never allowed to feel different. Now, everybody in LA started treating me like somebody I wasn’t.

It started with clothes. People would give me designer clothes. For nothing? For nothing. Awesome. It moved on to cars. I met somebody who looked after BMW’s VIP fleet. Never in my life had I considered myself to be a VIP, whatever that even meant. Suddenly I was one, apparently, and they’d lend me different cars seemingly whenever I wanted them. We’d turn up at a club with a queue of people outside because it was the place to be seen, and the red velvet rope would be lifted immediately and we’d be ushered in without having to wait, because that’s what happens when you’re a “movie star.” My world became one of crazy opportunity, elaborate nights out and—there’s no other way of putting it—cool free shit. I enjoyed it. Jade enjoyed it.

I mean, who wouldn’t?

If you tell a person he’s great enough times, he’ll start to believe it. If you blow enough smoke up someone’s arse, sooner or later they’ll start breathing it in. It’s almost inevitable. I’d turn up outside some new fancy restaurant in a bright orange Lamborghini I’d been given for the week, and waiters would scurry to lead me to an exclusive table I’d only managed to reserve at the very last minute because of my name, while paparazzi took pictures of my incredibly subtle entrance. The old Tom would have been straight on the blower to his brother to tell him how mental it was. He would have been constantly kicking himself, because this was insane! The new Tom didn’t do that. The new Tom pretended it was normal. Of course you’ve saved me a table at this exclusive restaurant with a waiting list as long as the Golden Gate Bridge. Of course you have.

I acted the way I was treated. For a while it was lots of fun. But only for a while. The gleam soon began to tarnish.

I never knew I wanted this kind of life. And as time passed, an uncomfortable truth quietly presented itself to me: I didn’t want it. Perhaps it sounds ungrateful. I don’t mean it to. I was in a lucky and privileged position. But there was something inauthentic about the life I was leading. I realised that, more often than not, I didn’t want to go to this premiere, or that fancy restaurant, or whatever Caribbean island we had earmarked for our next getaway. I missed my old life. I missed fishing by the lake with Chris. I missed watching Beavis and Butt-Head with Ash. I missed making music with Jink. I missed smoking a crafty spliff with my friends on a park bench. I missed those days where my spare time could be spent with a beat to rap over, rather than being peddled out on the celebrity circuit. I missed having an ordinary conversation with an authentic human, who didn’t know who I was, and didn’t care. I missed my mum.

I should have noticed these feelings and made a change. I should have voiced my worries, if to no one else, at least to myself. It was up to me, after all. But something strange had started to happen. Placed into an environment where people were desperate to do things for me, I started to lose the ability to do things, and think things, for myself. Having allowed my newly appointed LA team to encourage me with my acting career and expose me to this new Hollywood lifestyle, I felt like I had gone a step further and outsourced my ability to make any kind of decision, or have an opinion of my own. If people remind you often enough how lucky you are, and that a certain way of living is cool, you start to believe it even if you don’t feel it deep down. Suddenly your critical faculties are turned to jelly and you stop being your own person. Bit by bit, I wasn’t myself anymore.

The more immersed I became in the smoke and mirrors of Hollywood, the less chance I had to meet people who didn’t know who I was and, more to the point, didn’t care. Daily I found myself having less genuine human interaction with people. There always seemed to be an undercurrent. A subtext. An agenda. I wasn’t being myself. For as long as I could remember, I’d mimicked my dad’s self-deprecating buffoonery. That sense of humour was second nature to me, an integral part of who I was. But in the company I was keeping in LA, it didn’t translate. Everyone took themselves too seriously. Everyone took me too seriously.

And maybe, beneath the surface, there were other matters at play. My family were not strangers to mental health issues. Ash had been hospitalised as a boy, Jink as an adult. A predisposition to such problems was in my blood. It’s easy for me to paint a portrait of a young man corrupted by Hollywood, but perhaps there was more to it than that. There’s no doubt that LA made me feel peculiarly lonely and disassociated from myself: feelings, surely, that could trigger mental health difficulties in anybody. Perhaps these difficulties are more easily camouflaged when you’re sitting beyond the velvet ropes or behind the wheel of the shiny orange Lamborghini.

I craved an escape from the version of myself I was becoming. I craved human contact with people who cared nothing for the red carpet lifestyle. I craved the old me. I craved authenticity.

I found it in a bar called Barney’s Beanery.