In my day England, Scotland, Wales had 80 drama schools. There are none left. So there's no training, no discipline.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was the suburban kid of Scottish parents, and the idea of an acting career was so beyond my experience. I didn't even know there were drama schools until a friend told me.
I was lucky enough to get into drama school in London back in 2005, and I was there for three years, and in those three years, we did a lot of theater. A lot of classical training.
The weird thing about drama school is that you train for three years for one thing, and then, more often than not, it's something that you haven't trained for that you end up doing.
Someone told me about drama schools, and they seemed like mythological places - you can really go and be in drama classes all day? I inadvertently entered into this world where people wore bicycle clips and did song-and-dance routines in the corridors.
In England, when we're at drama school, we spend a lot of time learning the craft from playwrights and stage actors, who are very well trained in the basics of acting because they need to get it right the first time - you can't have second or third takes when you're in front of a live audience, unlike in film.
From there I did a one year theatre acting course in Fife, and then three years of drama school in London.
My parents couldn't afford a full time drama school, but I basically just did every class I could do, and followed every drama interest I could. When I was 15 or 16 I did drama courses.
When I first left drama school, I was too posh for the working-class parts and not posh enough for the upper-class roles. You know what England is like: the gradations of accent and how you're judged by them are still there. I discovered that to get a break you have to lie about where you're from.
The theatre training is second to none in Ireland and England. You meet people who haven't had theatre training - it is harder for people who worked in TV to go into theatre than the other way around.
We don't have drama in public schools in France. I had never taking an acting class.