Like a lot of people, I was bullied at school. I grew up in an affluent area, but my parents, who worked hard and absolutely did their best to provide for me and my Sister, did not earn much money. Although we lived in a reasonably large house on an expensive street, my Mum had inherited the place from her parents and my folks simply couldn’t afford to maintain it, and it slid ever further into disrepair, and frankly looked shit. My clothes were mainly presents from well-meaning but horribly unfashionable neighbours or relatives, or second hand, and ok, to be fair I was incredibly uncool as a kid anyway (hard to believe, right…..Right?), and so, I was bullied. For a period of about a year I guess, once the cool kids who were formerly my friends had caught onto all this, I was ridiculed, belittled, and other similarly-themed words, and in the end cast out entirely – for a while, I had no friends at all, and this led me to team up with another outcast or two, and my path to alternativism (I just made that up, thanks spell check for pointing this out) was inexorably set. I grew my hair, got into AC/DC (and yes, alright….Iron Maiden), and generally embraced my outcast status. Of course, this did nothing to ingratiate me with cool kids – in fact, it made things worse – but by that point I didn’t care and acted even more weirdly, revelling in my freak status. I had found a niche, and my crew, and that’s pretty much how things stayed for a couple of years. In due course, I found new friends (who are still – officially – BFFF), that were unfortunately friends with the cool kids that had formerly ostracised me, and so I attempted again to ingratiate myself with the ‘trendy’* world, but this was doomed to awkward – sometimes embarrassing, sometimes painful – failure. I wasn’t part of that world, I never had been and I couldn’t communicate with those sort of people.
This was all a very long time ago now, of course, and I have gradually got cooler (at least in comparison), am blessed in that I generally am well liked, have no trouble making friends, and can generally get on with and communicate with people from all walks of life (even if I am just pretending). In fact, I have never been happier.
So why I boring you with all this shit?
Currently, I am working on my first ‘proper’ movie, a slasher-horror romp called Serial Kaller. I say proper because I have had tiny parts in a couple of other things, but this is the first film that I have done that has a budget, location, full crew and experienced, professional Actors. I got the role through a friend that works at the studio, and although I was and am really grateful about this, I confess that I had mixed feelings about the project to start with. I didn’t have to audition, which made me wonder about the standard, for one. Two, the movie is backed by a lads mag and is set in a Babe TV station, and features a lot of ladies wearing not very much, and this concerned me too – I have noticed recently that in my old age I am turning into a bit of a feminist, and definitely am not (and probably never was) a ‘lad’, and all that T&A bothers me more than anything. I had researched the cast before filming and they are all, as you can imagine, beautiful people (if that’s your thing – no judgment here, just everyone’s different), but I gratefully took the job as the script is good, it was a great chance to get involved in a movie, and it paid, and let’s be honest, that makes all kinds of misgivings go away. But still, even once I had put these other concerns behind me, I had feelings of strong anxiety about doing it; in the lead-up to filming I was really bothered by something, and it took me a while to figure out where these feelings of trepidation were coming from. When I figured it out, I was as surprised as anyone. I was anxious, and nervous, and unsure of myself because of my experiences at school.
All of a sudden, I felt like I was 13 again, the kid that didn’t really fit, seemingly heading back into the world of the fashionable and popular; the world that I was booted out of for not being cool enough, or having the right clothes, or whatever. That seems really melodramatic, but it was a very tangible feeling and so, when I turned up on set the first day I was feeling nervous, shy and awkward, and radiating intensity (which was mostly performance nerves and me getting into character, but not all of it.) Of course, I needn’t have worried – everyone was really nice, are really professional and I’ve met some really cool people, and am excited and proud to be a part of the project. But all that unnecessary anxiety has made me realise just how much your experiences as a young teenager shape you, and how deep-rooted that stuff goes, and how damaging bullying is – that shit sticks, man, and for a very long time. I know that we were all kids and when you are young you have a far lesser appreciation of the consequences of your actions, but it concerns me that if I can have such a vivid flashback, a quarter of a century later, (and my experience, on the whole, was not that bad), then it must be far more difficult to be a kid these days, with smartphones and social media to instantly spread the word on the latest outcast. At least when I was being kicked around, once I was out of school that was pretty much it – I could forget all about it and lose myself in something else. Now, you can be trashed on Facebook (or whatever) 24/7.
That’s got to be pretty tough.
An Actor's Journal 