#actors manchester and salford

[mcrshakespeareco]

It was a lovely afternoon with our new team for the next production.

Some of them are excited.

It was lovely meeting up with Kieran again. I see a future mapped out for him with that amazing voice of his. He’s still a bubble of fun!

GinJo

[scotianostra]

The folk singer-songwriter and playwright Ewan MacColl was born on January 25th at Salford, England.

Now and again I post about Anglo-Scots, those born over the border in the home of our closest neighbours England, McColl is a man who was proud of his Scottish heritage, there is no doubt, but there is no doubt he took much from his upbringing in Salford, most evident in the song about the city Dirty old Town.

Ewan was born as James Henry Miller to William Miller and Betsy (née Henry). William, an iron moulder and trade unionist, had to leave Scotland after being blacklisted at every foundry in Scotland, one of them being the Carron Ironworks at Falkirk, that crops up in my posts now and then.

Ewan left school in 1930 after an elementary education, during the Great Depression and, joining the ranks of the unemployed, began a lifelong programme of self-education whilst keeping warm in Manchester Central Library. During this period he found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer.

In 1932 the British intelligence service, MI5, opened a file on MacColl, after local police asserted that he was "a communist with very extreme views" who needed "special attention” For a time the Special Branch kept a watch on the Manchester home that he shared with his first wife, Joan Littlewood. MI5 caused some of MacColl's songs to be rejected by the BBC, and prevented the employment of Littlewood as a BBC children's programme presenter.

Inspired by the example of Alan Lomax, who had arrived in Britain and Ireland in 1950, and had done extensive fieldwork there, MacColl also began to collect and perform traditional ballads. Some of you might remember my post Come All Ye Tramps And Hawkers from the Lomax archive a few weeks ago, he was a folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker.

More well known by most as a singer, MacColl was also an actor, writer and playwright To put him into some sort of importance George Bernard Shaw said of him in 1947, “Apart from myself, MacColl is the only man of genius writing for the theatre in Britain today., fine praise indeed.

MacColl recorded a huge volume of traditional Scottish and English folk songs, as well as creating a vast body of his own work, which ranged from satirical protest songs to tender love ballads, the latter most popularly renowned in his composition, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, written for his wife, Peggy Seeger (another folk singer), but made most famous by Roberta Flack. His songs have been sung by the likes of the Dubliners, Dick Gaughan, The Clancy Brothers, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, David Gray and The Pogues.

Back to my favourite song by Ewan MacColl, Dirty Old Town, it’s not about Dublin, as many believe but Salford, because the Dubliners made it famous I think that’s where the confusion comes from.

Ewan must have been very proud of his daughter the late Kirsty MacColl, who followed on from her dad as a singer songwriter.

In 1979 he suffered the first of many heart attacks. The next ten years saw a steady deterioration in his physical condition, but he continued to work, tour, lecture and write songs. In 1980 he wrote his last play, The Shipmaster, the moving story of a sailing ship captain who cannot adapt to the coming of steam. In 1987 he began to write his autobiography, Journeyman. In the same year the University of Exeter presented him with an honorary degree. On October 22nd 1989, he died of complications following a heart operation. The University of Salford awarded him a posthumous honorary degree in 1991.

I’ve chosen The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie today as it is the first song I learnt and sang while still at primary school, probably aged about 10 year old.

If you want to know more about the man, his music and lots more check out the web page dedicated to Ewan here http://www.ewanmaccoll.co.uk/ewan-maccoll-biography/

[manchestertheatre]

What's on in Manchester: The Ultimate Guide to Theatre and Live Events

Are you looking for the best live events and theatre shows in Manchester? Whether you're a resident or a visitor, Manchester has a diverse and exciting range of events happening every day, from musicals to stand-up comedy, concerts to ballet, and much more. In this guide, we will explore the best of what's on in Manchester, highlighting the top events and venues that you don't want to miss.

Manchester Theatres

Manchester is home to some of the best theatres in the UK, with each offering unique productions and performances that cater to different audiences. Manchester's Palace Theatre, for instance, is one of the city's most famous venues, featuring touring productions of the West End and Broadway shows, including classics such as Wicked, The Lion King, and Les Misérables.

The Royal Exchange Theatre is another one of Manchester's iconic venues, located in the city center. It is known for its innovative approach to theatre, featuring plays, musicals, and adaptations of classic literature. This theatre also offers a wide range of outreach programs, including workshops and classes for young aspiring actors.

The Lowry is a modern, state-of-the-art venue located in Salford Quays, just a short journey from Manchester city center. This venue offers an extensive program of events, including musicals, plays, ballet, opera, and contemporary dance, as well as exhibitions, workshops, and family-friendly events. The Lowry also has several on-site bars and restaurants, making it a perfect place to spend a full day of entertainment.

Live Music Venues

Manchester is known as the music capital of the UK, and it's no surprise that there is an endless supply of live music venues in the city. From the legendary Manchester Apollo, which has hosted some of the most famous acts in music history, including The Beatles, to the O2 Ritz, which regularly hosts indie and alternative music acts.

Another iconic venue is the Albert Hall, which is housed in a renovated Wesleyan chapel and features a diverse range of music genres, from jazz to pop, rock to classical. The Deaf Institute, which was formerly a working deaf and dumb school, is a quirky and intimate venue that offers a wide range of genres, from indie rock to hip hop.

Manchester Arena is the largest indoor arena in Europe and is home to some of the most significant music events in the UK. It has hosted international superstars, including Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, and Justin Timberlake, and is the perfect venue for fans of mainstream and pop music.

Comedy Clubs

Manchester is also known for its comedy scene, with several comedy clubs offering nightly shows featuring the best up-and-coming comedians and established names. The Comedy Store is one of the most famous comedy clubs in the UK, featuring stand-up comedy, improv shows, and special events, such as the famous King Gong show.

Frog and Bucket is another popular comedy club, located in the city center and offering weekly shows featuring both local and national acts. With a capacity of 500 people, the venue also features a bar and a restaurant, making it a perfect place for a night out.

Other comedy venues include The Dancehouse Theatre, which offers regular shows featuring some of the best local comedians, and The Glee Club, which offers a mix of comedy shows and live music events.

Arts and Culture Events

In addition to theatre, music, and comedy, Manchester is also home to many arts and cultural events throughout the year. The Manchester International Festival is a biennial event that celebrates a wide range of art forms, including theatre, music, visual arts, and dance, and has featured performances by famous artists such as Björk, Damon Albarn

[camedownonamoonbeam]

No problem! I wish I was an expert on British accents, but alas, they elude those of us who didn't grow up there lol. They are super local tho so unless an actor is putting on another accent, you really only need to see where the actor is from lol. Rob's from Salford, Greater Manchester. Here are some fascinating photos of its working class slums shortly before Rob was born, if you're interested! And a quick peek at Scouse, if you like. The k's are quite unmistakable lol

ok hold on per my last post i will now explain;

WHY THOMAS BARROW FULLY DESERVED HIS REDEMPTION ARC AND MORE:

i’ll start off with the not-so-obvious: thomas offhandedly remarks to ms. baxter that his father was never kind to him. his tone and eagerness to avoid the subject imply to me that he was abused, or at the very least, has a bad relationship with his family. that could give us some insight into why he is so horrid to others during the series (it’s not an excuse by any means, but it is a reason) [also this is kinda a stretch but i’ll say it anyway: he has, in my opinion, a scouse accent, which would mean he’s from manchester or liverpool, somewhere in the west of england. that is also where rjc is from, but i feel like if thomas were from yorkshire, rjc would have put on a yorkshire accent. given the show’s timeline, previous casting errors, and wiki, thomas probably would’ve been about 15-16 when he started at downton, so that suggests to me that he left his home at a young age to travel across the country for work. his father was a clockmaker, so shouldn’t he have had a relatively secure position at his fathers shop? this is, unless his father kicked him out….sorry that’s practically incomprehensible 💀]

he had an affair with the duke of crowborough, which, to me, felt very manipulative, more so from the duke—> thomas in my opinion. it also kinda struck me as though that was thomas’ first serious relationship. he’s clearly never really been loved before, or had affection directed towards him, obviously from his response to baxter’s later treatment of him

he clearly has a substantial amount of self hatred for both his general personality and his sexuality. most, if not all of his behavior can be classified as self destructive and sabotaging, so i believe that is the reason behind much of his ‘villainous’ behavior

as well as that, most (if not all) of his schemes were due to o’briens instruction, and i wouldn’t put it past her to be blackmailing him into doing some of the things

finally, he’s clearly mentally ill. as someone with diagnosed depression, anxiety and ocd, he fits the bill (to me) of depression and anxiety perfectly. many of his actions were probably driven by an unnecessary panic and fear that he felt due to anxiety. His self destructive tendencies can be attributed to depression (end of season six??? hello?? someone help him)

that’s all i just really love my little guy and i want everyone else to understand why. i see myself in him a lot (which is kinda pathetic). I just think he deserves a happy ending with a hot, loving boyfriend (*cough* Richard Ellis *cough*) and to own a cute little tailors shop or a clock shop or something.

[we-are-afirelove]

I’ve spent quite a few years planning and creating a Web Series and now i think it’s time to bring it to life. If you are or know someone in the Manchester area that’s an actor or someone who’s handy with some recording equipment contact crabsticksknittingneedles@outlook.com or follow @/crabsticks_knittingneedles on instagram. Please follow our journey in bringing my dream to life.

[swearyshera]

Hello everyone, it's 'Shameless Self-Promotion' time!

I mentioned a few weeks back that a play I wrote was set to be included in a show later this month, and I've got plenty of exciting news to share about that! Firstly, the actors have been announced and I am absolutely thrilled to see them bring my words to life

Kelsea and Georgia are both fantastic actors who I can already see will be perfect for the roles I've written.

Secondly, I'd love for you all to be able to see it - and now you can!

The Wednesday performance is being livestreamed, and you can tune in from anywhere around the world to see an evening of amazing LGBTQ+ performers in 11 short plays. You can book tickets for the online event here!

Couple of notes:

The performance starts at 8pm BST and will likely last 2-3 hours

Some of the plays talk about sexual stuff, so beware of that (mine uses the phrase 'hot dripping pleasure cavern' multiple times!)

Tickets start from £10 with £3 booking fee, however if you really want to watch and can't afford that, message me as I have a limited number of cheaper tickets

If you are in the Manchester/Salford area and can make the in-person performance on Tuesday 27th, message me as I should have a spare ticket for that (that's when I'm watching it!). Even if you're not, if you fancy a coffee on Monday night/Tuesday daytime, let me know!

If you're able to tune in, that would be awesome. If you can't, you're still awesome!

Thank you everyone, Shameless Self-Promotion time will now end.

-Alice

[romancandlemagazine]

An Interview with Al Baker

I first came across Al Baker’s photography whilst looking through an old copy of a magazine called Flux I’d snaffled from Manchester’s world-famous second-hand wonderland, Empire Exchange.

Hidden in the magazine’s pages, between an interview with Mark E Smith and a review of a newly-released sci-fi film called The Matrix, were two black-and-white photos, snapped from the window of an ice-cream van, showing kids lined up for a bit of frozen respite from the summer heat. Reading the fairly minimal bit of text below, it turned out the photos were part of a series called ‘Ice Cream You Scream’. 

I’d missed the exhibition by approximately 20 years, but thanks to the high-speed time-machine known as the internet, I managed to track him down. Here’s an interview about his fine photos, his time living in Hulme Crescents and the benefits of carrying cameras in a Kwik Save bag...

Classic ‘start of an interview’ question here, but when did you get into photography? Was there something in particular that set you off?

Like a lot of young people, I knew that I was creative but hadn’t quite found my place. I didn’t know whether I wanted to be a writer or in a band. I used to doodle, copy Picasso’s in biro, so off I went to art college and tried my hand at different things. All it really taught me was that I had neither the patience, technique or talent to become a painter. Photography seemed a much easier way to make images, a more instant result. Of course, the more you get into it you realise that whether you’re any good or not does rely upon patience, technique and talent after all.

Was ‘being a photographer’ something that people did in Manchester in the early 90s? Who did you look up to back then?

Not really. It was very rare to see another person wandering around with a camera back then. Even years later when I began photographing the club scene in Manchester no-one else seemed to be doing the same thing. Not at the night clubs I went to anyway. 

Now it’s very different. These days you see people with cameras everywhere. Club nights almost always have a photographer. People are far more image-conscious due to social media. Today most people are busy documenting their own nights out with their phones. Look at footage from any major gig these days and half the room is filming it. Back in the 90s no-one seemed to care about documenting anything like that. You were very unlikely to see the photos that someone might be taking the next day or, in fact, ever. People often used to ask ‘What are you taking photos for?’ with genuine surprise or distain.  

In terms of photographers whom I looked up to there are so many! There are great image masters like Cartier-Bresson or Elliott Erwitt. Photographers of war and social upheaval like Don McCullin and Phillip Jones-Griffiths. I liked Alexander Rodchenko and Andre Kertez, how they broke the conventions of their day with wit and invention. 

I loved the dark and dirty images of Bill Brandt, and his inspiring nude studies too. I loved the city at night recorded by Brassai. Paris in the 1930s definitely seemed to be the place to be. Diane Arbus, Jane Bown and Shirley Baker. American street photographer Gary Winogrand was a huge influence on me, as was Nick Waplington’s book ‘Living Room’.  

I was also quite lucky to be living in Manchester at that time. Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr had both attended Manchester Polytechnic. Denis Thorpe had worked for the Guardian in Manchester. I saw Kevin Cummins iconic Joy Division images, Ian Tilton documenting The Stone Roses. Both were regularly in among the inky pages of the NME. 

I also saw an exhibition of Clement Cooper’s photographs of the Robin Hood pub in Moss Side, which was another big influence. I was also very lucky in that my very first photography tutor was Mark Warner, who produced very beautiful images, did a lot of work for Factory Records. He shot The Durutti Column’s (1989) Vini Reilly album sleeve. He was probably the first person who ever really encouraged me.

I really like that series of photos you took from inside an ice-cream van in the late 90s. What was the story behind that? 

The initial idea for that project came from my friend Steve Hillman, who is an actor. At the time he was ‘between jobs’, which is an actor’s euphemism for being unemployed, so he was working an ice-cream round to help to pay the rent. I was at his flat one night, thinking aloud about where I might go next with my camera. I’d spent quite a long time following graffiti artists work around Hulme, and had my first exhibition based around that. But it only seemed to lead to offers of more work with graffiti artists, and I wanted to do something else.  

I’d done a 2nd exhibition based around portraits of my friends in Hulme. I’d flirted with some one-day projects, like Belle Vue dog track, Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. Anyway, while I was talking, not really knowing what I was going to do next, Steve simply stated ‘You should come out on the ice-cream round with me. No-one ever comes to the van without a smile on their face.’ And it just struck me as a beautiful & simple idea. So, one day we just set off. 4 or 5 rolls of film and all the free ice-cream I could eat, which I discovered wasn’t very much!

What was the logistical side of those photos? Were they taken from the same van? 

They were all shot on the same day, the same van, all around Salford. It was good fun, but actually very hard work. Trying to constantly find new angles, different framing and working on a hot August day in such a small confined space. By the end of the day I felt that I had enough strong images for my next exhibition. They were much jollier images than ones I’d made before. As a result, because it had more universal appeal, I got quite a lot of good publicity out of it, and Walls gave us hundreds of free Magnum ice-creams to give away on the opening night!

These days I could think of more than a few reasons why you probably shouldn’t drive around Salford photographing other people’s children without permission haha (in fact, I’m surprised that I wasn’t hung from the nearest lamppost!) but I was much younger and far more naive back then. Besides, that was something that I’d learned from living in Hulme. You don’t ask for permission. Someone will only say ‘No’. Just crack on and do it anyway.

You also documented the last years of the Hulme Crescents. A lot of people talk about that time and place in Manchester, even now—but what was the reality of it? What was a normal weekend there like?

It was quite unlike anywhere that I’d ever lived before. It looked like a fascist dystopian nightmare, only one peopled by Rastas and anarchists. Bleak concrete interconnecting walkways. No through roads whatsoever. A fortress feel to the place. The entire estate was earmarked for demolition before I arrived. Everyone else seemed to be busy moving out. But I was already spending a lot of time there, post-Hacienda, parties, friends, lost weekends.  

There were lots of young people living there. Families had mainly moved out as the heating didn’t work properly, flats were cold & damp, often infested with cockroaches. There were traces of old Irish families, the Windrush generation, interwoven with punks and drop-outs. 

There was a cultural & artistic flowering among the ruins. A Certain Ratio, Dub Sex, A Guy Called Gerald, Edward Barton, Ian Brown, Dave Haslam, Mick Hucknall, Lemn Sissay, all lived there at one time. It was the original home of Factory, where all the post-punk bands played. In turn that led to Factory Records, New Order, and the Hacienda. The PSV club later hosted raves and notorious Jungle nights. It was a good time to be young.

You lived there as well as shooting it. Do you think it’s important to be a part of the thing you’re photographing, rather than just an outsider with a camera?

I don’t know that it’s important to be a part of the thing you’re photographing, ‘embedded’ is what the war photographers call it, but you definitely capture different images. Certain things that might have been shocking to an outsider were commonplace, normal & every day to me. Boring even. On the other hand, I was much less likely to be robbed walking around. That meant I could take my camera places that other people couldn’t, or maybe shouldn’t!

I used to wear my camera beneath my coat so it couldn’t be seen, and I carried my film and lenses in a Kwik Save shopping bag so as not to attract unwanted attention. I got into the habit of handing that bag over the bar at the pubs I went in. I would collect it the next day if I could remember where I’d been the night before. Bless you, saintly barmaids of old Hulme.

If you look at my images of Hulme people they’re usually reacting to me and not the camera. Either that or they’re not reacting at all. They’re ignoring the fact that I’m taking a picture. That’s what gives them that ‘fly-on-the-wall’ feeling.

This is something that I put to greater effect later when I was photographing in night clubs, skulking stage side or hiding in a DJ booth. When DJs & MCs see you week in week out at the club doing the same thing they stop posing for the camera and just get used to you being there. You become part of the furniture. And when people stop being conscious of the camera, when they ignore that you’re even present, you can step in much closer. Put simply, you get better pictures. They’re much less performative and far more honest. It’s not often people can say they like it when they’re being ignored, but for photographers it’s a gift.

Do you think somewhere the Crescents could exist now, or was it just a case of the perfect accidental recipe for that kind of creative, DIY activity?

No, I don’t think anywhere like Hulme will ever happen again. I think the city council learned that lesson a long time ago. It was a dystopian utopia for us, but it grew out of failure. When I 1st went to university they warned us never to set foot there. I said, ‘But what if you live there already?’ and there was an embarrassed silence. They really hadn’t expected a poor boy from Hulme to be in the room. Now they own half of it and it’s all student Halls of Residence.  

The city centre has been regenerated, redeveloped & gentrified. We can’t afford to live there anymore, and people like me are pushed out. Hulme was a failed social housing experiment, an eyesore & an embarrassment to the people who had commissioned it. People like me moved in & we made it our own. They’re never going to allow anything like that to happen again. Every quaint old fashioned pub that closes becomes a block of flats. The footprint is too valuable to property developers. One day all we will have will be faded photographs to bear witness to a very different way of living.

Was it through the Crescents that you started shooting graffiti? 

When I first arrived in Hulme I’d just spent 3 years living with mates in a couple of houses elsewhere in the city. It suddenly struck me that that part of my life was over and I had very few photographs of that time. I’d been too busy learning photography, taking the kind of photos that every art student takes: Broken windows; abandoned buildings, and bits of burnt wood. I vowed I wouldn’t do that again. I began documenting the life that was around me.

I started with the architecture, as it was quite unlike any other place I’d ever seen. It had a desperate, faded beauty even then. The whole estate had been condemned for demolition before I arrived, but the city council had given up on the place long before that.  

I started to notice graffiti pieces going up, seeing the same names repeated. It was obvious that there was a small group of writers trying out their styles on a large canvas for the 1st time. Wanting to claim this derelict space as their own Hall Of Fame. I started to document them as they sprang up. Then I noted that context was crucial, and so I began to include the soon-to-be-derelict buildings in the images also. The shapes & colours of the graffiti looked positively psychedelic beside the drab monochrome of the setting.

With your graffiti shots, you show a lot more than just the pieces. Was it an intentional thing to show the act behind it a bit?

Because it was Hulme and no-one cared, these guys weren’t working in the dead of night like most graffiti writers do in the train yards and what-have-you. They were working during the day, right out in the open. So, documenting their work, it wasn’t long before I ran into Kelzo. He really didn’t trust me at first, but I kept coming back. So, I got to know them. They started to let me know where they were going to be painting next.

In 1995 Kelzo organised the 1st SMEAR JAM event (named after a young aspiring writer who used to come down to Hulme to learn, and had died suddenly from a nut allergy). That was such good fun that another event arrived the following year, another & another. Graf writers came from London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield, and as far afield as Spain. The local community came out to support and, as usual, it turned into a party that lasted all weekend.  

I got into the habit of taking 2 cameras. One loaded with B&W film to capture the event itself, and another with colour transparency to document the finished artwork.

Graffiti… hip-hop… kids getting ice cream… I suppose there’s a few different subjects there, but was there an underlying thing or theme you wanted to show with your photos? Maybe getting a bit philosophical, but they’re all quite free acts—is it about enjoying what’s there?

It was more about documenting the life I saw around me. Moving to Hulme was what led to me capturing graffiti, and graffiti led to hip-hop events. Once Hulme was demolished I moved my camera into the city centre and began photographing club nights. House and hip-hop turned into Drum’n’Bass, and then dubstep. Residents and warm-up acts have now become headliners in their own right. Manchester has always been a great city for music, and it kept me busy throughout the naughty Noughties. I’ve pretty much retired from all of that now. I’d had enough after over 15 years of it. I no longer feel compelled to document something as ephemeral as a club night anymore when half of the audience are doing it themselves anyway. Then coronavirus came & properly killed it all off. I don’t know what it’s going to be like now going forward, but it’ll be someone else’s turn to document whatever that is.  

What do you think makes a good photograph? 

You need to have a good eye. You need to notice & be aware of the world around you. You always see an image before you create one. You don’t require expensive equipment. Mine never was. And you don’t need to be trained. It’s one of those areas where you really can educate yourself. A certain amount of technique and technical understanding goes a long way but, again, you can pick those things up as you go along.  

There are different kinds of photography, of course, but for me it was always about capturing a moment. The Decisive Moment, as Cartier-Bresson so eloquently put it. It’s something that the camera has over the canvas. For me the camera has always been a time machine. Like an evocative love song on the radio, it can transport you back immediately to a time & place long gone. It also acts as a witness for those people who were not there. Images tell stories. And we all like to hear and tell stories.

A couple of years ago I was invited to talk at the University of Lancaster for a symposium on documentary photography, which is a tradition that I had always considered my photographs sat within. But oddly, as I gave my slide-show presentation, images that I have seen and shown many times before, and thought I knew very well, I suddenly saw in a brand-new light. I could see myself in every image. Almost like a self-portrait from which I was absent but my own shadow cast large. I realised that I haven’t been documenting anything other than my own life. 25 year old images suddenly had something new to say, something new to tell me.  

Do you still take photos today? What kind of things are you into shooting these days?  

I don’t really do a lot of photography these days. I teach and facilitate as part of my job now. I still do the odd event but night club photography is a much younger man’s game. I really don’t have the levels of commitment, energy or enthusiasm I once did. I feel like I’ve taken enough images. If I never took another photograph ever again, that’s OK. Maybe, perhaps, I’ll get into a different kind of image making in my twilight years … but for now I’m trying to reassess the images I made 25 years ago. People are far more interested in them now than they ever were at the time. Now they have become documents of a time and place which has gone. The graffiti and the walls that they were written on have disappeared. Many of those night clubs have closed. Time moves on. The images and the memories are all that is left.  

Over all those years, how has the art of photography changed for you?

Back when I started taking photographs, where I lived in Hulme, the kind of music that I was into, the magic of a night club moment, there were very few people I knew of who were doing the same thing. Now I am aware of others who were. Almost everyone is their own photographer now. Mobile phones & social media have given a platform for anyone to make & share images of their individual lives, whether it be their friends & families, holidays, public events or more private & intimate moments. Anyone can document their own lives now, so I no longer feel that I have to. I do still love photography, it’s still my favourite form of art, but I don’t feel compelled to capture it all anymore.

I suppose I’ve pestered you with questions for a while now. Have you got any wise words to wind this up with?

If you want to become a photographer you must learn your craft. Keep doing it, and you will get better. But you must remember to always be honest. Make honest images. Listen to the voice of your own integrity. Don’t worry too much if no-one sees any value in what you do. If you’re any good people will eventually see it. It may take years, it did for me, but images of the ordinary & everyday will one day become historical, meaningful & extraordinary.  

We live in a world today mediated by images, a Society of the Spectacle, but we still need photographers: People who have a good eye, an innate feel for the decisive moment; what to point the camera at and when to press the shutter. The images that you make today will be the memories of the future.  

See more of Al’s photos here.

[six-costume-refs]

Black Alt - Cassandra Lee

Actor: Cassandra “Cassy” Lee

Production: 2nd UK Tour

Role: Alternate

Covers: 1st: Aragon/Cleves 2nd: Seymour/Howard 3rd: Boleyn/Parr

Costume: Black alt

Played: Aragon, Cleves

Makeup: Pictured: Cleves debut, Kingston, 14 or 15 Nov 2019. Aragon, Oxford, date unknown.

White, black, and brown shades (mostly glitter) of eyeshadow with a bright red lip. Nails are typically (possibly always) painted black.

Note: I normally include info about the base costume/the main pieces worn for the majority of the queens. Because Cassandra Lee has only debuted as two queens in two completely different outfits, I’m not including that here on this post. However, I am including some details on makeup here, which seems to be consistent across Aragon and Cleves.

Aragon: Manchester, 13 Dec 2019. Manchester, 4 Jan 2020.* Manchester, 4 Jan 2020.* Manchester, 4 Jan 2020.*

Half-open skirt. Main top. Spiked crown. Wig.*** Medium-sized silver hoop earrings. A nude-toned leotard with attached sleeves (most likely attached to the black shorts under the skirt). Fishnet tights. Choker. Boots. 

Cleves: Debut, Kingston, 14 or 15 Nov 2019. Manchester, unknown date.**  Debut, Kingston, 14 or 15 Nov 2019. Salford, 2 Jan 2020.*

Cleves shorts. Cleves top. Cleves jacket. Detached sleeves. Spiked hairpiece. Wig.*** Fishnet tights. Boots. Earrings differ: sometimes studs, sometimes hoops with spikes (see makeup photo for more details).

Note: additional studding seems to have been added to her shorts between her debut and the photo taken on 2 Jan 2020.

---- 

*Taken by @/paigeleigh59916 on Instagram

**Taken by @/evaraephotos on Instagram

***I know there are photos of both wigs somewhere, as well as the Howard one. I’ll add them when I find them. If anyone has them and can send them my way please do so!

[lisbetadair]

The Ghost Comics: A Timeline 2

This is the same timeline, but this time I Have Opinions About Things. It's under cut because it's as long as the last one, the whole torture theme that was so imperative to the comics being something that not everyone wants to read and because some of you really like the comics and I get very sarcastic about the plot holes.

Unspecified time: Riley (age 8) is taken to a punk gig by his father. His eyes are brown despite being the most cerulean orbs to ever have existed in the One True Divine Canon of the Actual Game. He witnesses his father having sex with a woman. He either murders her, or causes her death through negligence. Also, despite Riley being voiced by famous Cockney actor and Eastenders royalty Craig Fairbrass, Riley is inexplicably living in Manchester.

January 2003: Riley visits his mother after an eighteenth month absence. For inexplicable reasons, he is wearing dress uniform.

March 2004: Riley confronts his father at a punk club night in Manchester, tells him not to come home and they fight. For inexplicable reasons, he is wearing dress uniform and a red beret, despite the SAS having worn beige ones since the 1940s. I mean, it's not even like they are the original maroon that they were at the inception of the regiment, which I could kind of forgive, they are actually red. He extracts his brother from wherever he is staying and takes him to rehab.

June 2006: Tommy Riley gets married.

Early October 2009: Riley gets orders to join a US led anti-drugs task force. Two previous unsuccessful missions of this task force to assassinate a heroin smuggling cartel leader in Mexico are mentioned.

13th October 2009: Major Vernon picks Riley up at Fort Bragg, and explains his concerns about a possible leak (possibly higher up the chain of command) that resulted in the last mission being unsuccessful. He explains he is the only survivor of that mission. In case anyone wants some cultural context " Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas was Number One on the Billboard chart for almost the whole month preceding, so you could really use that for inoffensive pop foreshadowing! It was followed by the Kings of Leon's Use Somebody for the first week of the month which I guess is also Relevant Foreshadowing Content!

October 30th 2009: Sykes dies during the parachute infiltration, due to a parachute malfunction. After the super stealthy parachute infiltration by night, they all check into a local hotel to "blend in" as sex tourists. It is unclear as to why they merely did not drive in like everyone else. They all go out drinking. Riley refuses the advances of a local sex worker, and follows Cumberland to a brothel.

October 31st 2009: He reports to Vernon that Cumberland was using a brothel where members of the cartel were also seen. That night is...

November 1st 2009: Doomed mission into Coahila, Mexico gets going. It is unclear as to what happened to the night of October 31st. Riley enters to target's villa and finds Cumberland gravely injured. Vernon appears, and helpfully explains in villain monologue that Cumberland witnessed him sabotage Syke's parachute, and this has been reported up the chain of command. Presumably Cumberland thought Sykes was a bit of an arsehole, hence why he didn't pipe up sooner. Vernon kills Cumberland but Riley escapes as far as the villa wall, where he is shot by Roba and captured

December 2009: Gratuitous torture.

February 2010: Gratuitous torture, and sexual assault.

March 2010: Gratuitous torture 3

July 2010: Sparks and Washington escape. Riley is buried alive with the corpse of Major Vernon, but escapes.

August 2010: Riley wanders in the desert, across the US border and is repatriated to the UK.

December 18th 2010: Riley appeals to his commanding officer to be returned to active service.

Later in December 2010: Riley visits his family in Salford. Sparks appears. No one considers Spark's appearance at Riley's next of kin's address to be a massive breach of security, or in fact, any sort of concerning event at all, and Riley and Sparks go drinking. They attempt to sexually assault a woman, but are scared off by the sound of police sirens approaching. Riley returns Sparks to his hotel and tries to stab Sparks, presumably this is because he has come to his sense and doesn't want to be some sort of rapist. They fight, and Washington returns, chasing Riley off. Shots are fired. He returns to his brother's house and finds the family murdered.

He phones his commander and is told he is dead as a result of an accident.

Sparks phones and says he's murdered Riley's psychiatrist. Washington sets the psychiatrists house on fire with a grenade, launched from a grenade launcher.

Later in December 2010 (it might be January, who knows?): Riley visits his father in hospital. He leaves before Sparks and Washington appear, and waltz, unchallenged, into a hospital, and murder Riley's father by shooting him at point blank range.

Even later in December 2010 (again, might be January): Riley murders Washington and Sparks who are inexplicably not wanted in connection with the murder of Riley senior. I fear this may be a cultural misunderstanding and possibly the comic writers live in a country so saturated in gun violence that people getting shot in hospitals is a completely normal occurrence, but there's no way that this would not merit major media attention and would have leant absolute credence to any defence Riley was putting about that he was being framed by rogue US agents. He takes Sparks back to his family's house, dumps the body there and sets the house on fire, putting his dog tags on Sparks to confuse the evidence despite mitochondrial DNA testing being a well-used forensic technique.

Unspecified time between December and February: A Colonel Barber, a character we have never met before, requests that the case into Washington's murder is closed, implying high levels of corruption or negligence in the British Military Police.

February 2011: Riley returns to Mexico and kills Robas.

A representative of Task Force 141 appears to pick up Riley immediate after. Presumably tipped off to the event by Barber. Implying that what? They knew Riley would go after Robas, and had the place on watch to see when this occurred, tracked him through the brush until they felt it was suitably out of the way enough to not be noticed? Does it imply that the whole Robas operation (the MK Ultra 2.0 stuff) was organised by the US and they are just waiting to see whether it has worked or not? And it has??

[krismusings]

𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍 ★ 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲.

FULL NAME: Roman Atticus Beckett

NICKNAMES: Ro, and Rome

AGE: 26

DATE OF BIRTH: July 29th

ZODIAC SIGN: Leo

PLACE OF BIRTH: Manchester, UK

HOMETOWN: Salford, Manchester, UK

LOCATION: Dayton. California

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

NATIONALITY: British

RELIGIOUS VIEWS: Agnostic

EDUCATION LEVEL: Guildhall School of Music and Drama

OCCUPATION: Director and Actor at The Cage theater

MENTAL CONDITIONS: slight ADD

PHYSICAL IMPAIRMENTS: one leg slightly longer than the other, thus causing back pain.

ADDICTIONS: weed and shrooms, as well as DAT ASS

PERSONALITY

POSITIVE TRAITS: CHARMING, TALENTED, DEDICATED

NEGATIVE TRAITS: BLUNT, SHAMELESS, LOUD

WHAT DO THEY CONSIDER TO BE THE BEST AND THE WORST PART OF THEIR PERSONALITY?:  Ro is an awesome friend, and he loves everyone in his life so much. He considers all of his close friends like family, and would be willing to bend over backwards to do anything for them. He is however very aware that he is closed off in certain areas of his life, which makes it hard for people to get close to him in a romantic sense. 

ARE THEY MORE EXTROVERTED OR INTROVERTED?: Probably the most extroverted person in the history of the world.

ANY TALENTS?: Acting, singing, writing

WHAT ARE THEIR FEARS?: Abandonment, falling in love again.

ANY ALLERGIES?: Pumpkin and Squash.

DO THEY HAVE ANY PHOBIAS?: No

LIST 3 PET-PEEVES THEY CAN’T STAND: Lateness, people who feel the need to bash everything you like, having to pay for shipping.

PAST (tw: mention of child abuse.)

BEST MEMORY: Travelling to Naples with his parents to visit ancient ruins, and go to the beach.

WORST MEMORY: Being brought along with his mother on her ventures as a prostitute.

BIGGEST SECRET: Ro suffered a lot of child abuse, mostly sexual, and he’s never talked about it in detail with anyone.

BIGGEST WISH: To act on a Broadway stage, or have his own television show.

BIGGEST FEAR: Falling in love, and having his heartbroken again.

FIRST LOVE : Landon Davies

ROMANCE & SEXUALITY

TURN ONS: Bondage, Breathplay, Daddy kink, Spanking, Sub/Dom

TURN OFFS: No one better try pissing or something like that on him, he’ll die. No un-welcomed bodily fluids at all actually, please. Also, anal fisting. He aint about that life.

MISCELLANEOUS

SPEAKING VOICE CLAIM: Harry Styles

SINGING VOICE CLAIM: Harry Styles

RELATIONSHIP WITH MOTHER: Relationship to birth mother is non existent, relationship with adoptive mother is good.

MOTHER’S NAME: Colleen Beckett

RELATIONSHIP WITH FATHER: Birth father is unknown, relationship with adoptive father is fine. 

FATHER’S NAME: Richard Beckett

SIBLINGS: Cassidy Beckett

PETS: All of his friend’s pets are his pets.

FAVORITE PLACE: The beach in the evening, when not many people are there.

FAVORITE ANIMALS: ALL THE ANIMALS

FAVORITE BOOKS: Love is a Mixtape by Rob Sheffield, and Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski

FAVORITE MOVIES: Gone With the Wind, Dumb and Dumber, The Prestige 

FAVORITE MUSIC: Oldies. Pretty much anything from the 60s, 70′s, and 80′s.

FAVORITE FOOD: Sushi, Traditional Ramen, and Pizza.

QUIRKS

ARE THEY RIGHT OR LEFT HANDED?: Right handed

WHAT’S A WORD THAT’S ALWAYS ON THEIR LIPS?: Some version of the word “fuck” lol!

WHAT LANGUAGES DO THEY SPEAK?: English, some Italian, some Japanese.

DO THEY CURSE?: Is the sky blue?

WHAT’S THEIR WORST HABIT(S)?: Picking off fingernail polish, and cracking knuckles. Oh, probably drugs too, but.

DO THEY DRINK OR SMOKE? HOW FREQUENTLY?: Drink yes, Smoke yes - but mostly weed. Every day pretty much with at least weed.

ARE THEY AN EARLY BIRD OR A NIGHT OWL?: Night owl.

HOW TIDY IS THEIR ROOM?: OCD clean.

HOW LONG TO THEY USUALLY TAKE GETTING READY?: He can take anywhere from one minute, to half an hour depending on the occasion.

[scotianostra]

On October 22nd 1989 Ewan MacColl, the multi-talented, socialist, folk singer-songwriter and playwright, died.

Now and again I post about Anglo-Scots, those born over the border in the home of our closest neighbours England, McColl is a man who was proud of his Scottish heritage, there is no doubt, but there is no doubt he took much from his upbringing in Salford, most evident in the song about the city Dirty old Town. 

Ewan was born as James Henry Miller on 25th January 1915 to William Miller and Betsy (née Henry). William, an iron moulder and trade unionist, had to leave Scotland after being blacklisted at every foundry in Scotland, one of them being the Carron Ironworks at Falkirk, that crops up in my posts now and then.

Ewan  left school in 1930 after an elementary education, during the Great Depression and, joining the ranks of the unemployed, began a lifelong programme of self-education whilst keeping warm in Manchester Central Library. During this period he found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer.

In 1932 the British intelligence service, MI5, opened a file on MacColl, after local police asserted that he was "a communist with very extreme views" who needed "special attention” For a time the Special Branch kept a watch on the Manchester home that he shared with his first wife, Joan Littlewood. MI5 caused some of MacColl's songs to be rejected by the BBC, and prevented the employment of Littlewood as a BBC children's programme presenter.

Inspired by the example of Alan Lomax, who had arrived in Britain and Ireland in 1950, and had done extensive fieldwork there, MacColl also began to collect and perform traditional ballads. Some of you might remember my post  Come All Ye Tramps And Hawkers from the Lomax archive a few weeks ago, he was a  folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker.

More well known by most as a singer, MacColl was also an actor, writer and playwright  To put him into some sort of  importance  George Bernard Shaw said of him in 1947, “Apart from myself, MacColl is the only man of genius writing for the theatre in Britain today., fine praise indeed. 

MacColl recorded a huge volume of traditional Scottish and English folk songs, as well as creating a vast body of his own work, which ranged from satirical protest songs to tender love ballads, the latter most popularly renowned in his composition, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, written for his wife, Peggy Seeger (another folk singer), but made most famous by Roberta Flack. His songs have been sung by the likes of  the Dubliners, Dick Gaughan, The Clancy Brothers, Elvis Presley,  Johnny Cash, David Gray and The Pogues.

Back to my favourite song by Ewan MacColl,  Dirty Old Town, it’s not about Dublin, as many believe but Salford, because the Dubliners made it famous I think that’s where the confusion comes from. 

Ewan must have been very proud of his daughter the late Kirsty MacColl, who followed on from her dad as a singer songwriter.

In 1979 he suffered the first of many heart attacks. The next ten years saw a steady deterioration in his physical condition, but he continued to work, tour, lecture and write songs. In 1980 he wrote his last play, The Shipmaster, the moving story of a sailing ship captain who cannot adapt to the coming of steam. In 1987 he began to write his autobiography, Journeyman. In the same year the University of Exeter presented him with an honorary degree. On October 22nd 1989, he died of complications following a heart operation. The University of Salford awarded him a posthumous honorary degree in 1991.

I’ve chosen The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie today as it is the first song I learnt and sang while still at primary school

If you want to know more about the man, his music and lots more check out the web page dedicated to Ewan here http://www.ewanmaccoll.co.uk/ewan-maccoll-biography/

[betsypaige22]

Hmmm.  Based on the description of the tv series, it sounds like a pretty cool show - and Bobby would have been perfect for it)

Life on Mars tells the fictional story of Sam Tyler (John Simm), a policeman in service with the Greater Manchester Police (GMP). After being hit by a car in 2006, Tyler awakens in 1973 to find himself working for a predecessor of the GMP, the Manchester and Salford Police, at the same station and location as in 2006. Early on in the series, it becomes apparent to Tyler that he awakes as a Detective Inspector, one rank lower than his 2006 rank of Detective Chief Inspector. As part of the Criminal Investigation Department, Tyler finds himself working under the command of Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister).

Throughout the two series, the plot centres on the ambiguity concerning Tyler's predicament and the lack of clarity, to both the audience and the character, whether he has died, become comatose, or actually travelled back in time.[4]

ROBERT Carlyle has revealed a career low — snubbing a top role in cop drama Life On Mars.

The Trainspotting star, 58, told how he and actor pal Ray Winstone, 62, were lined up to play tough 1970s detective Gene Hunt and time traveller colleague Sam Tyler.

But he pulled out due to 11th hour doubts, with Philip Glenister, 56, and John Simm, 48, instead bagging the parts in the BBC favourite.

Glaswegian Carlyle said: “I wish I’d done Life On Mars because I liked the show.

“That was an offer and I was thinking about it.

"They were great and they said, ‘Look, you could play either of these parts’.

[latestinbollywood]

Paul Ryder Wife, Son, Death, Age, Wiki, Ethnicity, Net Worth & More

Paul Ryder Wife:- Paul Ryder was an English musician. He was also a bass player and a founding member of the Manchester band Happy Monday. He was also an active member of the band throughout most of its history. He had a brother named Shaun Ryder, who is also a musician. He also starred in several films such as The Ghosts of Oxford Street, and Losing It, and gave a critically acclaimed performance in the film about his band, 24 Hour Party People. In this blog, you can read all about Paul Ryder's Wife, Son, Death, Age, Wiki, Ethnicity, Net Worth & More.

Paul Ryder Death, Cause of Death

English musician Paul Ryder passed away on 15 July 2022 at the age of 58 years in England, United Kingdom. His cause of death is never mentioned anywhere.

Paul Ryder's Wife, Son

Now we are talking about his marital status. He was a married man. He got married to Angela Smith. His wife's more details are not known. He had a son with his wife Angela Smith named Chico Ryder.

He had a son with his wife Angela Smith named Chico Ryder.

Paul Ryder Age, Wiki

Paul Ryder was 58 years old as of 2022. He was born on 24 April 1964. He took birth in Little Hulton, Salford, Lancashire, England. Paul's zodic sign was Taurus. Paul's religion was Christian. He was a well-educated man. He graduated but college details are not known. His school name was also not known.

Paul Ryder  Ethnicity,  Nationality

Paul Ryder holds  British nationality. His ethnicity was not known.

Paul Ryder's Net Worth

Paul Ryder was a well-known American stand-up comedian, actor, television producer, and podcaster. His net worth was approx $2 million. 

Paul Ryder Social Media

Instagram Twitter FAQ About Paul Ryder Q.1 Who was Paul Ryder? Ans. Paul Ryder was an English musician. Q.2 How old was Paul Ryder? Ans. Paul Ryder was 58 years old as of death. Q.3 When was Paul Ryder born? Ans. Paul Ryder was born on 24 April 1964. Read Also: Chico Ryder Wiki Read the full article

[jimsturgessnews]

Actor Jim Sturgess, recently seen in BBC drama Hard Sun with Agyness Deyn, divides his time between Hollywood movies and songwriting. He talks to The Cork about constantly getting beaten up, the similarities between film and music, and swapping his skateboard T-shirts for a bespoke English Cut suit. As a fixture on the red carpet at Hollywood film premieres, Jim Sturgess has had to get used to being decked out by brands. “I remember the first time I got put in a suit,” the Wandsworth-born actor recalls. “I got on my bike the next day and delivered it back to them. They were like, ‘No, no, it’s yours, you can have it.’ I was like, ‘Are you joking?’” Even now, selecting from English Cut’s vast menu is a novel experience for someone accustomed to choosing from a rail of off-the-peg suits. “It’s like ordering a salad in America,” he says of the bespoke process, speaking like a man who spends extended periods of time in health-conscious Los Angeles for work. “You have a million options: do you want three buttons or two? I got quite into it. You start off thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t mind.’ Then you go, ‘Actually, let me see what pleated trousers look like … ’” After chewing it over, Sturgess settled on a rustic dark green. “I have a load of black and grey suits, so it was a chance to create something a bit different,” he explains. “It’s got a sort of tweed feel, a bit boxier than I’d typically go for … I’m sounding like a pro now, aren’t I?” His self-conscious laugh betrays that tailoring is not his, well, strong suit. “I live in Dickies trousers and a pair of white canvas shoes,” confesses the fresh-faced 39-year-old, who could comfortably pass for a twentysomething and still dresses, by his own admission, like a teenage skateboarder, even if he no longer actually skates in the park like he did when he was a teenager growing up in Surrey. “I sort of still think that I do, but I don’t,” he says. “Last year, I was messing around on my board, and I fell off and really hurt myself. Like, it hurt and hurt for a long time. You start to learn the hard way that your body’s not the same as it once was. Plus I have to go and throw myself around and get beaten up for work. You get injuries, and it makes life pretty difficult.” “You have a million options: do you want three buttons or two? I got quite into it. You start off thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t mind.’ Then you go, ‘Actually, let me see what pleated trousers look like’” Sturgess does seem to have a history of being on the receiving end of on-screen violence, from 2008 thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking, in which he played a British agent infiltrating the IRA, with Sir Ben Kingsley as his handler, to 2016 US TV series Feed the Beast, in which he played a Bronx chef with David Schwimmer as his fellow restaurateur. “I’ve got a punchable face,” Sturgess quips. “I suppose I’m attracted to stories that have an edge. Now I just assume that’s what acting is: getting beaten up.” Most recently, he was punched in the face by model-slash-actress Agyness Deyn – with a brass knuckle – for Hard Sun. (She learnt Israeli special forces fighting system Krav Maga for the role.) Written by Neil Cross, the scribe behind Idris Elba series Luther, the pre-apocalyptic BBC series stars Sturgess and Deyn as police detectives who inadvertently uncover a government-level conspiracy to conceal the inconvenient truth that the sun is going to destroy the Earth in five years. As knowledge of impending doom becomes more widespread, the fabric of society begins to unravel. At the time of writing, Sturgess has been selling Hard Sun to audiences in America. “They get bombarded with a lot of regal stuff, and they have a particular idea of what England looks like and sounds like,” he says. “It’s nice to show another side of London – a bit more contemporary.” Less like, say, 2008’s Tudor period drama The Other Boleyn Girl, where he played the brother of Natalie Portman’s Anne and Scarlett Johansson’s Mary, with Eric Bana as Henry VIII. Besides, Hard Sun is “very international”, even if it’s set in the UK: “If you live on this planet, you’re definitely involved.” Hard Sun also involved Sturgess wearing a suit every day, something he’d usually only do on special occasions. “It killed the joy,” he says. “I remember going to the Baftas, so I got out of one suit that I’d been wearing for months and put on another. Normally I’m pretty scruffy, so to put on a suit is quite a big change. It’s nice to put something on occasionally and feel a bit … You just feel different in a suit, don’t you?” Sturgess feels different whenever he gets into costume for a role. “It’s when the character comes alive, when you put on his clothes and the shoes that he wears,” he says. “It’s your identity. When you put on a different pair of shoes, you feel like a different version of yourself. So it’s really not until you put the costume on, clothes that you’ve specifically chosen to represent the character, that you understand, ‘OK, this is who he is.’” It’s surprising to hear that it all comes together at that late a stage, albeit after much planning and research. “Yeah, for sure,” insists Sturgess. “It’s always a very exciting moment, actually, when you go, ‘All right, there he is. That’s the way he’s going to look.’” One of Sturgess’s most sartorially memorable roles was the one furthest removed from any semblance of fashion: 2010’s The Way Back, inspired by the memoir of a Polish officer who claimed to have escaped from a Siberian gulag during WWII and trekked 4,000 miles across the Himalayas to British India. (A 2006 Radio 4 documentary questioned the veracity of the account, although there is evidence that someone did do the walk – just not the author.) “One of the great things that the survival expert told us was that you would never throw anything away,” remembers Sturgess. “So you wouldn’t get rid of your jacket, even in the desert – you’d cut it up and wear it as a headband.” Sturgess went straight from that to 2011’s One Day, the adaptation of the then-unavoidable David Nicholls novel with the instantly recognisable orange cover. Over the course of two decades of on-off romance with Anne Hathaway’s Emma, his character Dexter graduates from student to successful 90s TV personality. “Suddenly I’m in a tight pair of leather trousers and a giant jacket,” Sturgess laughs. “You couldn’t feel more different. And the clothes definitely navigate those feelings.” Those feelings were more combative in the case of London Fields, the adaptation of the Martin Amis novel also starring Billy Bob Thornton, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, which has been trapped in legal limbo since 2015 after the director sued the producers for allegedly releasing their own cut (panned by the few critics who saw it). Sturgess played petty criminal and pub darts virtuoso Keith Talent, covered in tattoos and a grimy beard that made him feel “a bit tastier than I probably was”. This nearly proved disastrous when someone almost ran him over in a car: “I got really aggressive with him, and quickly realised that he was double my size.” Still, at least he’s used to being beaten up. Sturgess’ own sartorial identity was influenced by American skateboarding culture. “Certainly, when I was in my teenage years, I was very skateboard-heavy in my fashion,” he says. “And now most people look like skateboarders. It blows my mind that the standard footwear is a pair of Vans. Because when I was younger only someone who was into skateboarding would wear Vans.” He’s similarly bemused that lowly streetwear brands have ascended to the height of fashion, and that kids now queue round the block and overnight for the latest product drop at the Supreme store he used to wander into when it was just a skate shop. At the same time though, he totally gets it. “I remember my mum trying to put me into a pair of shoes that weren’t Converse All Stars,” he says. “They looked exactly the same, and they’d probably be way cooler now, but I was mortified. I was like, ‘No, they have to be Converse.’ My mum was like, ‘But they’re too expensive. These one look exactly the same – they’ve even got a star.’ And I was in tears: ‘Mum, you don’t understand. I can’t wear these to school: I’ll get crucified.’” The other major key to Sturgess’s wardrobe choices was music. He started a band when he was 15, singing and playing bongos in pubs despite being under-age. When school and the band finished, he went to the University of Salford to study media and performance, and be closer to the Manchester music scene. “There were a lot of jackets done up to the top and desert boots,” he says. “I miss that different kinds of music were so influential in the way people dressed. It was almost like a gang mentality: you’d have mods, you’d have rockers, you’d have two-tone … And now everyone looks roughly the same. But maybe that’s because I’m just hanging out with 40-year-old men. I don’t know.” Sturgess was as obsessed with films growing up as he was records. “Even at school, drama and music were the two things I was interested in,” he says. His uni course taught him scriptwriting, editing and theatre production as well as acting; he wrote and performed a one-man show called Buzzin’ that brought him to the attention of an agent, who encouraged him to move to London. Instead of kickstarting his acting career, he got into the Camden music scene and started a band called Saint Faith, taking bit parts in TV and ads to pay the rent. When they broke up, Sturgess was cast in 2007’s Across the Universe, a film musical based on Beatles songs and a perfect fit for his skill set. The common thread between music and acting is creativity and, perhaps not obviously in the latter’s case, self-expression. “It’s interesting because they’re very similar and totally opposite at the same time,” says Sturgess. “When you’re writing and playing music, it’s completely you, naked and bare; when you’re acting, you’re pretending to be somebody else. But you use your own emotions and life experiences to try and relate to the character. At the same time, people behind a microphone are playing some sort of a character. They might tell you that they’re not, but there is a level of performance that isn’t you while you’re just sitting with your mum and dad having a roast dinner.” Sturgess describes his diversion into acting as “circumstantial”; even now that he’s a star, music remains a big part of his life. “I’ve got a little studio at home, and then a lot of my friends are musicians,” he says. Over the years and the various bands, he’s amassed a vast quantity of unreleased material; he’s just now really putting his mind to doing something that might actually get out there. “I just want to finish a cohesive record that kind of has a beginning, a middle and an end,” he says. “Not just a load of scratchy demos that are all just lying around that could potentially grow into something great.” Songwriting inspiration can strike Sturgess in different ways. “Sometimes it’s just a thought,” he says. “Sometimes you’ll be messing around on the guitar and a little melody comes into your head, but you have no idea what the song’s about. Sometimes it’s lyrics: you build a song around the words first. Sometimes you can hear a drum loop, someone starts messing around with some melodies and then you just start singing on top.” Either way, it tends to be followed by a great deal more perspiration: “the grinding bit”. Sometimes Sturgess will know from the first page of a script how he’ll play a character – and sometimes not. “I’ve been offered things and I’m like, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me to do this,’” he admits. “And that’s always quite exciting because it’s out of your comfort zone. You have to build a character, and change the way you speak and move.” For that, he accesses a database being constantly compiled. “Sometimes you’ve got a character in your head that you’d love to find a story for, and then you read something and go, ‘I could put that into this,’” he says. “Or you’ve noticed somebody on the Tube: ‘That’s interesting, the way he is.’ Then you read something and go, ‘I could use a bit of that.’” Getting noticed on the Tube is not something that Sturgess has to worry about – not even on buses with a picture of his face on the side. “Nobody’s that interested, really, so it’s very grounding,” he says. “In LA, people are very excited about movies, it’s an city built around the movie industry, and actors are kind of the commodity of that industry. So you feel a bit of treatment that you definitely don’t get when you come home.” London brings him back down to earth with a bump: “I’m very quickly getting knocked over on the Underground.” He tells an anecdote about a foreign tourist at King’s Cross who kept saying to him, “You’re a star, you’re a star.” Turned out she was looking for the Eurostar. That probably has more to do with Sturgess’s down-to-earthness than any lack of profile. Certainly, though, his flight path has brought him into the orbit of some massive stars. Like Tom Hanks, his co-star on 2012’s Cloud Atlas, who Sturgess describes as “the nicest guy you could possibly imagine” (exactly how you’d imagine him, then). “He took it on himself to organise a movie night every Sunday at his apartment in Berlin,” Sturgess says. “He’d order loads of food and put out the word to the cast and crew. And we’d all pile round there, hungover from Saturday night, to sit on his couch and watch movies.” Hanks would also talk with Sturgess about music: “He knew quite a lot about hip-hop.” Ed Harris, his co-star on The Way Back, is another. “He was one of the first actors that I worked with who I was so in awe of, and who became a friend, which was amazing,” says Sturgess. “He really took me under his wing, we bonded and we’ve stayed in touch ever since.” A surreal scene ensued in a hotel in New Orleans where the pair were working together for a second time, on 2017’s Geostorm. “We bumped into Billy Bob Thornton, who I’d just done a film with in London, in the foyer of the hotel,” says Sturgess. “We were in an elevator – a lift – and I introduced Ed Harris to Billy Bob Thornton. And I was just standing in the middle of two of the coolest dudes I know.” Sturgess doesn’t know what the future holds, beyond the release of two films that he shot after Hard Sun. The first, JT Leroy, is the strange but true story of a woman, played by Laura Dern, who writes a fictional memoir in the persona of a 15-year-old boy. When it becomes a literary sensation, she convinces the younger sister of her boyfriend, played by Kristen Stewart and Sturgess respectively, to masquerade as the non-existent male author – for six years. The second, Berlin, I Love You, is an anthology of 10 romantic stories set in the German capital and the latest in the series that began with 2006’s Paris Je T’’Aime; Dame Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley grace the ensemble cast. “It always surprises you,” Sturgess says of his fluid profession. “Which I quite like. What’s going to happen next? What sort of story am I going to be involved in telling?” Back in his normal “scruffy” clothes, he blends into the Chiltern Street foot traffic like a chameleon, just another anonymous extra in the movies of everyone else’s lives.  (credit)

[lapsa-lapsa]

Rob James-Collier: Oh, You Handsome Devil!

As Downton Abbey's hot gay villain, Rob James-Collier finds love -- and redemption.

BY

AARON HICKLIN

THU, 2013-01-03 09:04

Photography by David Bailey

Styling by Julian Ganio

Last March, when The New Yorker’s Ian Crouch declared an “epidemic of Downton Abbey fever,” he wasn’t wrong. The show has been nothing short of a phenomenon, a runaway success for dowdy old PBS, far outpacing in ratings that other popular period drama, Mad Men. It’s a classic tale of love and fortune with a fundamental mystery at its core, namely: How can something this schlocky be this good? Maybe it has something to do with its formula, equal parts high class to high camp (yes, Dame Maggie Smith, we’re looking at you); or its bucolic English setting; or, more likely, its blatant appeal to our closeted hankering for a butler fully versed in the art of decanting vintage port. After all is said and done, who has not wished that they, too, could be in the position to declare, like the Dowager Countess with her imperious mix of disdain and perplexity, “What is a week-end?”

Indeed, what is a weekend without Downton Abbey to cozy up with on Sunday nights? And here it is, back again to keep winter from the door—season 3, and with it the Roaring Twenties to blow away the agony of war and the insult of rationing. Expect flappers and the Charleston, and a Marcel wave or two.

Let me come clean: I haven’t seen a preview of season 3 -- in my home that would be cheating; it’s what we still call appointment TV -- but I have it on great authority that this is the season in which that villainous gay footman-turned-valet, Thomas Barrow, experiences the tender love that his poor, neglected heart so craves and needs. It’s about time. His dalliance with the Duke of Crowborough in the opening episode of season 1 turned out to be a tease. He ended season 2 in the arms of the Dowager Countess, twirling around the dance floor at the Christmas party like a neuter content to spend his prime escorting ladies of a certain age to the ball.

We should have known that creator and writer Julian Fellowes would not disappoint. Season 3 is where it all changes for young Thomas. And for us, too. Although there clearly were gay men in Edwardian England, they’ve been in scant supply on television. There was, of course, Sebastian and Charles in Brideshead Revisited, whose “naughtiness [was] high on the catalogue of grave sins,” as Evelyn Waugh wrote, but they merely hinted at what happened when the lights were off. Thomas promises to go somewhat further. It’s what makes Downton Abbey feel, well, modern.

No one, of course, is more excited by this turn of events than Rob James-Collier, the actor who secured the role of Thomas with the understanding that it was a one-season deal. “My agent said, ‘Listen, you’ve got the part that everyone in town wants—he’s a villain, he’s a great role, the only bad thing is that he dies at the end of the first series,’ ” recalls James-Collier. But Thomas clicked with the audience, and his on-screen chemistry with his maid counterpart, O’Brien (a wonderfully surly Siobhan Finneran), was irresistible. “I gave it 110 percent, and after the first couple of episodes, Liz, the producer, came to me and said, ‘We want you to stay on. Will you?’ And I was, like, ‘Fuck, yeah.’ ”

We are in Bloomsbury, London, sitting in a tiny French patisserie hardly big enough to contain James-Collier’s boundless energy. When he walks in, he immediately begins by quoting lines from articles of mine that he’s found online. It’s discombobulating. Research is my job. At another point, he puts me on the phone with a friend summoned to serve as a character reference. I feel like a luckless audience member at a comedy show, plucked from the front row as a volunteer for a gag. When I accidentally insert a “Smith” into his surname (it’s that damn hyphenate), he is gleeful as hell. “Aaron has got my name wrong, and he’s now floundering, trying to think of it,” he dictates into my recorder.

That double-barreled name, incidentally, was not his choice. He grew up in Salford, near Manchester, as plain Rob Collier, and might have stayed that way had actors union Equity not intervened to avoid confusion with another Rob Collier. “I said, ‘Can I have Rob James Collier, and they said, ‘Yeah, if you hyphenate it,’ and I said, ‘Well, can I have Rob-James Collier?’ and they said -- and this is true -- ‘No, you have to hyphenate the James and the Collier.’ ” He wasn’t happy. In England, hyphenated surnames are for posh people. “I was, like, ‘That sounds like someone from the aristocracy, as if I’m being somebody I’m not.’ But they insisted,” he recalls ruefully. In Britain, still today, there’s little more disreputable than the man or woman who puts on the airs and graces of the upper class.

I went to school with boys like James-Collier. You probably did, too. They are the entertainers and comedians, who laugh at their own pratfalls. What they lack in confidence they make up for in banter. It’s no surprise to hear that James-Collier is the joker on set, and the one with the loudest mouth. “Most actors are really shy and insular creatures,” he explains. “I’ve just always been a dick.” He remembers his first day at acting class (he found it by consulting the Yellow Pages), and realizing that he’d liberated himself. “We were doing these warm-up exercises, running around doing crazy things with our voices, and, rather than feeling stupid, I just felt that I’d come home,” he says. He was working as a marketing assistant at the time, “listening to Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon -- great album, bad album to listen to if you’re in a rut, ticking away the hours that make up a dull day.” Watching Ricky Gervais’s masterwork, The Office, compounded his sense of futility. “It was my office,” he says. “I thought, I can’t do this for the rest of my life, surely?”

Oddly, that is the same dilemma facing Thomas Barrow, shackled to servitude as a footman at Downton Abbey, always looking for an opportunity to elevate his station in life -- and failing. His pitiful efforts to establish a black market in rationed goods during season 2 spoke volumes about the limitations confronting Britain’s working class in the Edwardian era. It’s moments like those that save Downton Abbey from being merely an exercise in sumptuous costume porn.

If you grew up in Britain, as I did, the world of Downton Abbey is a familiar one, conjured in an endless parade of finely wrought television shows, which we send across the oceans like telegraphs from our gilded past. Some of them, like 1981’s 11-hour miniseries, Brideshead Revisited, which introduced Jeremy Irons to the world, or 1995’s six-episode serialization of Pride and Prejudice, which did the same for Colin Firth, strike gold. Few, however, receive quite the rapturous reception of Downton Abbey. The reason, perhaps, is fairly simple: Although Downton wears the clothes (and production values) of quality drama, it has the soul of a soap opera. As my boyfriend likes to say, it’s very efficient, meaning that things happen at lightning speed. Resolutions come thick and swift, which is all part of the pleasure.

Fellowes himself takes credit for modernizing the format by borrowing his style from U.S. shows like The West Wing, but it’s also that the concerns of the show are discernibly our concerns, albeit in Edwardian costume. For James-Collier, “Downton Abbey is a workplace like any other. You’re going to get cliques of people who don’t like each other -- Thomas and O’Brien versus Bates and Anna -- and you’re going to get people who really love doing their jobs and people who are bitter and feel they’re just a number. It’s about relationships in the workplace environment, and people can identify with that because the same problems and political conflicts you have in work today were relevant back then.”

Coincidentally or otherwise, almost all the actors who play servants in Downton Abbey got their start in English soap operas -- gritty exercises in social realism, fully rooted in working-class culture. The oldest of those shows, Coronation Street -- set in Manchester -- has run continuously for 52 years, and nurtured generations of acting talent. James-Collier arrived on the series in 2006, as  “loveable rogue” Liam Connor, and stayed for two years before deciding he wanted to take on a different kind of challenge.

“It’s a great, brilliant show, but you have to make a decision,” he says. “I’m not knocking anyone for going that way [of soap operas] -- you can get security, and God knows we need that, but I think you’re limited then in terms of your options as an actor.” After Coronation Street, he was out of work for 15 months, waiting for the right thing to come along. “I watched people who had left these kinds of shows and had seen what happened,” he says. “So I knew you had to literally put the shutters down and just pray and hope that something would come along, and when the wolves were near the door, Downton Abbey came.”

James-Collier has joked that his character’s sexuality became so muted in season 2 that he called up Fellowes and asked, “Am I still gay?” Yes, it turns out. In season 3, we get to see Thomas outed in a powerful sequence of episodes that James-Collier considers the best acting of his career. “It’s the series where we really comes to grips with Thomas’s sexuality and the impact being gay must have had on him, in Edwardian times,” he says. “If you’re including a gay character, there’s an onus and responsibility to at least show what the impact of the time will be on him, and of him on that time. Thankfully we’ve done that, and I’m so proud that I’ve been used to tell that tale.”

A confrontation between Thomas and the butler, Mr. Carson, proves to be a high point, and one that confers uncommon dignity on the footman. “It’s a lovely, beautiful moment,” says James-Collier, clearly delighted by the opportunity to redeem his character. “If you were gay in those times, the fact that you’re even functioning, how you’re not completely fucked up by that, is beyond me.”

Although not gay in real life, he says he has empathy for misfits and outsiders, perhaps because of his own atypical route to acting. Even now it’s clear that he can’t quite believe that he’s earned his place as an actor. He recalls sitting opposite Maggie Smith during the first read-through (“a proper pinch-yourself moment”) and feeling that everything out of his mouth sounded like wooden splinters. It can’t be easy playing the least lovable character on the show. When she arrived on set, guest star Shirley MacLaine greeted him with the words, “It’s you -- the evil one! Why are you so evil?” The answers, apparently, are all in season 3. “With O’Brien and Thomas, you’ve got these two forces, and it’s a kind of paradox -- they work for this great house that keeps them off the streets and from starving, and yet they absolutely despise the system they’re in, because there’s no other option,” he says. “In a weird way Thomas wants to bring down the system, but if he did he’d be putting himself out of a job and a home.”

As he was talking, I remembered something: My own grandmother, now 92, had started her working life “in service” as they say, at the age of 14, still a child herself. That would have been in the 1930s -- the same era as Julian Fellowes other big country–house hit, Gosford Park, for which he won a best original screenplay Oscar in 2002. At the time my grandmother went into service, her father was ill and her mother was struggling to hold things together. “It was an awful wrench to leave my sisters and brothers at home, but it was one less pair of shoes under the table,” she explains when I ask about her experiences. My grandmother, a country girl, didn’t work in the big house (as one of her sisters did), but for a doctor’s family, where she was excruciatingly lonely.

“I think that’s the reason I got married so young -- to get out of it,” she says. “I did all the cooking and all the cleaning, and had one half day off a week, and a whole day off once a month.”

“No weekends, then?” I ask.

“Oh, there were no weekends,” she says, conjuring Maggie Smith’s glorious bafflement in season 1. It is to Downton Abbey’s credit that this stark double meaning isn’t entirely lost on the audience, or that the disparity between those upstairs and those downstairs isn’t varnished into oblivion. It’s left to us to imagine how people of O’Brien’s resourcefulness or Thomas’s ambition would fare in our own age, but one thing’s certain—they wouldn’t be spending their weekends polishing the silver.

https://www.out.com/entertainment/television/2013/01/03/rob-james-collier-downton-abbey