Having been in the entertainment industry now for two months short of 50 years, people ask me who the great actors I have worked with are?
I was asked this a few years ago by a journalist from the Daily Telegraph who was interviewing me enquiring if it was any of the actors I have employed like Anthony Hopkins or Kenneth Branagh or even Lenny Henry.
In a way, being a star is easy.
Do they decide to do this theatre job for £x or that TV job for £xx or a film for £xxx. They are always asked. They rarely audition.
The actors I admire the most are those who find themselves in performing in a work that "is not as good as it should be" and they do it as if it was Shakespeare.
I admire those actors who appear in a theatre production, and after the play receives the worst reviews, they continue night after night, giving it their all.
I admire those actors who appear in a film that has not worked, in any way, but they still turn up to promote it aware of all its faults.
So very often these actors are doing this work for very little money. They do it to the very best of their abilities. They do it because they love it. They do it because they are professionals.
The hardest part of acting for almost all the actors I know is, not the acting, it's the getting by, surviving between the last role and the next.
How dare some cunting journalists job shame actors as they did recently with actor and single mother of two Kate Jarvis who is working as a security guard in between acting jobs to feed her children.
Acting is a noble profession far older than journalism.
Not one of these publications would have job shammed Sir Kenneth Branagh or Sir Anthony Hopkins or Sir Lenny Henry. Of course, they would not. They would not dare.
How dare they do this to jobbing actor.
These so-called journalists are bullies. They pick on those who they think will not fight back - the jobbing actor.
I was so pleased to see that so many of those stars stood up and defended Kate Jarvis, but then they were once like her before that lucky break - a jobbing actor.
