It was a repertory theatre set up in a provincial town in 18 months. GAME Of Thrones star Clive Russell has joined Hollyoaks as Jack Osborne’s ex-con brother.
I didn’t have an agent. ‘Of course, the horse took it as a signal to gallop off and did so – but with the actor hanging around his neck screaming.
My career in TV and film was driven by that reality, but I always sought interesting work, whether it was an interesting script, director or just other actors.I’ve been lucky enough to do some good work.
During that decade I worked with the Royal Shake speare Company in a number of plays which was both exciting and terrifying.In a sense, I did not think of myself as an actor; I felt like I was part of a group of people doing good plays about good things. It has all been a glorious surprise. In Canada, we’d been told to “kick ’em up” to get moving, but now it was more like a squeeze, the strength of a handshake.’Clive Russell with Cal Flynn on the beach in St AndrewsOne actor didn’t like being told what to do, Clive recalls, and kicked his horse on hard while filming a sequence outside a castle. But, he says, such excitements are par for the course. I have always been drawn to the sea – it’s good to be back in Fife but still working as an actor.
The good thing is that when you come out of the war in your early twenties, you have the whole world ahead of you. After training in horsemanship for a part in the 1999 film The 13th Warrior – in which he played Norseman Helfdane alongside Antonio Banderas – his roles have repeatedly demanded that he take to the saddle, as Brynden Tully in He is, he warns me before we meet up for a hack along the beach at West Sands at St Andrews, still very much a beginner, albeit a keen one.‘I love the whole experience,’ he says. He won the Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Newcomer in 1986 for a stage performance of Of Mice and Men. GAME OF THRONES star Clive Russell reflected on being cast in the hit HBO series during an appearance on Celebrity Antiques Road Trip tonight. Someone says, ‘Come to the West End’, then people see you in productions and it jumps forward from there.I moved down to London in 1984 with my second wife, a theatre designer with the Young Vic.
If you don’t do that, you don’t get the work. We were an ordinary middle-class family.We lived in a street by the shore, so my life has always been about the sea, about dunes, about the wind.
It took a long time to get accustomed to their style of riding. My horse was 21 hands high – try getting on that in full armour!Being able to ride has helped in many roles since. By the time I was 16 or 17, I was already 6ft 5ins and covered in spots so I was fantastically shy and self-conscious. People are more reserved on the east coast but I have always loved its landscape more.
If you have to do something, you do it. Looking back, we did shows that were quite controversial, educating kids about working-class history and so on.I never expected to go to London and the West End but I was offered a part in Accidental Death of an Anarchist with the company Belts and Braces.
13 Clive Russell: Tallest (6'6'') They tend to be able to ride and they can list it among their skills on their CV.’For other roles he has learnt to ice-skate, to handle and dismantle a gun, and to paint – or at least to hold a paintbrush and approach the canvas like an artist, a harder task than one might think. When I came off stage the teacher said to me: ‘You know something, you’re a born actor.’ I think she was just being encouraging, but I never forgot it.When I was 17 I wanted to be the Open golf champion, play rugby for Scotland, write a novel and be an actor. The only place I felt empowered was on stage. I had a wonderful family home in London and had no plans to come back up to Scotland. I have been in A-List films, but I’m not starry. You can walk from Crail to St Andrews and you’re never more than 100 yards from a golf course, yet it’s so wild you could be on the Isle of Harris. A lot of the time he’s trouble. He was raised in Fife, Scotland and oftens performs with a notable Scottish accent. He played Percy Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. There are also a lot of conspiracy theories. I taught for a year in a small primary school in Leicestershire which had an absolutely inspirational head teacher and I loved it, but an opportunity came up to join the Octagon Theatre in Bolton. But I don’t find it too difficult. You can buy tickets here. In Scotland, I’m more likely to be recognised as Big Yin Innes from Still Game. The idea of distilling thoughts into four or five lines is extraordinary. Now there are none, so it’s changed a lot. ‘They are small in comparison, and very sensitive. Organisers of the Land Rover Blair Castle International Horse Trials have promised that 2021's event will be all the more special after being forced t... Equine students at Scotland’s Rural College will be able to specialise in race horse care as part of their course thanks to the creation of a new Sc... We at Scottish Field endeavour to ensure that all our reports are fair and accurate and comply with the Editors’ Code of Practice set by the