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Interview with John Whittington

At what age would you say that acting was the career you wanted to pursue?

I’d probably say when I was very young, between the ages of 2-3 I used to watch a lot of TV with a lot of different actors in American and British films and that’s when I thought to myself “that is something that I want to do”.

Where did you learn to act?

It started off at school I suppose when we did the Christmas play at primary school and I was one of the guards who nailed Jesus to the cross and that were quite a big part for me. Then at secondary school there were more and more plays and stuff but there were a lot of bullies who would say “well if you’re going to be in this then we will make your life a misery” and I just thought at the end of the day all I want to do is act and get me lines learnt but I’d never be able to do that in that environment so I never did much at secondary school. Then I moved on to Hillsborough college and applied for a performing arts course at Norton college and got the BTEC diploma and I enjoyed that so much that I went on to do the national diploma and we did all sorts of stuff in that.

What would you say is the most enjoyable part of being an actor?

I’d say bringing a character to life and using your own life experiences to connect with a character, because despite what people may believe you never become that character that character is an extension of you like if you’re playing a teacher and you know someone who’s a teacher you can always go and get tips from them or if you’re playing a guy who’s had an argument with his girlfriend everyone can relate to that and you can then look back and think well how did I feel in that situation and how did I react because you don’t want it to be all over the top as otherwise if it’s just all shouting then there’s no purpose to it.

In contrast, what would you say is the most challenging part of being an actor?

I would say definitely the training, just because when you start off and you may think that looks easy but it’s not. Because what we were told was that you don’t really need to act although that may sound complicated it’s really not you just need to think about how would you say or do whatever you’re being told to do in real life and not go over the top on it. But yeah the training is definitely the most challenging part as there’s still stuff I’m learning to this day.

What would you say is the best project you’ve worked on so far?

I’d probably say the student films I’ve done, as the guys were really great they knew exactly what they wanted, they showed me all the storyboards, we went through beforehand about the scenes we were doing and they talked to me saying this is how we want this and that done. But they also let me input my own personal ideas into the project and we worked well together and I hope the end result is what they wanted.

Was there ever a character you found difficult to portray and if so what was that character?

Id probably say this character I’m working on currently because the story is quite complex and the character is much older than I am and he’s had a lot of different life experiences than I’ve had. While there are a lot of similarities there marginally more differences. The basic story off the character is that the character is quite wealthy and he’s an entrepreneur, so I had to do the research on that too see what a entrepreneur would be like. Also he’s been married and his wife died of cancer and then he cheated on his wife. So id says that this character is rather challenging and there’s obviously been other challenging ones but there’s a lot more research for this character. But in a way I suppose every role can be challenging in a way.

Are there any areas that you feel you could improve in as an actor?

Yeah there are lots of areas but I don’t think you ever stop improving because you always strive to do better, like you’ve got these big actors who have got loads of awards for acting and their always trying to do better with anything it takes practice the moment you start to give up or you start to think I’m good you start to get a bit relaxed and you might get a bit cocky but the fact of the matter is it doesn’t matter what it is in life there’s always stuff you can learn, so I think you should always be training and practicing.

Are there any projects you are working on currently?

At the moment like I said I’m doing the play in drama class is what I’m working on at the moment, there’s a lot of work involved in that and a lot of research and most people just think it’s a matter of reading the play once and figuring out what to do but its not because what we have to do in drama class is fill out a 30 page journal and we have to answer questions like about our character and like what do other characters think about you in reference to my character so you’d have to scan through the script and find quotes about what other characters say about my character. But yeah that’s what I’m currently working on.