Curated playlist
National Youth Theatre members
- Kate WinsletKate Winslet pleaded for the part of Rose in James Cameron's Titanic while he still preferred Claire Danes and Gwyneth Paltrow. She told the director that she was Rose, and she could not see why he was seeing anyone else. The plea worked.…
- Ed SheeranEd Sheeran bought a thirty-pound guitar two days after hearing Eric Clapton. He was eleven years old.
- Orlando BloomOrlando Bloom was named after Orlando Gibbons, an English composer of the 16th century. He was born in Canterbury, Kent, on the 13th of January 1977. Nothing about that start pointed toward a screen career. Some consider him the Errol…
- Daniel Day-LewisDaniel Day-Lewis collapsed sobbing during a 1989 Hamlet, in the scene where the ghost of Hamlet's father appears.
- Daniel CraigIn 2021, the English actor Daniel Craig was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It sits at 7007 Hollywood Boulevard, an address that winks at the code number 007. Two days later his final film as that famous spy opened in the…
- Rosamund PikeRosamund Pike, the English actress and producer, was turned down by every stage school she applied to. She went on to win a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress. Between those two points lies a career built on women who are hard to…
- Taron EgertonTaron Egerton learned to play the piano for his role as Elton John in the 2019 film Rocketman. He also sang live in every take, rather than miming to a recording. That is a demanding brief for any actor. Egerton, a Welsh performer born in…
- Helen MirrenDame Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Mironoff on the 26th of July 1945, at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in the Hammersmith district of London. Neither the first name nor the surname on that record would last. The woman who…
- Ben KingsleyBen Kingsley turned down an offer to become a pop star in 1966. He auditioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company instead.
- Idris ElbaIdris Elba spent a night locked alone in a cell on Robben Island. He did it to prepare to play Nelson Mandela.
- Jamie Campbell BowerJamie Campbell Bower once needed up to eight hours of make-up work in a single day to become Vecna, the monstrous villain of the Netflix series Stranger Things. The man beneath the prosthetics is an English actor, singer, and guitarist. He…