May I Have Your Attention Please?

by James Corden

  Before he left, he made a point of telling me that I was a young guy and, though I hadn’t won tonight, he was sure that my time would come. I also got to speak to Graham Norton, who hosted the awards. I’m sure he’d never remember what he said to me, but it was something I’ve never forgotten. He came over, introduced himself, and told me that the clip they’d showed of me crying had silenced the room and that that, in a roomful of television people, was a real achievement. I was so happy just to be talking to him, let alone receiving compliments from him. The whole night, everything about it, was so different to anything I’d experienced, and yet, at the same time, had some bizarre sense of familiarity, which must have come from me having dreamt of it for so long. Sitting in the back of a big flash car on the way home, I thought about what Rob had said, and hoped he was right; I hoped there would be many more nights like this one.

  CHAPTER 11

  BEST MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT:

  ‘Little Bear’ by Guillemots

  BEST FILM TO WATCH ALONGSIDE:

  any film by Mike Leigh

  BEST ENJOYED WITH:

  a double espresso

  ONE STATISTIC I remember hearing while I was growing up used to worry me quite a lot. It’s this: at any one time, 80 per cent of actors are out of work. That’s a scarily high number. The chances are, if ever you’ve been out to eat or drink in London, one of the people serving you your burger or bringing you your cappuccino will be an actor; for all you or I know, he or she might be the best actor in the world who trained at RADA and is represented by a top agent but, for whatever reason, just hasn’t got the breaks. So much of acting is about luck, being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people. And it’s definitely true that the more you work, the more people you meet, and the more likely you are to get opportunities to work.

  Tiger Aspect are a big production company making many varied television shows, from documentaries and comedies to dramas like Fat Friends. Because I’d worked with them on that show, they asked me if I’d like to audition for a new Channel 4 series called Teachers. It starred Andrew Lincoln of This Life fame and was centred around the lives of a group of young teachers in Bristol. Once again, the fact that I had experience yet still looked like I was a schoolboy played into my hands, and I was offered the part of Jeremy, the class geek. Working with Andrew was a real joy. To this day he still ranks as one of the nicest and warmest people you could ever wish to work with. So encouraging, with the perfect balance of fun and professionalism.

  I made instant, lasting friendships on that job – not just with Andrew but also with the runner, a young guy called Ben Winston. There’s a runner on every production and, for my money, they have the hardest job on the set. It’s utterly thankless: they are the first to arrive on set and are the last to leave; they do everything, for everyone, and yet they’re often treated as irrelevant. They are the worst-paid member of the film crew, but they’re vitally important to the smooth running of the production and, the truth is, anyone who is anyone in film will at one point or another have been a runner. When you first start out, the best way to discover whether you’re cut out for a life in TV – the shitty hours, the time away from home, the unpredictability of where your next job will be – is to become a runner. If you can hack that, then there’s a good chance you’ll be all right. And Ben could hack it – he could hack it ten times over. I’ve never known anyone light up a film set the way he did. Everyone fell in love with him – nobody more than me.

  His job description involved getting tea for anyone who asked for it, bringing sandwiches, carrying messages, standing out in the rain making sure unwanted cars weren’t driving through a shot … Any kind of crappy task you could think of on set – and there are lots of them – he performed not only with good grace, but with a laugh and a smile. To this day Ben was the best runner I’ve ever seen. Clearly, he was head and shoulders above everyone else.

  But more about Ben later, because right now I want to tell you about a call I got that very nearly killed me stone dead. I’d just come off the set of Teachers when my mobile started ringing. It was Jacquie and she was phoning to tell me that she’d arranged an audition with someone I was a fan of. That got me listening.

  ‘Who? Who is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s Mike.’

  ‘Mike. Who’s Mike? Mike who?’

  ‘Mike Leigh.’

  I just stood there holding the phone.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘You mean actually with Mike?’

  ‘Yeah, with Mike.’

  ‘Mike Leigh. You’re talking about the Mike Leigh? Basically my favourite film-maker of all time?’

  ‘That Mike Leigh, James. Yes.’

  How to explain? If you ever passed Mike in the street, you’d barely notice the little guy with dark, smiley eyes, cropped hair and a smallish, Father Christmas-style white beard. He’s so unassuming he looks like a cross between a good-natured hobbit and a monk. The reality is that Mike is probably the purest film-maker on the planet. I know that sounds a bit wanky, but it’s the truth. Acting in his films is the most original, fundamental and raw experience you can have professionally. For months on end you soak yourself in the character you’re about to play and get to learn them inside and out: their thoughts, their instincts, their hopes and aspirations, what they’d eat for breakfast – everything. You essentially become the author of a person. I’ll explain that a little more later; but, right then, when I got Jacquie’s call, I was still in a daze.

  Jacquie told me that she’d taken a call from Nina Gold, who had cast me in Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? Nina was casting Mike’s new film and she wanted me to come in and meet him.

  Mike’s office is in Soho and on the train travelling in, all I could think about was that conversation I’d had with David Thewlis back before the spoon-hummus party. I was trying to remember everything he’d told me about the way Mike works and his approach to acting and characterisation. Not a lot of it was coming back.

  The usual thing you do when you’re going for an audition is to read through the script and familiarise yourself with the part so you can really do it justice when the time comes. But that’s not how it works with Mike. There is no script at the ‘audition’ at that point I don’t think Mike even knows exactly what he’s looking for. It’s the kind of thing that, if you over-think too much, can get very daunting; that sense of a blank page and having nothing to work from but your instincts. But if you look at it another way, it can really free you up. You’re not constrained by lines that must be said in such-and-such a way or dealing with someone else’s creation – the character is entirely yours. You are way more in charge.

  This time, heading into London, I’d left early enough so I could navigate around the strip joints and sex shops in Soho, so as to be sure not to run into Sapphire and Danny. However, when I got to Mike’s office, there was no avoiding the reality – I was right smack-dab in the middle of Soho’s sex trade. The office was on the first floor of a Georgian townhouse and the bell you rang from the street had two other bells alongside it. One was for the place downstairs and the other was for the lady-of-the-night’s pad on the top floor. In Soho, there are plenty of doors with the words ‘Model Upstairs’ printed somewhere discreetly. Here’s a useful piece of tourist advice I can give to anyone visiting London: it probably isn’t a model upstairs. There’s someone up there; it’s just very unlikely she’s an actual model.

  By the time I got upstairs, the nerves had overtaken me a little and I sat down in front of him, still not quite believing I was actually there, and that he was Mike Leigh.

  ‘So,’ he said in his quietly considered way, peering out from his hooded eyes, ‘you were in this programme Fat Friends, then, with Alison?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I was.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think it was very good.’ He studied me. ‘What do you think?’

  Mike is renowned for his no-nonsense honesty, but to be hit with that from the get-go was a little
alarming. I didn’t jump right in. I considered my answer for a bit and told him I could see why he might not like it, but that I was very proud of my bits.

  ‘Really,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen your bits. I’ll have to look them up.’

  I chilled a little after that. We talked about acting and films, about my career and the kind of films I liked. I told him how important I thought films were and that I didn’t have anything more valuable than my DVD collection. A lot of the films in it had been made by him, and I had to make a big effort to stop myself from telling him again and again what kind of influence he’d had on my life.

  I can tell him now, though: the two greatest influences on my working life have been Mike Leigh’s films and The Royle Family series on TV. In different ways they show you that, no matter what you might think or feel about this world, nothing is ordinary. Mike has the ability and talent to show you how people actually live, and make incredibly moving drama and comedy from it. He doesn’t shy away from everyday concerns, or hardship, or even boredom; he manages to find drama and emotion in very normal places. I’m not criticising other glitzier kinds of films for their lack of realness – every movie has its place and I love my Hollywood as much as any man – but it’s the genuine, challenging stuff that has always moved me the most.

  It was an audition of sorts. I was with Mike for about an hour and we did a bit of background work on a character and then Nina came in. Mike told her that he thought I ought to come back again the following Thursday, when I had a day free from filming Teachers.

  Travelling back down to Bristol, I couldn’t get over the fact that I’d just spent the best part of an hour sitting and working with one of my heroes. On Nina’s recommendation Mike had wanted to audition me, and now he wanted to see me again. This was the guy I’d admired all my life, the guy I’d talked about with so many other actors, the director I most wanted to work with.

  When I went back to Soho again the following week, the nerves had gone. It helped that, as I walked up the stairs, I passed an Australian guy who was tucking his shirt in his trousers. ‘Oh strewth, mate!’ he said. ‘Get yourself up there. She’s a ripper!’ He’d clearly had a good time.

  Mike was standing in the doorway on the first floor chuckling to himself at the exchange. We sat down on the sofa in his office and he told me that he’d watched my episode of Fat Friends and, though he thought I was right to be proud of it, he still thought it was an awful show. I wasn’t offended; in fact I appreciated his honesty.

  Mike’s films are entirely about the characters. Prior to their creation nothing exists at all – no story, no plot, no locations; everything takes shape as the characters develop. On that second visit he asked me to think of someone I knew who wasn’t a relation and wasn’t an actor either. Anyone. For whatever reason, Luke Smythson popped into my head, a guy from school who was a massive Leeds United fan. Mike told me he was going to go out of the room for a while and, in my own time, he wanted me to become Luke. He didn’t tell me to do anything specifically, just to ‘become’.

  ‘All I’m going to do is step back into the room and observe,’ he said, ‘all right?’

  ‘Fine. No problem.’

  So for forty minutes I did absolutely nothing. I read a newspaper; I looked out of the window; I stared into space; because that’s what Luke would’ve done. When we finished, Mike asked me to tell him about what had been going on for the last forty minutes. I amazed myself by what I started to say. I explained that I (as Luke) was reading the newspaper because a Leeds fan had just been stabbed in Turkey and the truth of it was that if I’d had more money, I’d have been there for that match, no question. He was nodding, asking a few questions, probing a little deeper, but there wasn’t much more to it than that. We talked a little more and then I left. I didn’t really know what to think other than that I’d really enjoyed the process. I’d had a taste of what it would be like to work with Mike and, difficult as it could be, the organic nature of the work was even more stimulating than I’d imagined.

  It was just before Christmas when I got the phone call telling me Thin Man Films, who make all Mike Leigh’s films, was booking me for eight months. I was absolutely ecstatic; it was a moment I will never, ever forget. I was on the set of Teachers and I remember telling Andrew Lincoln and him giving me the biggest hug. Ben Winston was there and he was jumping around too, celebrating with me.

  It turned out that working with Mike was both brilliant and brutal. It was incredibly hard work, but also extremely rewarding. The truth is, I could write a whole book on the experience and still wouldn’t be able to get across exactly what it was like. It was the most challenging, difficult, lonely, yet fulfilling work I’ve ever done as an actor.

  You start with nothing. Absolutely nothing. Then you and Mike get together in a room and, over time, you fashion this character from birth to the age they’re at in the film. It’s kind of a gamble because you sign up not knowing what you’re going to be doing at all, or how big your part will be. I’ve heard endless stories of actors signing to do a film and ending up with three lines or, worse still, being cut altogether. Fortunately, in my case that didn’t happen. The film was called All or Nothing, and I played Rory, an overweight, angry boy who lives in a high-rise on a council estate.

  If you asked me what Mike Leigh is like, I’d describe him as the nicest, warmest, funniest, most generous arsehole in the world. It’s very, very hard doing his films. You never get any praise. The best you could hope for is a slight purse of the lips and maybe a quiet ‘That was good acting.’

  Ironically, given it was my dream job, I look back on that time with a lot of regrets. Maybe that’s how it is with dream jobs, I don’t know. I was so in awe of Mike that I found it hard to do my best work. When you’re so desperate not to mess something up, that’s all that occupies your mind, and you find yourself second-guessing your instincts and constantly questioning yourself. I find that my best work comes when I’m totally open to screwing a few things up: you accept the mistakes and learn from them. Anyway, whatever it was, I was never myself on that set. I felt out of my depth with the other actors. I didn’t feel intelligent. In fact, compared to everyone else, I felt really stupid; most of the time when we’d sit round a table at lunch, they’d all be talking about things I had no clue about.

  For the first time in my life, the fact that I hadn’t trained professionally suddenly bothered me. Mike would tell us to warm up and send us off into a room on our own so we could get into character. I wouldn’t know what to do. Once, I tried to peer under the door to watch Lesley Manville to see what she did. The really stupid thing is that, if I’d swallowed my pride and told Mike that I needed his help, he’d have given it to me. I lost something out of the experience because I was so uptight about getting it right (or at least being seen to be able to get it right). But saying that, I’m incredibly proud of the film. It’s beautiful. Incredibly bleak, but very beautiful.

  I remember one day – actually, ‘remember’ is the wrong word; it’s a day that’s tattooed on my mind for all eternity. It was only my second day of actual filming, and we were doing a scene between Rory and his mother, Penny, played by Lesley. Rory was an angry kid. I mean really, bitterly angry. So angry that he kicked out at every opportunity. Overweight, friendless, living on a council estate, he was a victim of his own loneliness. And the lonelier he was, the angrier he got, and vice-versa. He was big, ungainly and clumsy. Finally, in the second half of the film, he suffers a heart attack.

  So, we were doing a scene in which Rory and his mum come out of a lift in the high-rise block of flats they live in. This was a real block on a disused estate. The art department managed to create the feeling that the entire block was lived in; every flat we used was fully functional so they all felt like real homes. Everything worked, from the plumbing to the lights to the cookers.

  Rory and his mum had to walk along an open balcony to their front door. Rory goes to open the door, finds it locked and then just loses i
t. He starts banging his fist against the door, banging and banging, then yelling at his sister inside to open it. We had rehearsed this over and over again, the improvisation gradually being scaled down until we all knew exactly how the scene worked. Every gesture and every expression had been practised to the point where they felt as natural as possible and had the sense of authenticity that is the hallmark of all Mike’s films. Only, in my case, it wasn’t quite as authentic as I thought. The line I had was simple: ‘What’s she doing?’ The words were supposed to spill from my mouth like stones – angry, frustrated, totally raw.

  Mike led us into the scene in his usual fashion, which is completely unlike any other: he’ll quietly tell you to get into character and then actually give you the time to do so. Then, after that preparation time, comes the measured sound of ‘Turn over the camera, cameras at speed and … action.’ By the time you start rolling, the entire crew is absolutely focused, working as one cohesive unit.

  So, I’m hammering on the door and Lesley’s telling me to stop but I keep on banging, ignoring her, and then I spit out my line.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘what she’s doing?’

  ‘Cut.’ Mike stopped the cameras. And then he laid into me. Day two of filming and he’s tearing this massive strip off me in front of the whole crew.

  ‘Well!’ he said. ‘What’s “well”? What’re you saying “well” for? Where does that fit? Well’s not right. Well’s not motivated.’ He shook his head and told me to ‘concentrate’. Then he turned to the crew. ‘Sorry, everyone, we’re going to have to go again.’