Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My mother was Welsh and I loved going to Wales every summer, where Uncle Les had a farm. My mother had seven brothers and a sister and they were all very close. There would always be food on the table and uncles coming in and out. My father's family were English and lived in London, and we didn't really see them.
I was fired from my first job in New York. I was just out of school, doing the Welsh play, 'The Corn Is Green,' at Equity Library Theater. I was studying with Uta Hagen, and I was really working well, but they got nervous. They wanted results right away. We had a run-through, and I wasn't there yet, so they fired me.
There are four of us, and we were all born in different cities because my dad worked all around the place. We settled in Birmingham, so I spent most of my time growing up there. We were all given very Welsh names - Geraint, Owen, Rhiannon and Gwilym. My mum's called Cainwen, and my dad is somewhat disappointingly called Tom.
It was in Cardiff, and the cast was 60 per cent Welsh-speaking. It's the first time I've walked into a rehearsal room speaking my mother tongue, which in itself was a breath of fresh clean air from the Welsh mountains. Singing Hans Sachs is always a milestone, but I was happy to be part of such an achievement, not personally but as a company.
I was always far more into anything creative that called for a bit of active participation, like reading aloud in class. Then, having left school shortly after my GCSEs, I auditioned for the National Youth Theatre of Wales and the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain as well as the Welsh National Youth Opera. I ended up getting into all three.
