![]() In the film, his character Vinnie gets a refresher lesson in creative integrity from a teenage drummer with autism who is applying to music school. “So, when you talk about drawing on these experiences, yeah.” “A lot of my peers didn’t achieve, didn’t buy houses and cars.” A lot of them now have mental health problems and addictions. Besides, plenty of his mates in music never made it. ![]() Still, he could relate to Vinnie’s frustrations: the “compare and despair … I remember that time for myself,” he says. Since then, his career has rocketed, with parts in Game of Thrones, superhero flick Deadpool, the Transporter franchise and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. Skrein started acting when Plan B cast him in a short film, which led to a role in the rapper’s 2012 movie Ill Manors. Still, there was a sense of failure: “The crushing feeling of not achieving what you had projected to the world that you were gonna do.” He taught swimming to children at the local sports centre – a “legit, normal job”, which he loved. “You can’t support a kid with it,” he laughs. ![]() There’s no money in underground music.” By that point he had a baby. Then came an epiphany in the cold light of his late 20s: “OK: this is the reality. He dreamed of becoming an underground sensation, a breakout performer “with integrity”. He’d paint by day and hang out at the recording studio by night, where his mate, rapper Plan B (AKA Ben Drew), was writing an album. Knuckling down, he enrolled on a BA in fine art at Central Saint Martins. After falling in with the wrong crowd, at 17 Skrein was stabbed in a knife attack that put him in hospital with a collapsed lung. “I’ve been on a couple of journeys.” Which is a bit of an understatement. “I’m going to be 40 next year,” he says, stroking his chin. ![]() Like the character he plays, Skrein has turned his life around more than once. Photograph: Christopher Murray Holt/Netflix Director Eddie Sternberg with Leo Long and Ed Skrein, filming I Used to Be Famous. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |