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'I'd like to thank amateur theatre'. The British actors who went from am-dram to Oscar glory

We’ve seen them starring in high-budget films, treading the boards at the National Theatre and strolling down the Oscars red carpet. But for these stars, their fame and prestige can be traced back to the more humble trappings of amateur theatre.

As part of the BBC's On Stage theatre season, MOLLY TRESADERN delves into the past of eight Oscar nominated - and Oscar winning - British actors and actresses, revealing their journeys from amateur dramatics to the Academy Awards.

Dame Judi Dench

Oscar nominations: Philomena, Notes on a Scandal; Mrs Henderson Presents; Iris, Mrs. Brown (Best Actress); Chocolat (Best Supporting Actress)

Dame Judi as Mary in the York Mystery Plays
I remember playing a snail…that was my first performance…my father made me a huge shell, which I had to creep under, and at one point creep out of


Oscar win: Shakespeare in Love (Best Supporting Actress)


Dame Judi has played every leading female Shakespearen role, bossed Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig around as James Bond's 'M', and won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love despite appearing on screen as Queen Elizabeth I for just eight minutes. But the star with national treasure status got her start as an amateur actress, aged 16, taking part in the 1951 revival of the York Mystery Plays, a work she would go on to take part in several times, eventually playing the Virgin Mary.

Her first ever role was less glamorous: aged five, she was in a school play and fondly recounted on Desert Island Discs: “I remember playing a snail…that was my first performance…my father made me a huge shell, which I had to creep under, and at one point creep out of, and when it came to the day that the parents came, I stood up, looking out at everybody, and I heard the principal of the school saying “Get down Judith!”

Charlie Chaplin

Oscar nomination: The Great Dictator (Best Actor), plus other nominations for his writing and music

Charlie Chaplin as a young man in London


One of film’s first superstars, Charlie Chaplin’s rise to a global icon from his childhood poverty was, according to his official biographer, “the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories ever told”.

While his parents were both performers, Chaplin’s father was absent and his mother spent years in mental asylums, leaving a young Charlie and his brother to fend for themselves.

Despite this, his prodigious talent meant that he started performing from the age of five, formed part of ‘The Eight Lancashire Lads’ – where he won recognition as a tap dancer - and was on stage as ‘Billy’ the page boy in support of William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes at the age of 12. Once Chaplin entered the world of film, he never looked back: but owed his superstardom in the film industry to his beginnings in London theatre.

Sir Ian McKellen

Oscar nominations: Gods and Monsters (Best Actor) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Best Supporting Actor)

Sir Ian with Sir Anthony Hopkins in BBC TWO's The Dresser
Growing up in post-war Bolton, with its three professional theatres, I was spoilt for theatre but most grateful to the Little Theatre…


He's played super heroes, super villains and super sleuths but Sir Ian began his long career with amateur performances at the Bolton Little Theatre, before moving on to repertory and professional theatre.

He also acted his way through school, notably at the Hopefield Miniature Theatre. There in ‘The Beauty Contest’ by Leonard Roe, he played a Bolton mill-girl who cheats her way to the finale of a pageant. His first – of many – Shakespearen performances was also at Hopefield, as a 13-year-old Malvolio in the letter scene from Twelfth Night.

With two Oscar nominations to his name and having been recognised as one of Britain’s greatest ever stage actors, Sir Ian remains passionate about amateur theatre, recently writing to Bolton Little Theatre – of which he is now a patron - to tell them how valuable his experience there had been: “Growing up in post-war Bolton, with its three professional theatres, I was spoilt for theatre but most grateful to the Little Theatre…It was the amateurs of Hanover Street, the lovers of theatre, who invited young enthusiasts like me in, who risked doing Shakespeare and other classics, plus the new plays like the Christmas entertainments of Alan Cullen.”

Brenda Blethyn

Oscar nominations: Secrets & Lies (Best Actress), Little Voice (Best Supporting Actress)

Brenda Blethyn as Cordelia in Jonathan Miller's 1982 production of King Lear

Twice Oscar-nominated Mike Leigh favourite Brenda Blethyn worked as a secretary for ten years before getting into the world of theatre - and can still recall the single line she had in her first ever on-stage part with the Euston Players, the British Rail am-dram group: “It’s a real dirty old night. Evans the post says the mist is right down to the path, quite thick it was”.

She was asked to join the production at the last minute when working as a secretary for British Rail, having only previously acted in school productions. Am-dram got her hooked: she played the lead in plays at the Rudolf Steiner theatre, then volunteered her services to work at the Young Vic’s press office, before going on to join the Chichester Players and the Guildford School of Acting.

Glenda Jackson

Oscar wins: Women in Love (Best Actress) A Touch of Class (Best Actress)

Glenda Jackson as Cleopatra with Morecambe and Wise
She wrote to the only drama school she’d ever heard of, which turned out to be the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts


The only British MP to have also won an Oscar (so far), Glenda Jackson’s first role was as a ‘crippled boy in the local Sunday school’s nativity play’. After finishing school at 16 she worked in the local pharmacy and got involved with acting in amateur theatre in her home town of Hoylake, in Cheshire – ‘usually playing maids and things like that’.

Someone told her that she should act professionally, so she wrote to the only drama school she’d ever heard of, which turned out to be the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where Jackson was awarded a place, a scholarship and a grant from the Cheshire Education Authority. She went on to become notable for playing serious, complex parts in dramatic films, but also showed off her comic side as Cleopatra in a sketch with Morecambe and Wise.

Sir Anthony Hopkins

Oscar nominations: Nixon, The Remains of the Day (Best Actor), Amistad (Best Supporting Actor). Oscar win: The Silence of the Lambs (Best Actor)

Sir Anthony as King Lear in The Dresser
One day in 1947 I found myself in an amateur dramatics class at the local YMCA. I thought to myself: “What the hell am I doing here?"


In Sir Anthony’s career-defining role, as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, he’s on screen for just over 16 minutes: but his unnerving stare and ability to make ‘a nice Chianti’ sound deeply sinister won him the Oscar for Best Actor – something he’d never have imagined growing up in the steelworks -dominated town of Port Talbot.

Sir Anthony never thought he’d be an actor, but described to the Daily Mail: “One day in 1947 I found myself in an amateur dramatics class at the local YMCA. I thought to myself: “What the hell am I doing here?” I had no interest in acting, no idea of what I was going to do in life, except probably follow my dad into his bakery….but I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery”. He went on to the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and, after two years of National Service in the army, joined RADA. He returned to Wales for his first professional role at the Palace Theatre, Swansea.

Sir Ben Kingsley

Oscar nominations: House of Sand and Fog; Sexy Beast (Best Actor); Bugsy (Best Supporting Actor)

Sir Ben on the One Show in March 2015, talking about his role in Iron Man 3

Oscar win: Gandhi (Best Actor)

Sir Ben grew up expecting to follow his father’s footsteps into medicine, but by the time he’d finished secondary school he realised that he didn’t want to become a doctor. Instead, he joined amateur dramatic society the Salford Players, where he performed while also working as a laboratory technician. He describes being ‘transported’ by the thrill of the audience response when he performed, and went on to a job with a children’s theatre company in London. Fast forward through roles in the West End and with the Royal Shakespeare Company to a meeting with Richard Attenborough, and Sir Ben was offered the title role in Gandhi – for which he would win his Oscar.

Sir Ben is one of two actors on this list who, as well as his Oscar, has the dubious honour of being nominated for a Golden Raspberry, or ‘Razzie’ award: for his performance as Kagan, King of Vampires in BloodRayne. (The other is Sir Anthony Hopkins, nominated in 1980 as Worst Actor for A Change of Seasons).

More theatre at the BBC...

Keira Knightley

Oscar nominations: Pride and Prejudice (Best Actress), The Imitation Game (Best Supporting Actress)

Keira on stage ahead of performing in The Misanthrope, her West End debut in 2009

Pirate, footballer, decoy queen and codebreaker, Keira Knightley says she was ‘single-minded about acting’ during her childhood – but never had any formal training. Before she became globally recognised for her first big role in the Star Wars franchise, she performed in local amateur productions, including After Juliet – an imagining of what happened to the Capulets and Montagues following the events of Romeo and Juliet, written by her mother – and United States, written by her drama teacher, Ian McShane.

Keira’s Best Actress nomination for Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice sees her alongside two others on this list – Brenda Blethyn as Mrs Bennet and Judi Dench as Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

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