Interviews

"I was at a wedding where there was a partition dividing two parties", explains Burke when asked where he got the idea for the film. "Initially that's what the script was, it was about two weddings divided by a moveable partition and it would get moved back. In the end that ended up being changed in the script and it ended up just being two wings of a hotel."

On shooting the film:

Tom Riley chimes in. "We don't tend to overrun schedules, which is unusual. In these jobs, it's low budget and you pack a lot into the day, so it's the kind of film where you think, 'Oh my God, it's going to go over 20 minutes or half an hour. Everyone is going to have to be paid more. It's not going to work'. In England, everyone would be running around, terrified that was going to happen and shouting at each other. Not here."

PART ONE

Guilty Pleasures and Favourites   

TV:

Favourite -

The Wire is the greatest television show ever made, but Lost remains a close second for having slipped such a complex and intelligent show under the radar and onto a mainstream American TV network.

Guilty pleasure –

Tom Riley, LAMDA alumnus, currently starring in "The Vertical Hour" at the Royal Court Theatre

7.  "I have always wanted to be an actor, but upon leaving school, felt I lacked the life experience and the intellectual capacity to do the profession justice. I chose to take an English Literature degree in order to achieve this, with every intention of applying to drama school the minute I graduated, if I could afford it. The knowledge that there may be funding there to help me when the moment came kept my hopes alive.

In his recent letter to me, as well as sending this gorgeous photo, Tom gave more details about the delays to his film Happy Ever Afters.

Happy Ever Afters is not in post production yet. We got half way through the shoot before disaster struck. The lovely Sally Hawkins and I were doing a very basic stunt in the gardens of a beautiful church on the coast of Ireland, and as Sal fell to the ground there was a giant crack and her collar bone fractured.

I wrote to Tom recently, via his agents, to inform him of the existence of this new website. Unexpectedly he sent a really lovely letter in reply, and included 2 gorgeous signed photos from the recent Ian Phillips-McLaren photoshoot.

Tom also very kindly let me know about some recent projects, and I will add all the relevant news details to the site, and images to the galleries in the next couple of days. I am extremely grateful to him for taking the time to do all that.

It’s not every day that the principal of a drama school has to go to the Royal Court to mark his student’s end of year performance but that’s what has been arranged in Tom Riley’s case.

Tom Riley, winner of a Genesis Bursary at LAMDA, has written a brief letter to us outlining how this past term has gone for him - the first of his final year.

Saturday, 11 March 2006

At the end of my second year at LAMDA, when my class was told that for the 'Long Project' (only one important module of our three year training, the one in which the year - in collaboration with a playwright and director - devises and performs a new piece of writing) we would be working with Mark Ravenhill, there was a slight unease.