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Graham Smith
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Graham Mumby-Croft


Just before I retired I received a message from someone who had been a Deputy Governor at my first establishment, and who finished his career being Director General of the Prison Service and then the second Chief Executive of the National Offender Manager Service after it was formed. In fact I worked with two Director Generals and a Deputy Director General as well as the first CEO of the Border Control Service during my first 7 years of Service. You would think some of that talent would have rubbed off on me wouldn’t you? Not a bit of it I’m afraid but it didn’t stop me enjoying my 35 years of Service one bit. 

The message included the phrase”… retirement gives you the freedom to follow what you really want to do.” And that is very true. For some that means going to visit exotic parts of the world, perhaps climbing mountains, going on walking holidays or just generally exploring; for others it means skiing holidays during term time or spending more time pursuing hobbies that they had taken up before retirement in preparation for that final working day to arrive. For me it was a collection of things. Most of you know I like my cricket so wandering the country following my beloved Lancashire playing in such delightful venues as Taunton and Cheltenham was always going to be part of my retirement agenda. I have an interest in my local rugby club so helping out more both at an administrative level and hands on would keep me busy and benefit them. But one thing I had done as a young man that I always wanted to take up again when I had the time was acting; the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd has always enticed me towards acting from being a young boy and I therefore decided this was the ideal time to take up the cudgel again. At school I had won prizes for my acting and did consider taking it up professionally. But life comes along and gives you a kick up the backside just when you are ready to do something else and it never materialised. Then I got married, soon had mouths to feed and a career in the Prison Service beckoned and, well, you know the rest.

I had, two years before I retired, sowed the seed for this activity and joined my local Amateur Dramatic Society. I am not going to mention their name and you will understand why when you have read a little further into my account. I also joined an agency for film and television extras in the hope that I could get days out AND be paid for the privilege. And it worked, but there was usually one snag; there are not a lot of professional casting directors that cast from generic agencies; they tend to go to individual agents representing specific artists (I am allowed to call myself an ‘artist’) – but a lot of students studying film and theatre do. But students do not offer paid roles, as I quickly found out. I retired on 1 August 2013 and joined the first agency on 1 November that same year. The Am-dram Society I told you about earlier I joined on 1 October that same year. They had meetings twice a week when they would cast roles for the 10 plays a year they put on. I attended for a month and soon found that being new to the group left me as an outsider. That was to be expected but I was an outsider both for consideration of parts in their productions and socially afterwards in the bar. It was terribly cliqued and I soon told them that I would not be renewing my subscription. If I wanted to be ignored I could stay at home thank you. So treading the boards at a local theatre was out for the time being.

Now most actors are young and adventurous when setting out on their chosen path and therefore I was not part of the main demographic. I had the good sense and even better Page No. 9 grace to realise this very quickly and therefore all my energy went into seeking parts that categorised me as what I am; old, slightly larger than average but with a characterful face (I reprised on my CV!!). Believe me there are not a lot of well paid jobs with criteria such as that!! But I was not reliant on income from acting for my living – not like those young aspiring better looking types who were competing for all the advertised roles. On the contrary, after a lifetime of working in the Civil Service I had earned a final salary pension, was in receipt of a State Pension and could pick and choose what I applied for. It did not matter if I failed an audition; my wife would still have bread and jam on the table and I could still keep the house warm in the winter as well as pay my council tax. The word ‘comfortable’ comes to mind and it was just that. There was no pressure on me and that relaxed me enormously as I started to navigate my way through the world of agents and auditions. The other criterion to consider was of course that I didn’t want to appear in a long theatre run lest it interfere with me watching rugby and drinking beer on a Saturday afternoon at my rugby club, where I have been President for the last two years, or watching cricket for days at a time in the summer at some sun drenched venue whilst sipping the odd G & T on the pavilion balcony. Call me picky but I do have priorities.

I soon discovered which agencies would provide the best service for what I needed. Now at first I was under the impression that you could only register with one agency. This will be true if you are in the ‘Helen Mirren’ class of actors but agencies for ‘extras’ or ‘supporting artists’ as they are known are not that fussy. If you are an ‘A’ list actor you will usually have an agent within a top flight agency who will deal with you personally; and you pay 20% of your fee for the privilege, sometimes up to 35%. For the rest of us mortals we pay a fixed fee, either quarterly or annually, to the agency and they will supply us with jobs as and when they spring up. My main agency posts jobs on a daily basis; and it will not surprise you to know that most of the jobs are London-centric. But, the BBC has in the last three or four years invested heavily in Manchester and MediaCity now houses ITV and BBC studios as well as the BBC Sports Department and three huge sound stages that are in regular use.

Having joined my first agency I began applying for jobs that were advertised as both paid and non-paid. Some were advertised as just supplying expenses and the pay range for paid jobs varies from £10 per hour for a two hour job, to which you have to make your own way to £150 for the day and a ‘buy out’ rate if it is an advertisement which can be up to £3500. And not all are local. I live just outside Manchester so anything in the North West is suitable, and I might even stretch to Yorkshire and Birmingham if the pay is right. And if you do consider all types of jobs on offer you could find yourself very busy but out of pocket. A balance has to be struck and I think, two years in, that I have found my balance. I still sometimes think that I should really strive for an agent and go for it at full pace but then I think long and hard and go back to doing what I’m doing.

My first audition came just before Christmas 2013. Now you don’t always have to audition for a role and Skype is a great addition to the technical revolution if you don’t want to travel to Cardiff or London for an audition. In this case the advertisement was for a number of roles in a film called ‘Mudblood’. Basically it was a Harry Potter spin-off and was going to be a feature film. I applied to be one of the Ministers (for the uninitiated Potters out there it is the equivalent of a House Master at a boarding school complete with gown) and for my audition had to learn a piece from a Harry Potter Movie. Now I was at a disadvantage because I had never seen a Harry Potter film and was not a keen admirer of the genre. But if I hadn’t seen a film then how did I know I wasn’t a fan? But I had seen excerpts because it was a cinematic phenomenon and just guessed it wasn’t my type of film; I’m not into sci-fi anyway. This is where I discovered another great technological advancement of our age called ‘YouTube.’ I found I could type in anything into my search engine and it would produce a clip of what you had typed. I am a fan of the actor Michael Gambon and knew he had taken over from the late great Richard Harris the role of Dumbledore, the headmaster of the school ‘Hogwarts, which Harry Potter attends. I was a great fan also of Richard Harris, that great Irish Rugby fan and one-time drinking pal of Richard Burton, so I thought I would learn a piece spoken by Dumbledore. I prepared well and the audition was at a studio in Manchester. I wore a shirt and tie with suitable flannels and sports coat (what does one wear to an audition I thought, and what’s more didn’t even dare ask) and arrived ten minutes early.

I was invited into the studio and was surprised to be greeted by the Director, the producer and the casting Director as well as three HD cameras; one in front of me and two at a 45 degree angle on either side. A chit-chat ensued and then I was asked if I was ready. I said yes and launched into it. I do have an advantage that I can make my voice travel a fair distance without any effort and I have a natural timbre to my voice which carries a smooth rich dark velvet tone with it (or at least that is how I describe it in my blurb on the agency website). I remembered all my lines and although it only lasted about three minutes it felt like a lifetime. When I finished I looked at the three of them and they just started clapping. Even the cameramen joined in the applause. Now I am not such a person as to believe they were doing this just for me. It was my first audition and I thought this must be the norm and they clapped everyone. So when the Director said they really enjoyed that I asked whether it was the norm to clap. Goodness gracious no they said and I believed them. Whether I still do now I don’t know but two weeks later they rang me to say I had got the part. This venture is a ‘crowd-funded project’ which means that they wait until people invest in the film before shooting; and we are still waiting for it to be filmed. But the director keeps in touch and it is still a goer, having recently received the blessing of J.K. Rowling and Warner Studios to go ahead. Watch this space.

The months went by and I applied for non-paid roles for students at Manchester and beyond and enjoyed some good productions in which I either played a leading role in a short film or an extra in a lengthier episode. Then came the decent offers; I started applying for voice over roles and radio drama parts. My voice seemed to be in demand for this type of work and I became rather successful financially for the next 12 months. This brought me into contact with other voice actors and you start quizzing them about what agency they are with and how much work they get; whether it’s paid and where the jobs are. And then I got two breaks into ITV series - The Syndicate by Kay Mellor and Black Work with Sheridan Smith. When they were aired I got a lot of phone calls and texts; but to be fair I had texted everybody to tell them I was on!!

One episode of the Syndicate was filmed in Scarborough and I had to be there for 7 a.m. It’s a long way from Manchester and it was in November – bloody cold. The other episode was a week later in Bramham House just outside Wetherby (the venue for the Leeds Music festival – a country house with massive grounds); again an early start and a late finish from 7 Page No. 11 in the morning until 8.30 at night, but really enjoyable. I acted with Anthony Andrews, Simon Williams, Melanie Hill and Lenny Henry and it was a real experience.

Latterly I have filmed an advertisement on one of the big sound stages at MediaCity for a betting firm, re-creating a scene from the Wolf of Wall Street where I played a broker. And last Monday I was sat on an Airbus A330 filming a Thomas Cook commercial with Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Lady Gaga. I am sorry to tell you that these people are just as glamorous in real life as they are on screen; not really these were just lookalikes but very impressive.

I still comb the agency jobs and apply on a regular basis. I have applied for over 1000 jobs with one agency alone so if you cannot handle rejection it is not something you should get involved in. But I like it and its fun. Next time I will tell you more about the things I’ve done and the categories the extras fall into, including those that never stop talking about themselves and who they’ve acted with. You need a lot of patience or a deaf ear for those people.

DAVID TAYLOR 

WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU FIND TO DO IN RETIREMENT?
 Issue No. 74 SPRING 2016
David Taylor