The Guardian
They're all over the screen with their floppy fringes and cut-glass accents. Are posh actors edging out working-class talent?
Eddie Redmayne, seen here in the television adaptation of Birdsong, went to Eton.
Photograph: Giles Keytes/BBC/Working Title
He appears in Downton Abbey, one of a wave of TV dramas centred on class, and in the Radio Times this week the actor Rob James-Collier was asked whether working-class talent was being squeezed out of the profession.
James-Collier was born in Stockport, and defines himself as working class, and his answer was direct. As with so many other jobs at the moment, he said, you have to work for no money when starting out, and "how on earth are you going to finance that" if you don't come from a wealthy background?
His comments tapped into a question that has arisen repeatedly this year. Can anyone but the exceptionally well-heeled, wealthy, connected upper classes now make it in the arts?
In acting, in particular, the question was thrown into sharp relief in January, when the shortlist for the Bafta rising star award was announced. The list was remarkable for two reasons. All five nominees were men, and two were contemporaries at one school.
Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne are both old Etonians, and their nomination led to articles highlighting just how their schoolmates are dominating our stages and screens. There's Harry Lloyd, who starred in Great Expectations and The Iron Lady; Harry Hadden-Paton, currently in She Stoops to Conquer at the National Theatre; Damian Lewis, appearing in the hit TV drama Homeland; and Dominic West, star of The Wire and The Hour.
That's not to mention Benedict Cumberbatch, who went to Harrow, and Henry Cavill, star of the latest Superman film, who went to Stowe. Their success raises these issues. Do you need family wealth in order to become an actor? And is there currently a bias towards a certain class in casting? (Are we, to put it simply, buried deep in an era of floppy-fringed costume drama?)
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/mar/07/being-posh-helps-actors?newsfeed=true
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