by Matthew Martino
We sat down to have a chat with actor Brad Moore, from his latest role in Gloves Off to his upcoming projects he gave us all the lowdown.
Q. Brad, how has your journey been so far in the acting world?
It’s a tough game but for me it’s well worth it. Highs and lows of course and there is a lot of rejection and worry. However, when it comes good and people enjoy what you’ve done you realise what you were fighting for in the first place. When it goes bad you can hide for a while and direct the blame at someone near you…
Q. What challenges did you face in your early career?
Well I started performing very late at 40 ( I did two years of stand up comedy prior to acting) so the biggest challenge was convincing my family that I wasn’t going completely nuts!! The decision is a little bit nuts of course and I guess it was some kind of mid- life panic for sure but deep down I always knew I was eventually going to act so I tried to hold off as long as I could and earn some cash first! The other big challenge was and still is, finding good work.
Q. Your role in Gloves Off has received critical acclaim – how does this feel?
It feels great of course!! Its lovely to receive nice feedback from anyone whether they are critics, audiences or people on your social media. I love it and it kind of validates what I’m doing, even though it shouldn’t but with me it does. I get reverse trolls, people seek me out and bully me with nice comments! Anyone who says they don’t like this I think may be telling porkys! Critics are a bit scary though as they can hurt you if they attack your work. I’ve pretty much had really positive reviews especially for a film I performed in a few years ago called North vs South ( also directed by Steve Nesbit). The character was a complete pyschopath and those types of performances can be attractive to watch and tend to grab attention. However, “Doug” (my character in Gloves Off) was actually much harder to play as he is such a caring guy but when we join the story he was very stressed and not the man he used to be. He was struggling to hide the fact that he was falling apart but then his pride kicked in and he dug deep. So he has a lot more going on emotionally and hopefully this comes through in the performance.
Q. Who were some of your influences in your early career?
I’ve probably only been acting seriously for about five years so I’m still early in my career I hope! My heroes go way back to Paul Newman in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” or “The Sting”. I actually watched the Sting aged 7 with my parents at The Odeon on Leicester Square back in the 70s! I swear the striking Martin Hamlisch score takes me back into the brain I had at seven years old but perhaps that’s a weird thing to say. More recently, Ray Winston’s performance in ‘Nil by Mouth’ and Johnny Harris’s performance in ‘London to Brighton’ inspired me to believe I could give acting a go. In my mind, they are both similar to me in nature and background so I think I identified with what they were doing on screen. They are tremendous actors.
Q. How do you feel the industry has evolved over the years?
Well for the past 4/5 years we have seen a massive swing towards TV viewing. TVs are bigger, sophisticated, cinematic and submersive. Most people tend to binge watch the box sets. These shows have the time to evolve characters and story slower. The writers are clever with the structures building Long and short arcs which make them very compulsive and addictive viewing. It’s the same formula employed by soap opera and reality Tv shows. You’re hooked in quick! Fewer indie films are being funded and in this sense “Gloves Off” is an enormous achievement as it’s a solid British comedy/drama with a great British cast in the vein of The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Bend it like Beckham. These types of films are what made the Bristish film industry so well respected. I looked at well-known supermarket DVD racks recently and there was only one Bristish comedy amongst 200 franchise/action/superhero flicks. Very disappointing. Cinema is not going anywhere of course as it’s embedded in our culture but I hope we can find a place for the lower budget indie films again.
Q. What can we expect from you in the future?
I’m writing a TV comedy for the character I played in Golden Years called Kieth Stringer. He is like a cross between Simon Cowell, David Brent and Fonzie but in his head he thinks he’s Don Johnson from Miami Vice. He a proper knob and was such a wonderful character to play. Many people said he would suit his own TV show so I’ve written a treatment for one called ” Stringer” its gonna need TV writers far more talented than myself to bring it all together though. I’m also just about to shoot a cameo for a British Indie horror film written by Anthony Hayles and directed by Martin Pick. I believe my scenes are with Steve Guttenburg from Police Academy which was one of 100s of films my pals and I watched whilst we played hooky from school! I’m looking forward to telling him he the reason I flunked maths…..
