ABOUT ME
My name is Aidan, born and bred in Hull - the land of chipspice, tenfoots and cream phoneboxes (happy to discuss Hull's quirks over a cup of Yorkshire tea if you'd like!)
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I believe it is important, as well as my identity and experience, to have a metaphorical chinwag with you and allow you to get to know the human behind the actor a little more first - see what we have in common.
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So before we get into my identity, bases, training and everything else, here's 5 RANDOM QUESTIONS about me - I change these every month!
WHAT ARE YOU READING THIS MONTH?
"'Murder on Lake Garda' by Tom Hindle. I've been to Lake Garda quite a few times (it's my happy place) so it kind of jumped off the shelf to be honest. Plus, who doesn't love a good murder mystery?"
I hope you enjoyed that! Now let's dig a little deeper...
A Member of the LGBTQIA+ Community
Living with a Hidden Disability
A Neurodiverse Individual
LONDON
MANCHESTER
HULL
Academy of Live
& Recorded Arts
TUDIO OF ACTING
NEW YORK CITY
I was born in Hull, East Yorkshire to my working class Mum and Dad, who had met five years earlier while working in our neighbouring council estate's betting shop. The youngest of three brothers, I spent much of my childhood playing endless PlayStation and Nintendo64 video games with my older siblings, from Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario to Tomb Raider and Star Wars. However, the main franchise that captured my attention was when we'd repeatedly play WWE (formerly WWF) games or watch it on the telly.
All the crazy characters involved in the pro-wrestling world completely enthralled me, probably even more than the actual wrestling itself. I can remember watching one bloke bury his brother alive, a pensioner giving birth to a hand, a gothic wedding with the bride strapped to a crucifix, and a grown man crying when his mop girlfriend was kidnapped and put through a woodchipper (yes, you read that correctly) to name a few occurrences - it was properly nuts! Looking back though, this was the start of me recognising my love of character development and story-telling. I'm sure my parents can recall numerous occasions of me pretending to be a vampire or a cowboy and fighting with my teddies and recording all of these fights in 'weekly episodes'... strange lil kid!
After finishing primary school, I naturally headed off to secondary school and when I received my first ever timetable, I saw a one-hour period per week called 'drama' and had no idea what on earth that meant in terms of lessons. After my first class with the best teacher ever, I thought: "OH. MY. GOD. THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE!" I took drama at GCSE, took performing arts full-time at college and all the while was a member of Hull Truck Youth Theatre, joined the National Youth Theatre, and performed with every local am-dram group I possibly could. It became my entire life.
After Sixth Form, my friends all left for uni and with my sights set on drama school, I decided to prepare myself as fully as possible and in 2016, I founded my own theatre company, ApposArt. I didn't plan it as such, nor did I have a team (as my oldest brother would say: "Aidan writes the theme tune, sings the theme tune etc etc"). Essentially, I forced myself to learn on-the-go by writing, directing, producing, marketing, administrating, networking, costuming, bid-writing - you name it! For a while, two hours sleep a night were definitely my closest pals, and most of the time I was funding my shows out of my own pocket, but I learnt so much and loved it! Just one year later, I was commissioned by Hull UK City of Culture 2017 and Pride in Hull to write and star in the first ever UK Pride theatre production, which I called Lads & Lasses with lovely reviews - so it was all worth it! I carried on doing this for a few more years until after a successful audition, I received a phone call telling me I'd been accepted at Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City.
Being a resident New Yorker was exactly the dream come true you can imagine it was and has equipped me with a lifetime's supply of dinner party stories! I was also lucky enough to train with some of the most influential acting teachers in modern American history, who also trained the likes of Robert de Niro, Marlon Brando and Mark Ruffalo to name a few.
Fast-forward to 2020, firmly back in the UK, I took up a new offer to train at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA) in Wandsworth on the MA Professional Acting course. Peak-pandemic era, I can definitely say that animal studies via Zoom was a strange one! In my final production, Growth, I played a travel agent who, on paper, simply spends his only scene denying the central character of a refund for a holiday he had booked. Come showtime, after I'd had lots of time to play with my role, I was eccentrically singing Madonna around the stage, had the most obnoxious 'customer service voice' and I treated my travel agent office like all of the furniture had feelings. When senior management saw the production, their nine word response to the whole show (which thoroughly dissected men's mental health by the way) was, and I quote: "Visiting any other travel agent will be a challenge". That was all! Just goes to show, you can take any role, regardless of size, and make it super fun and memorable! Graduating in December 2021, I secured my first television role just two months later playing Conor Gorman on ITV's Coronation Street.
When they say show business isn't all glitz and glamour, they ain't lying - only one month after my Coronation Street appearance, I became homeless in one of the most difficult periods of my life, both financially and mentally. Luckily for me, I had a wonderful support bubble of friends that, without them during this period, I'd have been entirely screwed. Over a year on (and firmly with a roof over my head again now!), I am still working on rebuilding myself brick-by-brick, as many of us are. I am getting there though and have been so fortunate even in these rough patches to have worked on great projects with BBC, ITV and with my beloved friends at Same Circle Theatre in Hull and I am so excited to continue telling you my story in time to come.
Throughout my career, I have been most often cast as either the villain, the comic relief or a comedic villain (I personally think it's the tash!). I'm a sucker for a role with an accent too, though not a necessity. I find it just helps really escape from my own reality. The main thing that draws me to my acting work is if it is GRIPPING. It can be hilariously funny, but it needs a gripping story; it can be intensely thought-provoking, but it must be edge-of-your-seat gripping - you get the picture. Someone asked me earlier in 2023: "What do you want to be remembered for?" And honestly, I want to be remembered for literally being memorable - as daft as that sounds. I don't just want to be another actor in the machine - I want people that watch my work to distinctly remember something about my performance that will make them want to watch again. Actors have historically been referred to as 'players' and I firmly believe that we have to work hard to play hard and play hard to work hard. Without 100% of our hard-work, creativity and resilience when playing with roles, we won't get to keep working. I tell myself this for each and every role I take on... So with that in mind, let's see what's next, eh?!
Click here to listen to an audio of 'My Story' spoken in my own voice