In a world working with Harry Styles and David Mitchell,
what’s there to hate about being an actor? The scrutiny, the 6am wake-up calls
and the unsecure line of work can all be found in the T&C’s.
Already sitting and waiting for me, in a small café just
outside of South Kensington station, is Bobby Lockwood. As he rises from his
chair, he greets me with a warm hug, apologising in the sincerest manner for
having cancelled on our first arrangement to meet. Lockwood had previously had an audition earlier that
morning, and sits promptly as he drinks a cup of fresh coffee to fuel himself
for his busy day ahead.
Bobby Lockwood has been in the professional acting industry
since the age of 10, where he landed his first role as the voice of Patch in
101 Dalmatians. Soon after, he was landing almost every role he auditioned for.
“I didn’t really have any inhibitions,
I was able to just sort of go out there and pretend,” he reflects, “funny
enough that led me to then when I was in my early-teens, and it got the stage
where people were doing more than just pretending. They were starting to
actually learn the craft and they were being trained as an adult.”
Never at the
start of his career did 24-year-old Lockwood think that he would get work with
the likes of Harry Styles, David Mitchell, and Christopher Nolan. “I did Dunkirk in May of last year,” he
proudly reveals, “an incredible experience, just the whole audition process.”
Making friends with Harry Styles in the audition room, and later getting to
work alongside the renowned director Christopher Nolan, Lockwood was grateful
to work on such a successful film: “to be a part of it was incredible.”
Another occasion where Lockwood hadn’t
quite got his head around with the names he was working with, was while on set
of CBBC’s Up All Night Friday Download
Movie. “Someone who I got really start struck around was David
Mitchell,” he admits gleefully, “I had so many questions about Peep Show and I
could only talk to him about pencils.” Disappointed about the topic of
conversation, at least he can proudly say he worked with Mr Mitchell.
As well as
these household names, he has also worked with some of the world’s leading
production companies such as, Disney, the BBC and Nickelodeon. But at the age
of 12, Lockwood was soon cut from Disney Channel’s ‘As The Bell Rings’. “I
remember at first I was fine. Then after chatting for a few minutes, suddenly I
felt myself tearing up a little bit,” he tells me, vividly recollecting his
memories from the day it happened, “I remember going home and I was gutted.”
It’s harder than it looks: acting is a creative art form. It
requires a lot of emotional, mental, and more often than not, physical
capabilities. One particular role that Lockwood says he found challenging, was
when he played a young serial killer in the BBC series Lewis. “I did a lot of work
on that, trying to understand why and what pushed him to do it,” he
admits. As well as this, despite having danced all his life, Lockwood admits
another challenge he encountered was while filming the dance movie Honey 3. “I was out [of dancing] for
five years, so I struggled pick up the choreography,” he says, “I felt like a
robot and that I couldn’t dance.”
Before securing the
role, actors have to take part in the dreaded audition process. One of Lockwood’s unsuccessful
castings was while he was out in America.
“They’re brutal out there,” he reveals, “you’d be waiting outside with
20 dudes who are just 20 different versions of you.” A coping mechanism for
these pressures Lockwood finds useful is meditation: “I’ve learnt to meditate before auditions just to sort of calm my nerves
and make my head a bit clearer.”
When shooting, a typical day for Lockwood can start as early
as 6am and end when the days’ work is complete. “I’ll get up and go to set. You’ll
either have breakfast straight away or you’ll be chucked in the make-up chair,
or costume,” he says, at the thought of how tedious it really is, he lets out a
yawn and soon apologises for his tiredness. “You’ll hang around and then you
get on set, and then you hang around and then you shoot, and then you hang
around and then you wait for lunch, and then you hang around.” He shares one
reference about the acting industry that he was once told and agrees with
completely: “I act for free, they pay me to wait around.”
If not acting, Lockwood admits that he would see himself in
either the fitness or food industry. Fitness has become a passion of the young
actor’s, having already ran three marathons to help raise money for Great
Ormond Street Hospital. “Food and fitness, and friends and family: all the
f’s,” he says fondly, listing all the things he cares about.
But Lockwood’s love for chocolate is another path that he
could potentially see himself wandering down in the future. “One day when I’m
older, I think I will actually like to make my own chocolate. Genuinely. As a
way to sort of make money on the side,” he ponders, “If I could make my own
chocolate, that would make me happy.”
Laid out on the coffee table he has a journal and a set of
old school over-the-ear headphones. The two perfect necessities for escaping
from the shallow, judgemental world one lives in. The journal is “a way for me
to not even express how I’m feeling, but it’s a way for me to understand what’s
going on in my head,” he explains, starring into his coffee, stirring his spoon
endlessly around in circles. “I overthink a lot of stuff anyway,” he admits,
“what’s in that book is personal.”
People seem to forget about the knock-backs, the cut-throat
audition processes, and the scrutiny actors face. “I try to keep positive as
much as I can, but I feel like in this industry if you take things personally,
I don’t know how you would survive,” Lockwood sighs, reflecting on the challenges he himself has faced over the years. “If
I don’t get a job, it’s because I’m too tall or too funny or too good looking,”
he says jokingly, laughing at the realisation of what he’s said. “I never get a
job because my acting isn’t good enough. If
I’m going to take every rejection personally, I wouldn’t cope.”
