People Always Ask Me: What’s It Like Being An Actor?
Alright. People don’t ALWAYS ask me that. Sometimes they ask me “Are you that guy?” Or “Can you get me on the set?” or “Are you sure the 6th pint is the BEST idea?” But sometimes they do. Sometimes I answer. I’m never fully sure what to say though. But I get ahead of myself.
Hello. My name is Ethan David Lawrence BA (Hons). I am 31 years old. For the last 12 years of my life I have been a professional actor (even during that year where I had to do pizza delivery for a bit. IT STILL COUNTS). For 20 years of my life I have been an actor in a more general sense. I’ve starred in record breaking comedies (Joe in BBC3’s Bad Education and James in Netflix’s After Life), performed alongside, like, PROPERLY famous stars (I was in a film called How To Talk To Girls at Parties with Nicole Kidman and was also, weirdly, in Magic Mike’s Last Dance with hunky Channing Tatum) and I also played a scientist dressed as a sheep crawling around in actual shit on a Scottish mountainside at the behest of a French mattress company with Belgian financing in an advert directed by a Canadian. I don’t think there was a single taxable event in the whole shoot. Point is, I’ve done it all. Or a lot of it. Some of it. I’ve been around the block a few times.
But what has this got to do with what you’re reading now? We should probably talk about what I’m attempting to do here.
1. The Bit Where We Probably Talk About What I’m Attempting to Do Here
From very early on in my career I made a promise to myself that in my forward facing profile I would endeavour to always be honest about the industry. Not only how it works but the actual day to day of doing what I do. It’s mad. Honestly the stuff I’ve seen. To that end, I’ve talked about stuff on my various social media profiles to basically anyone who would listen. Some of it has been slightly successful. I may have even helped a few people along the way. However, the changing nature of social media (read: The Enshittification of everything) has made that more difficult to do. For the longest time my primary outlet was Twitter (or X if you’re stupid). That’s become an increasingly pointless endeavour since the world’s richest clay doll made his midlife crisis the world’s problem. It’s an irony not lost on me that I’ll be attempting to promote this thing on there long after the point where anything I post is buried by a combination of the worst things anyone has ever written and adverts for some memecoin.
Instagram was never really a possibility for what I wanted to achieve in that area. Lacking text all I could rely on is my awful face and any video content would be buried by clips from some wellness podcasts by slippery looking men in loose shirts and ancient YouTube compilations of a duckling being startled by a caterpillar. I had some minor success with Tiktok for a while. I used to do these Q&A videos where I would give short form answers to various fan questions but given the brevity required it always came off as insincere (my liberal use of props not really helping in that regard). Besides which my content would be buried by an algorithm that prioritises videos of GTA V stunt challenges overlaid with copyrightable content from a BBC panel show or those livestreams where a young lady pretends to be an anime NPC for trinkets.
But so help me God I bloody enjoyed doing it. I got a real pleasure out of drawing back the veil that surrounds this business of show. I loved lending my time to various podcasts where I could talk about things in a more longform way. Because, frankly, a lot of people think my job is easy and there’s an entire industry standing between you and (ugh, I hate this word so much) The Talent to maintain that illusion. There’s so much more than what ends up on television, both good and bad (mostly bad) that’s INTERESTING and I think it behooves people like myself who are grateful every damn day for the ridiculous job they’re allowed to do to speak candidly and offer advice to people who want to pursue this themselves or are just interested in what goes on.
Which is why I’m here. My degree is, in part, in creative writing and I have shamefully barely used it since my career began. I love writing and I love my industry and I love talking about myself. I figure that between all those various social media ventures that there’s a potential audience for some just straight up long form writing about stuff. If there is, great, and you are most welcome but even if not I’ve had a decade plus of bringing to life other people’s words. This is as much for me. You’re welcome. Anyway when you write your first Substack post there’s like a layout they use to help you get started and the next bit is about community so I had better move on to that.
2. What kind of community are you looking to build here?
Good question faceless form writer!
My intention with this, as with all my various social media zones, is to host a place free of absolute nobbers where you can hang out, chat to like minded travellers and also provide grist to the content mill. As well as writing stuff that I come up with, I would love for people to leave questions and stuff in the comments so I can use it as a jumping off point for a deep dive that I wouldn’t have been able to do on TikTok or on a podcast (where it’s live and I ramble a lot. Definitely not like I’m doing here, no sir). If you read it and enjoy it, I would love for you to share it around with people who might find it interesting or helpful.
Substack encourages you to set up a paid model which I have done in the interests of stopping the front page yelling at me to do so. If you think it’s worth anything by all means feel free but, and this is a Lawrence promise, no writing will EVER be paywalled and all you will get in return for your coin is my everlasting thanks and a signed picture of my bum (optional). Much like my Cameo (buy now, beat the rush) it exists purely as tip jar to give what you can only if you can. This is not a money making exercise. I’ll still talk endlessly about myself for free. That’s another Lawrence promise.
In broad, I don’t know how regular or consistent posting will be but I’m assured that if you subscribe anything I post will go to your email inbox where you can read/delete at your leisure. What follows is a little widget that will subscribe you virtually straight away.
End Bit
And that’s about it for this introductory spiel. I don’t know how many, if any, will get this far or even read it at all but I’ve genuinely really enjoyed writing it. I hope you’ll join me again sometime. Please leave any questions you might want answered in the comments.
My name is Ethan Lawrence: Large Actor. What do you wanna know?
E xx
As a larger man myself (I prefer the term rotund) I'm intrested to know if you feel your size impacts your opportunities, do you feel like you are always destined to play the large comedy sidekick type roll. Would you even try out for the leading role in a romantic film for example. Thanks.
I’ve always been a fan of your posts (in particular on wresting, and your saga about the NBA game you played still cracks me up). You’re too hard on yourself! You’re a great character actor and my fave Brit actor of the last few years along with Tony Way. Cheers mate.