It would never have happened if I hadn’t told a lie.
Not one of the small personal lies we’ve all come out with at some stage in our life: ‘I completely agree with you,’ or, ‘No, I’ve never had a lover with a bigger cock than yours.’ Those are the lies that grease the wheels of our relationships and keep them running smoothly. Without them, no one would ever get laid.
No, this was a professional lie. Actors’ résumés are full of them. We shave a couple of years off our age, add an inch or so to our height, purport to be fluent in French or able to carry off a number of accents, from upper-class English to downtown Glaswegian. Anything that might give us an advantage over all the other equally accomplished actors going for the same rôle. In my case, I claim I can ride a horse. In truth, I’d trotted along Clacton beach on the back of a donkey a few times when I was a toddler. Since then, nothing.
It never mattered. No film or TV show I appeared in ever required any riding ability on my part. Until I received the script for Grail.
My agent, Keira, sent me two scripts that week. One was for a film about rival football gangs, adapted from his own autobiography by a former hooligan who condemned all the violence he’d been involved in while describing it with lip-smacking relish. I would be reading for the part of the author’s younger brother, who never quite managed to escape the gang’s influence. I knew I could play the rôle in my sleep, but the project had the air of something the audience had seen too many times before. I was looking for a different challenge.
Grail, on the other hand, grabbed my attention like nothing had in a long time. A stripped-down retelling of the legend of King Arthur’s knights and their search for the Holy Grail, the storyline had me gripped from the start. The part I’d been suggested for – Sir Bedivere, one of the knights who remained loyal to Arthur as his band of warriors gradually fell apart – was both meaty and sympathetically written.
It didn’t bother me that there were a couple of nude scenes in the script. I’ve never had a problem with taking my clothes off for the camera, and I wouldn’t quibble even when the part required me to do a full-frontal shot. It helps that I have one of those cocks which looks impressively big when it’s limp, even if it doesn’t grow much larger when it gets hard. We all know size doesn’t really matter, but there is a warm glow of satisfaction that comes from being on the receiving end of envious glances in the showers.
‘I’ve told the casting department you’re pretty handy with a sword,’ Keira said, when I rang and told her how much I loved the script.
That, at least, was true. I’d taken fencing lessons at drama school, and excelled at them. Two summers ago, I’d been part of the repertory company at the Globe Theatre, dying on the point of a sword in an adrenaline-fuelled production of Romeo and Juliet four times a week. Grail would call for me to handle a heavy broadsword, but I was sure I was equal to the challenge.
‘And you’ve got no problems with horses, eh, Jamie?’
‘Absolutely none.’
‘Great. And from what I can gather, you’ve got the look they’re going for.’
Sometimes, “the look” can be more important than your acting ability. I’m not one of your conventional pretty boy types. My jawline’s too prominent for that, and my nose is crooked from where I broke it playing football at school. Fortunately, it seemed the director of Grail wasn’t in the market for pretty boys.
‘I shall keep my fingers crossed for you,’ Keira promised before she put the phone down. ‘I have a really good feeling about this one.’
The first audition was the following Monday. To help give the impression I was a world-weary knight, I stayed up till the small hours, so when I woke I looked bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and I didn’t bother to shave that morning. Nervous as I was, the audition went well enough that they called me back for a second reading a week later. By now, I knew I was down to the last three for the part of Bedivere, but the competition was strong. I wasn’t as hopeful about my chances as Keira was, so when the call came to welcome me on board and let me know location filming would begin in the Czech Republic in two weeks’ time, I was speechless. Even more so when the casting director added, ‘You know what swung it for you, Jamie? The fact you were the only one of the final three who can ride a horse.’
I didn’t know whether to break out the champagne or book riding lessons immediately. In the end, I decided I could bluff it. Everyone says when it comes to riding, it’s the horse that does all the hard work anyway. So instead I rang Fin and asked him if he was free for a drink.
Fin was one of the first friends I ever made when I moved down to London and started looking for work. Five foot ten of pure Galway beefcake, with the wickedest laugh you could ever hear, I met him on a building site. He was the foreman, I was doing a spot of hod-carrying to pay the rent while I waited for my first acting break. Not only did we click as friends, but the fact he was openly bisexual meant we also struck up a relationship as fuck buddies, sharing each other’s beds on the most casual but enjoyable basis.