Mark Addy believes there will be a "working class gap" within acting because people from a "poor background" won't be able to afford the education.
Mark Addy believes there will be a 'working class gap' within acting because people from a 'poor background' won't be able to afford the education
The 58-year-old star has told how he probably wouldn't be an actor if he was starting out nowadays because his parents wouldn't have been able to afford his acting education.
He told the Daily Mirror newspaper: "The local government grant system that used to pay for your education, that is now gone. Certainly people from a poor background can’t afford to go.
"My parents would not have been able to send me to drama school without a grant. So I probably would not be doing this now and nor would Robert [Carlyle].
"There is a whole slew of talent that is not being recognised as financially they are not able to do it.
"I mean, do we want the Eton boys taking on working class roles and pretending to be working class? You had to scrape money together in order to survive but your training as an actor didn’t cost you anything. That has gone now.
"There will be a working class gap now as who can afford to go to drama school?"
The 'Game of Thrones' star insisted the situation is "tragic", and it results in people from "different backgrounds" playing working class characters in TV series and films.
He said: "It is tragic, and it means you have people from a different background playing working class characters."
Mark is reprising his role as working class character Dave Horsefall in Disney+ TV series 'The Full Monty', the follow up to the 1997 film of the same name, in which he starred alongside Robert Carlyle, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber and Hugo Speer.
The movie told the story of six unemployed men from Sheffield who formed a male striptease act to raise some money.
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