A Bafta-nominated actor from Bradford has launched his own drama school to help working-class northern English talent into the TV and film industry.
Samuel Bottomley, who received a Bafta nod for his role in Channel 4’s Somewhere Boy in 2023, opened the West Yorkshire Workshop in Bradford this week.
He made his acting debut at nine, when he was plucked from a local church drama club to star in Paddy Considine’s domestic violence drama Tyrannosaur.
The school’s courses, which will run on evenings and weekends, will feature tuition from Bottomley himself as well as from directors he has worked with, including Molly Manning Walker (How to Have Sex) and Penny Woolcock (Ackley Bridge).
It is influenced by the Nottingham Television Workshop, which has been helping working-class young people get into acting since 1983, spawning the careers of the director Shane Meadows and actors including Vicky McClure and Samantha Morton.
Asked about working-class access to the arts, Bottomley said: “I feel like up north, or in Yorkshire, there’s definitely a lack of it. So if we can do anything to change that, let’s try.”
He added: “I want to help people and I want to keep busy because when you’re not acting, you’re not doing right much, other than auditioning.”
Bottomley, who lives with his mother, a beauty therapist, just outside Bradford, said most other young actors he met on set had been to drama school or had connections in TV or film: “There is a lot of people who have got family in the industry, or they’ve got, like, rich parents.”
Once in the industry, working-class actors were often in danger of being typecast, he said: “It bothered me, always getting auditioned for this ‘Jack the lad’ sort of bouncy, almost misunderstood young man … One thing you don’t want to get is typecast.”
He beamoaned having to “tidy up” his Yorkshire accent when he started out: “If you’re a northern kid with an accent, you definitely feel out of place a little bit, especially with your accent, because you have to tidy it up as well quite a bit, so people can understand.”
The proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s, according to the Office for National Statistics. Bafta-nominated actors are five times more likely than the general UK population to have attended a private school, at 35%, the Sutton Trust found.
Bottomley first heard of the Nottingham Television Workshop from another young actor, Jack O’Connell (Skins, SAS Rogue Heroes), with whom he worked on the 2012 British war drama Private Peaceful.
“He was a massive role model for me growing up when I met him, because he was working-class as well,” said Bottomley.
O’Connell told him about the Nottingham acting school and “my ears pricked up straight away”, he said.
“It would have been a great place for me to go. I’ve heard rave reviews from people that have been, so as I was getting older in the last couple of years, I always thought it would be cool to create something like a hub up north.
“I just thought the north needed some sort of hub where actors from all around the north can come together and have this same thing that they had in Nottingham, which is like a proper, cool vibe – normal people that just want to be actors, coming together and just sharpening their tools and staying sharp and staying in the game. And communicating with other people, which is a massive one for me.”
Fees are £15 for two hours for teenagers, and weekend sessions for adults over two days cost £80. “I’m trying to keep it as affordable as possible,” he said, adding that if people could not afford to come, he would try to find a way for them to join for free.
