‘Posh boys’ playing gangsters: Eddie Marsan on TV and film industry’s obsession with upper-class actors
One of Britain’s most versatile and acclaimed character actors has said new performers now need to be backed by the “bank of mummy and daddy” to reach the big time.
Eddie Marsan, star of major blockbusters such as the Sherlock Holmes films and Mission: Impossible III, as well as TV series Ray Donovan, and Supacell, said one thing he’s come to notice a lot over the years is how few of his castmates tend to share his working-class roots.
“If you want to be an actor in this country, and you come from a disadvantaged background, you have to be exceptional to have a hope of a career,” he says. “If you come from a privileged background, you can be mediocre.”
Speaking after being named one of the new vice presidents of drama school Mountview, and meeting students at the establishment where he too first trained, Marsan is keen to stress why it’s so necessary to support young actors who can’t fund their careers.
Eddie Marsan at Mountview. Pic: Steve Gregson
“I came here when I was in my 20s… I was a bit lost, to be honest… I was serving an apprenticeship as a printer when Mountview offered me a place,” he says.
“There were no kinds of grants then, so for the first year an East End bookmaker paid my fees, then my mum and him got together and paid the second year, then Mountview gave me a scholarship for the third year, so I owe them everything.
“I didn’t earn a living as an actor for like six, seven years… years ago, actors could sign on and basically go on the dole while doing plays… now, in order to become an actor, you have to have the bank of mummy and daddy to bankroll you for those seven or eight years when you’re not going to earn a living.”
Marsan, Dame Elaine Paige and Hamilton actor Giles Terera are all taking on ambassadorial roles to mark Mountview’s 80th anniversary, joining Dame Judi Dench, who has been president of the school since 2006.
“The parties are fantastic,” he jokes. “The two dames, they get so half-cut, honestly, you have to get an Uber to get them home!”
But he’s rather more serious about TV and film’s “fashion for posh boys”.
‘If you come from a privileged background you can be mediocre’ in the TV and film industry, says Marsan. Pic: Steve Gregson
“When I went to America and I did 21 Grams and Vera Drake. I remember thinking, ‘great I’m going to have a career now,’ but I wasn’t the idea of what Britain was selling of itself.
“Coming back from Hollywood, a publicist said to me ‘when we get to London and do publicity for the film 21 Grams we’re going to come to you’… but no one was interested… I remember coming to Waterloo station and looking up and seeing all these posh actors selling Burberry coats and posters, and they hadn’t done anything compared to what I’d done, and yet they were the image that we were pushing as a country.”
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A 2024 Creative Industries, Policy, and Evidence Centre report found 8% of British actors come from working class backgrounds, compared to 20% in the 70s and 80s.
“Even a gangster movie now, 40 years ago you would have something like The Long Good Friday or Get Carter with people like Michael Caine or Bob Hoskins who were real working-class actors playing those parts, now you have posh boys playing working-class characters.”
Within the last five or six years, he says there has at least been “more of an effort to include people of colour”.
Pic: Steve Gregson
‘They’re scared of a level-playing field’
“What I find really interesting is, I’ve been an actor for 34 years, and I remember for the first 20 years going on a set and very rarely within the crew and within the cast would you see a black face, very rarely.
“One of the saving graces really are things now like Top Boy and Supacell, where you have members of the black community making dramas about their communities, that can’t be co-opted by the middle classes.”
“People like Laurence Fox complaining that it’s unfair, I never heard them complain when you never saw a black face, never once did they say anything. Now that people are trying to address it, they think it’s unfair…because they’re scared of a level playing field.”
Now, more than ever, Marsan says he feels compelled to point out what needs to change within the industry he works in.
“Look, social media is destroying cultural discourse. It’s making people become very binary… acting and drama is an exercise in empathy and if there’s one thing that we need more of at the moment it’s that.”
It started with a strong espresso in a simple cafe on a side street in north London.
Several Algerian men were inside, a few others were outside on the pavement, smoking.
I’d been told the wanted prisoner might be in Finsbury Park, so I ordered a coffee and asked if they’d seen him.
Spotting a man resembling the suspect, Tom and camera operator Josh Masters gave chase
They were happy to tell me that some of them knew Brahim Kaddour-Cherif – the 24-year-old offender who was on the run.
One of the customers revealed to me that he’d actually seen him the night before.
“He wants to hand himself to police,” the friend said candidly.
This was the beginning of the end of a high-profile manhunt.
The Algerian convicted sex offender had been at large since 29 October, after he was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth in south London.
Within an hour of meeting the friend in the cafe, he had followed myself and camera operator Josh Masters to a nearby street.
Kaddour-Cherif was accidentally freed five days after the wrongful release of convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu (pictured). They were both arrested separately in Finsbury Park. Pic: Crown Prosecution Service/PA
We weren’t yet filming – he didn’t want any attention or fuss surrounding him.
“Follow me, he’s in the park,” the man told me.
“Follow – but not too close.”
We did.
I was in the same park a few weeks ago after fugitive Hadush Kebatu, the Ethiopian sex offender – also wrongly released from prison – was arrested in Finsbury Park.
It was odd to be back in the same spot in such similar circumstances.
Read more on Tom’s story:
Wrongly released prisoner’s angry reaction
‘I’m glad he’s been arrested‘
As he led us through the park past joggers, young families and people playing tennis, the man headed for the gates near Finsbury Park station.
All of a sudden, two police officers ran past us.
The Met had received a tip-off from a member of the public.
It was frantic. Undercover officers, uniformed cops, screeching tyres and blaring sirens. We were in the middle of the manhunt.
As they scoured the streets at speed, we walked by some of the Algerian men I’d seen in the cafe.
Kaddour-Cherif walked up to a nearby police van as Tom continued to question him
One man near the group was wearing green tracksuit bottoms, a beanie hat and had glasses on.
“It’s him, it’s him,” one of the other men said to me, gesturing towards him.
The man in the beanie then quickly turned on his heel and walked off.
“It’s him, it’s him,” another guy agreed.
The suspect was walking off while the police were still searching the nearby streets.
Josh and I caught up with him and I asked directly: “Are you Brahim?”
You may have watched the exchange in the Sky News video – he was in denial, evasive and pretended the suspect had pedalled off on a Lime bike.
I can only guess he knew the game was up, but for whatever reason, he was keeping up the lie.
Police moved in to handcuff him and used their phones to check an image of the wanted man from one of Sky News’ online platforms
Once his identity was confirmed, Kaddour-Cherif was put into the back of the police van
Moments later, one of the bystanders told me “it is him” – with added urgency.
Only the prisoner knows why he then walked up to the nearby police van – officers quickly moved to handcuff him and tell him why he was being arrested.
Over the next 10 minutes, he became agitated. His story changed as I repeatedly asked if he had been the man inside HMP Wandsworth.
Officers needed confirmation too – one quickly pulled out a smartphone and checked an image of the wanted man from one of Sky News’ online platforms.
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When Tom first caught up with him, Kaddour-Cherif claimed the culprit had left on a Lime bike
“It’s not my f****** fault, they release me!” he yelled at me.
The search was over, the prisoner cage in the back of the van was opened and he was guided in.
I then spoke to another Algerian man who had tipped off the police – he told me he hated sex offenders and the shame he felt over the whole episode.
The community had done the right thing – there were two tip-offs – one to me, one to the police.
The farce of this manhunt had gone on long enough.
UK
Nadjib, who tipped off police over released prisoner Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, tells Sky News he’s ‘happy to see him arrested’
“It’s him, it’s him, it’s him”, the man told me urgently.
While police were frantically searching in Finsbury Park for wanted sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, locals were telling me where he was.
Immediately after the dramatic arrest, filmed exclusively by Sky News we spoke to the North African man who tipped off the police.
Sky News filmed Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s rearrest
Nadjib had been on the lookout for the convicted sex offender, who had been spending time in different parts of north London since his release from HMP Wandsworth.
He even had a folded-up newspaper clipping in his pocket so that he could check the picture himself.
He told Sky News he was “very happy when he got arrested”.
“I don’t like the sex offenders,” he said.
“I know him from the community. He has been around here every night since he was released from prison.”
Nadjib (L) told Sky’s Tom Parmenter he had been looking out for the offender
Not only did he tip the police off about the prisoner’s whereabouts, but he also witnessed the other high-profile manhunt that ended in the same park last month.
Ethiopian asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu was also arrested in Finsbury Park after a 48-hour manhunt in the capital. He was then deported to Ethiopia.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif
“When he [Kebatu] got arrested in the park I was there,” Nadjib said.
I asked him why both men ended up in the same park in north London.
“Because the community, he came here for the community of Algerians,” he said.
Several Algerian people that I spoke to on Friday told me how shameful they thought it was that this sex offender was still on the run.
“Job done,” Nadjib said, before walking off.
UK
Alice Figueiredo: NHS trust and ward manager to be sentenced – over a decade after young patient’s death
An NHS trust and a ward manager will be sentenced next week for health and safety failings – more than a decade after a young woman died in a secure mental health hospital.
Warning: This article contains references to suicide.
Earlier this year, a jury found the North East London NHS Foundation Trust and ward manager Benjamin Aninakwa did not do enough to prevent Alice Figueiredo from killing herself.
The decisions were reached after the joint-longest jury deliberation in English legal history.
Alice was 22 years old when she took her own life at London’s Goodmayes Hospital in July 2015.
Her parents sat through seven months of difficult and graphic evidence – and told Sky News the experience retraumatised them.
Mother Jane Figueiredo
Jane Figueiredo said: “It’s very distressing, because you know that she’s been failed at every point all the way along, and you’re also reliving the suffering that she went through.
“It’s adding trauma on top of the wound that you’ve already got, the worst wound you can imagine, of losing your child.”
Step-father Max Figueiredo
Alice’s stepfather Max said he remains “appalled” that she died in a place they thought would care for her.
“The fact we have these repeated deaths of very young people in secure mental health units shocks me to the core. How can society look at that event and portray it as something that happens as a matter of course?”
Ms Figueiredo said Alice had predicted her own death.
“She said to us – out of fear really: ‘The only way I’m going to leave this ward is in a body bag.’
“It’s because she did not feel safe.”
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Alice had predicted her own death, her mother says
In a statement, the North East London NHS Foundation Trust said: “We are deeply sorry for Alice’s death, and we extend our heartfelt condolences to her family and loved ones.
“We have taken significant steps to continually improve the physical and social environment, deliberately designed to support recovery, safety, wellbeing, and assist our workforce in delivering compassionate care.”
For Alice’s family, the convictions have brought some justice, but they will never have complete closure.
“As a mum your bereavement doesn’t ever end, it changes over years as you go on, but it’s unending. The thought I won’t even hear her voice is unbearable and I still miss it. I still miss her voice,” Ms Figueiredo said.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
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