We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Owen Llewelyn a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Owen, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project for me has to be the R.I.P. Man which I finished filming earlier this year. Despite pursuing acting my whole life and it being the only thing I ever wanted to do, when covid hit it put a complete halt to my acting career. Due to this I turned my side hustle business into a full time job and when the world opened up again acting started to feel like a distant memory that was perhaps behind me, This role came out of nowhere for me and by complete surprise. The film got far more attention than any project I have been involved with before and have since been offered other roles off of the back of it. No matter where my career goes from here, this film will forever be one of the most significant and special to me for that reason.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I got my first acting at age 12 at school. Very soon afterwards I got a very tunnel visioned view that this is the only thing I want to do with my life. I studied at college and drama school and my first taste of the industry was getting a tiny part in a play of Cyrano de Bergerac at the Chichester Festival Theatre starring Joseph Fiennes, Since then I pursued everything I could in film, theatre and TV while doing jobs such as working as a zombie in a tourist attraction and starting an ebay business to help fund my goal.

I think every actor likes to see themselves as someone who can play any kind of role, and for the most part they can. But I also think that after a few years in the industry, you learn to realise what kind of roles casting directors want you to be, and how you overall fit into the industry. You learn what roles you are more likely to get when you audition for them. My typecasting over the years has definitely leaned towards playing the darker villain type characters. Sometimes comic foils and policemen, but primarily dark characters. Which are the roles a lot of actors pine for so I have been very lucky in that regard with the interesting and chaotic roles I have had the pleasure to play over the years. Personal favourites on stage have been playing Francis Begbie in Trainspotting and playing a dark, drug fuelled rendition of Laertes in an adaption of Hamlet.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2020 when covid happened it completely halted my acting career and changed the way I was perceiving my life and career aspirations. I had been fortunate enough to have had my own business selling online which I utilised to supplement my acting career, but when lockdown happened, that became very busy and successful and became a full time job. Years passed and acting looked to be in my rear view and I had almost come to accept its not something I do anymore. Acting is a profession where you don’t just work hard on. But you also have to be constantly working hard just to get work, and if without an agent, you have to work ultra hard just to get an opportunity to be seen for an opportunity to get work. That itself is hours upon hours every week dedicated to work which has no guarantee of a penny from it. The idea of going back to that when working hard on a business that is securing you money for every bit of work you put into it, was a tough conflict that made going back to acting hard to justify.

I didn’t act for 4 years until summer of last year director Jamie Langlands who I had known for a few years socially contacted me to play the title character in his new feature film, The R.I.P Man. The film had gotten more of a buzz than anything i have ever been involved in. Upon finishing filming this movie I got offered another lead role in an upcoming comedy called ‘Ghoul Squad’ , and now a sequel for the the R.I.P. Man movie is soon to start filming. So I feel fully back into the profession now and couldn’t be happier for it

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I recall a book called ‘Auditions A Simple Guide’ by Richard Evans being a great help to me in my early days of acting. The author was a Casting Director and it was all about how to hold and present yourself in an audition room, how to write emails and applications in a way industry professionals would want to see them. And just explaining the industry from a casting directors perspective. It certainly helped me in my early days and recommend it to anyone in the early stages of their career and in the process of figuring the industry out,

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @owenllewelyn
• Twitter: @Owen_Llewelyn