I have been attending John Gordon’s Monday Masterclass since 2017. It has been a structural shift in how I approach my work; my career.

John has given me licence to think beyond the narrow band of roles I once assumed were “mine.” In his class, I am cast as leads: complex, high-status, low-status, volatile, restrained. That recalibrated my internal bar. I stopped defining myself by a narrow type and started working from the assumption that my range was the starting point, not the exception.

That shift translated directly into action. Five years ago, I approached one of the top agents in town with a level of clarity and confidence I would not have prior to studying with John. The quality of auditions changed. The scale of the virtual rooms changed. Expectations changed.

I have recently played a brain-damaged goon from South London opposite Minnie Driver (The Borderline), to a high-status tennis club owner in a period costume drama opposite Jann Arden (Murdoch Mysteries), to a vainglorious militia leader in 1990s Michigan (in the critically acclaimed horror film V/H/S/94)

That breadth is not accidental. It comes from being trained to jump both sides of the status coin without apology. I now arrive on set, unaware of what side of me will come out and that is both terrifying and glorious. When you dismantle your own barriers, what follows may feel like chaos, but it is often the precise disorder required for something larger, and more honest, to emerge.

John doesn’t slot actors into categories. He dismantles them. If you’re willing to do the work, he expands your sense of what is possible, and then expects you to pursue it with utter abandon.   

Credits: (The Borderline, The Handmaids Tale, American Gods, Map to The Stars)