Being a child actor seemed like a vision of what the world could be – free of sharp edges
- David Mitchell on his dreams of being a lighthouse keeper
- Margo Jefferson on musical theatre
- Nina Stibbe on her ambitions to work in a sawmill
I tried, for a while, to be in movies. Or rather, my mother and I tried, because that’s the nature of child actors – they require adult sponsorship, the parental momentum taking over when the child’s interest falters. I missed days of school to attend auditions in various low-ceilinged rooms in Burbank, toting my headshots in a fake leather portfolio like a grim little businessman. I ate bowl after bowl of ice-cream for an ice-cream commercial, did a catalogue shoot on a soundstage where bright, fake leaves blew in front of industrial fans. I was not a happy child: this all seemed like a vision of what the world could be. A world free of sharp edges.
I read for the parts of girls who spoke in full sentences and played soccer, girls who wore capri pants and collared shirts in Liberty prints and kept up sexless crushes on boy neighbours. These were girls unlike any girls I knew, but that was part of the pact, the lie we were all creating together: the characters weren’t realistic, but they offered the chance to participate in a world in which daughters would ask mothers to buy them their first bra, where daughters would confess the benign secrets of their hearts. The characters were sometimes embarrassed or ashamed, but in neat, normal ways, ways that were easily assuaged by a mother sharing her own experiences on the drive to soccer practice. I did not recognise this world but I wished I did, and for a while, believed that these precise falsehoods were vastly preferable to the indignities and messes of real life.
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