Ten Telly Legends Who Made Me Want to Act — And the One Who Nearly Ruined Everything

Every actor has a telly origin story. Mine involves a beige carpet, a 1990s CRT television, and a family who refused to change the channel even when I started doing 'the voices' back at the screen. These are the characters that got under my skin, in roughly the order they got there.

10. Del Boy, Only Fools and Horses

My grandad's laugh at Del Boy falling through the bar is my Roman Empire. I didn't understand the joke properly for years — I just knew comedy timing mattered, because the whole room reacted to it. First lesson in performance: it's a contact sport between you and the audience.

9. Dawn French's Geraldine, The Vicar of Dibley

A woman being the funniest person in the room, every week, without apologising for it. Eight-year-old me took notes. Actual notes. I still have a notebook with 'BE FUNNY LIKE HER' written in it.

8. David Jason's Frost, A Touch of Frost

The proof that you don't need glamour to be magnetic. A rumpled coat, a bad temper, total watchability. I learned 'character is in the slouch' from Frost.

7. Julie Walters as Mrs Merton-era Walters, generally

Okay, technically a sketch character, but Julie Walters taught me you can disappear completely into someone and come out the other side giggling. A magic trick, on the telly, before my eyes.

6. Lynda La Plante's Helen Mirren, Prime Suspect

Jane Tennison walking into a room full of men who didn't want her there. I didn't have the vocabulary for it then, but I understood power on screen. I wanted to make a room feel like that.

5. Victoria Wood as Kitty, dinnerladies and Acorn Antiques

The undisputed queen. Wood's writing and performing were two sides of the same genius, and Kitty's two-line interruptions still make me laugh out loud on trains. She showed me that specificity — a raised eyebrow, a perfectly placed pause — is the whole job. If I could have dinner with one person from this list, it's her, no contest.

4. Sergeant Catherine Cawood, Happy Valley

Sarah Lancashire saying 'I'm the police' in that car park is the greatest piece of acting ever broadcast in this country and I will not be taking questions. Modern me rewatching it thinks: right, THAT'S the standard.

3. Jim Royle, The Royle Family

'My arse.' Two words, endless comedic power. Watching a family do nothing but sit and be funny taught me that the best dialogue sounds like people, not writing. My own scripts are judged by one rule: would it survive a Royle family living room?

2. Frank Gallagher, Shameless

A chaotic, charming disaster of a man who anchored an entire show by being impossible to look away from. I did my first 'proper' monologue at drama school doing Frank, badly, and got my first note about 'finding the charm under the mess'. Thanks, Frank.

1. Tony, This Life, or more accurately: the gritty northern antihero era

My top spot goes to the brooding northern antiheroes of the late nineties and noughties — the Christopher Ecclestons, the John Simms. Complicated, unlikable, utterly human. I remember watching one particular performance and thinking: I want to make people feel unsettled and moved at the same time. That's still the brief for every job I take.

And The One That Nearly Put Me Off...

Right. Confession time. There was a character — I won't name the show, but it was a much-hyped crime drama — so relentlessly grim, so mumbly and beige and self-serious, that I remember thinking, aged about fifteen: is THIS what acting is? Being sad in the rain with bad lighting?

For about six months I genuinely considered giving up on it all. Then I rewatched some Victoria Wood, remembered telly could be joyful, and got back on track. The lesson? Sometimes the thing that puts you off tells you as much about your taste as the thing that drew you in.

So — what characters made you? I'm genuinely nosy. Tell me yours, and yes, I want to know the one that nearly put you off too.