Navigation trail

• Home page
• Actor: Angelo Calvo

Actor: Angelo Calvo

This Case Study belongs to Actor.

Angelo Calvo has forged a very successful career in a short space of time mostly working at the National Theatre. In 2006, he obtained a BA in Acting from RADA.

I decided to become an actor quite spontaneously just before I turned sixteen. Before that, I wanted to be a stockbroker, before that an architect, and before that a lawyer! So I think it partly came out of a desire to experience a diversity of life, and partly out of a sudden whim to do something that seemed at the time completely extraordinary – I had never even thought about acting before, although a couple of my friends and I would often enjoy sabotaging our art lessons by shouting at each other in ‘funny’ voices. Over time we developed a whole repertoire of bizarre characters and situations. This began to spill over into our lunch breaks, which of course irritated everybody else, but for some reason we found it strangely cathartic.

As soon as I made the decision I joined a local youth theatre group and withdrew my place in the school Sixth Form to begin studying for a diploma in drama at college and A-Level Theatre Studies. I then trained at RADA and signed with an agent after the showcase, just before graduating. My first job was a smallish but regular part in a new television series for the BBC, which was an incredible piece of luck. Since then I have done odd little bits of filming and four plays at the National Theatre. I think so far my first job is still my favourite, simply because it was very exciting to be in something completely new, right at the beginning, with people who were roughly the same age as me. Having so much time on it allowed us all to bond and become friends and provided me with a decent experience of acting for camera - drama schools tend not to have a particularly exhaustive programme of film training. I think in general I have preferred the film work I have done. I enjoy rehearsing plays but get bored very quickly once they are up and running, and you have to go in every night and do the same thing over and over again. You need an incredible amount of mental stamina to do a long run of a play. Quite frankly, it is much harder work for much less money!

If I have been successful so far I think the reason for that is partly due to the fact I am perhaps slightly unusual. I don’t mean that simply in terms of my physical appearance, or my voice, but also in my feelings about acting. However passionate I may be about it, as I said before, there was, and still is, no inevitability about my being an actor. My interest in acting is borne solely out of my interest in other things. Whether this contributes to my getting work as an actor is questionable, but I think it helps not to think too much about the future. Both in the work itself and in how you approach it as a vocation you have to be committed almost entirely to the present.

Case Study sourced by Miranda Glavin of AGCAS, 24 July 2009.