Running on empty

JACK McMullen has been acting for half his life – he’s 21 – but only now is he doing his first “proper” theatre job. He’s appeared on stage before, collecting two British Soap Awards at the same ceremony. But Pilot’s production of The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, currently at York Theatre Royal before touring, marks his stage debut as an actor.

He’s also left school for the first time after studying at BBC1’s Grange Hill, as Tigger Johnson, and Waterloo Road, as bad boy Finn Sharkey. Now he finds himself in a young offenders’ institution in Roy Williams’ new stage adaptation of the Alan Sillitoe novel. He plays the best friend of rebellious runner Colin Smith in the play which updates the action to 2012.

He previously worked with director Marcus Romer on a film of another novel, The Knife That Killed Me, which was filmed entirely in a studio against a green screen with the background being added in the edit.

“It was very much for him like directing a theatre piece. It’s useful for me to have gone through that process,” says McMullen, during a break in rehearsals. “I’ve been acting for 11 years and never had a proper theatre job. It’s work. It’s like unlearning everything I know and starting again, and not being able to go again when you do it wrong.

“Because it’s my first theatre job I’m nervous about it, but I can’t wait to finish that first show and when the curtain comes down it’ll be like, ‘I can do it’.”

Attending awards shows is different. “I’m always nervous on stage because it’s usually being myself and I hate having to be me. I’m great at being other people.”

THAT award double was for C4’s now-axed soap Brookside, in which he played Bev McLoughlin’s son, Josh. He won best newcomer (beating, among others, Shane Richie) and also best on-screen partnership with his screen mum, played by Sarah White.

“It was amazing because I didn’t expect it,”

he says. “You’re like 12 years old and there are all these great actors there. I just wanted to go to the awards and see all the people I saw on TV and be a bit starstruck. I just went as a fan – and won two awards.

“That was a crazy night for me. I’m a football fan and it was the last day of the season the next day and Liverpool were playing Chelsea to get in the champions league. I went back to the hotel and Steven Gerrard and Danny Murphy were there and I thought, ‘This is the best weekend of my life’.”

He was a Brookside regular when the series was axed in 2003. It was a blow at the time, not least because he rates the Liverpool-based show as “the best soap there ever was” (while admitting he might have a slightly biased opinion).

“It was probably a good thing for me that happened because at the age I was I didn’t know anything about career choices. I was just loving being at work and enjoying being on set,” he explains.

“I would have stayed in it for as long as possible and that might not have been the best thing for my career. Maybe I’ve been lucky and it’s worked out all right for me, but we see it too much these days with people making reality TV really easily, “Personally I think Big Brother killed Brookside. The ending of it coincided with the start of Big Brother and Channel 4 knew they could get as many viewers for half the money because people just want to be famous.

It’s cashing in on that celebrity culture, which is appalling.”

He spent four years at Grange Hill and then did some one-off dramas before transferring to Waterloo Road. Last Christmas he starred in the ITV film Fast Freddie with Laurence Fox.

“Waterloo Road was brilliant for me because it was my first proper job as an adult actor. I started when I was 18. I was staying in a house with a group of fellas who taught me how to cook. It was a real growing up experience and I gained so much in the two, three years I was there,” he says.

“Finn was a bad boy, but I loved my character.

It was like playing a different character sometimes as he had these mood swings. He’d be depressed, angry, then a good boy and then all of a sudden blowing up garages. It was great to be so unpredictable.”

MAKING The Knife That Killed Me marked another new chapter for him and a welcome one because he loves films. He wants to do more British low budget independent movies.

“Because there’s not an awful lot of money in it, I find people are doing it for the love of it, for the art. Everyone cares about the script and how it looks. It’s not like a factory churning out episode after episode of whatever show. People care about what they’re doing,” he says.

As for The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, he’d heard of it and knew the story.

He’d seen the film (which starred Tom Courtenay) but not read the book and decided not to until he had the stage interpretation firmly in his mind.

Although he’d worked with the director before, he still had to audition for the role. “I’d been going for theatre roles and the auditions went really well, but the feedback always was we think your audition was great, but worry that you have no experience,” he says.

“I was thinking it’s a Catch 22 situation because I’m not going to get experience unless I do some theatre. It’s great that Marcus took a risk on me and hopefully I can pay him back.”

Football rather than running is his sport.

He’s patron of a charity, Once Upon A Smile, set up by actor friends to provide support for families who’ve suffered the loss of a parent or child from a long term or terminal illness.

“We play charity matches and go all over the country,” he says. “I’ve started running and did the Manchester 10K this year and am hoping to do some more,” he says.

•  The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, York Theatre Royal, until Sept 29. Box office: 01904-623568 and yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Durham Gala, Oct 9-13. 0191-3324041 and galadurham.co.uk