A rising star of acting is about to make his professional debut in his home city of Newcastle.

GEORDIE actor Daniel Weyman is bursting with pride that his professional acting debut on Tyneside is the title role in the mammoth touring production of Nicholas Nickleby at the Theatre Royal Newcastle (October 15-20). He learned 400 pages of script for the two-production, six-hour run and earned himself a Theatre Management Association Best Performance award nomination at last year's Chichester Festival before agreeing to tour the UK and complete seasons in the West End, Toronto and New York.

"I am very excited about playing Newcastle and it's a real dream to come up here and give something to the city. It's going to be fantastic for me. I've not been acting that long, this is my fifth year because I first did a chemistry degree and was about to join Unilever when I was persuaded to try acting. After weighing up my options, and deciding that I didn't want a company car and a nice wage packet, I managed to get a scholarship for drama school.

"Lots of my friends still live up there and I always think as you come in on the train that, with the bridges and The Sage, it's just a great sight and I don't think there's anything like it. It puts a smile on my face and makes all the hairs on the back of my neck tingle," says the rising star of acting, who is desperately hoping to attend a Newcastle United match while he's in the region.

When he landed the role of Nicholas, his parents, who still live in York, went off to Greta Bridge and got pictures from a pub, which does all things Charles Dickens, to show him the journey he was on. About the impact of this major role Daniel adds: "I don't envy my poor understudy so I do try to stay healthy for him. It's an interesting thing, with a play so big, how much responsibility you have to accept about the way you live your life outside the theatre. I really can't stop up late, I don't drink very much (alcohol) and on matinee days I find myself squashing three meals into about four-and-a-half hours which is really odd. I find eating on this show a real conundrum. You don't want to run out of energy as Nicholas because he's always bombing about everywhere," jokes Daniel, who reckons that TV's Sunday Kitchen shows have been useful, particularly when meals have been cooked for elite athletes.

"I just copy what they eat, masses of pasta and as much meat as you can possibly manage and big portions of vegetables," he adds.

He researched the real life North Yorkshire boarding schooldays of boys in the 1820s and was shocked by stories of youngsters going blind from malnutrition and suffering horrible infestations. "I found records of North Yorkshire schoolteachers and one who neglected three boys who went blind, plus a case of death, and the guy was found guilty and charged £300 for each offence which was a remarkable amount of money. Wackford Squeers talks about £20 a year for one boy, Nickleby's wage is £5 a year and at the end of the play, when he's offered a good wage, it's only £120 a year," says Daniel. He pays tribute to Charles Dickens' story and the adaptation by David Edgar which makes full use of 27 actors in the multitude of roles required.

"The onus on creating these really visceral and brightly-coloured places is on the actors and the power of the audience's imagination, which is often missed by theatre productions," explains Daniel, about the decision to keep props and sets as basic as possible.

He also drops in a hello from fellow Geordie, David Nellist, who appears as one of the Cheeryble Brothers and picks out David Dawson as Smike as another performance worth watching. Daniel is about to go from hero to zero because he's just filmed the starring role of a wifebeater who must find redemption.

"I'll be playing Nicholas until the end of April, but I've just finished a British film called Just Ines, which is the name of a French character that my character, Tom Jackson, meets. He beats his wife up early in the piece and spends a short time in prison and the film is about whether he can atone for his mistake. It does that brilliant thing of British films in not becoming shmaltz and doesn't give all the answers," he says of the film which is due out next year.