Guy Burnet fell into acting as a teenager, when he was given a part in the UK soap opera, Hollyoaks. Five years and many hundreds of episodes later, Burnet decided to leave the show. In the years that followed, he says he went right back to the beginning of his trade, often questioning whether acting was something he could continue with. He describes those years as difficult but formative, and they seem to have paid off.
After saving up money to move to New York, small theatre productions turned into larger roles, such as the lead in an off-Broadway show called Murder In the First, for which he received rave reviews and today, Burnet has appeared in a number of films, including Two Jacks alongside Sienna Miller, and Mortdecai with Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor; he also plays Casey Finney, in the Showtime series Ray Donovan. Glass spoke to him about the transition from Hollyoaks to his work now, the difficult in-between years, and what has inspired him along the way.
Guy Burnet. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
So are you mainly based in LA now?
I’m not really sure … it’s been very back and forth and I’m kind of based wherever the work is, in a nomadic way. I’ve been doing a show called Ray Donovan, which we’ve been shooting over here in LA and then in between that I’ve been off to do a film in Germany [The Have Nots] directed by Florian Hoffmeister, who’s just brilliant…it was a nice opportunity to jump from American television into a European art house film.
How much of a contrast was that?
At the end of the day you prepare as much as you can for any character … the Ray Donovan thing is something I’ve enjoyed maybe more than anything I’ve done – doing a cable show as they call them that’s slightly more cinematic – it has a film quality to it but also the fast pace of TV drama … and everyone involved working on it – they are brilliant. So I went from that to a small studio in Cologne.
They both were enjoyable in very different ways. For the German film everyone was abundantly polite and very welcoming, it was very much a family atmosphere, with everyone working together to make it as good as it can be artistically, on a small budget. There’s no restraints on anyone there and if the director wants to do it a certain way that’s what happens.
At one point, we were doing this scene and I couldn’t remember my line so I was just staring for ages but they didn’t say cut and so it just carried on and carried on. Afterwards the director came up to me and said,“Wow I love what you did there with the long pause.”
Guy Burnet. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
It sounds like you’re really enjoying some variety in your career at the moment?
Yes I’m very appreciative of that. It’s very easy not to work at all or to play the exact same character over and over. And I think because I had a few years where I really struggled – as anyone in their twenties going into their thirties knows – you’re kind of looking for your own identity in a way. I was struggling trying to figure that out –what is it that I actually wanted to do.
But I’ve found as I’ve got older and turned 30-31, even my face started changing a bit, maybe a bit rougher round the edges, like life has taken over and given you a little bit of a beating. So you don’t look quite so happy all the time and maybe that helps more diverse characters come in to play.
Guy Burnet. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
Do you feel as you get older you have more emotional depth to give to your characters?
One hundred per cent. I’m honest with other people and myself. I look back at years ago when I was doing television in England and I don’t even recognise myself … something happens where you let go, you kind of just accept ‘ok this is who I am now, and who I want to be, and this is who I used to be.’ Do you find that too?
Yes I think our many different selves throughout life and allowing change to happen is interesting to think about, and allowing other people to change too …
Yes, it depends on what affects that, you see people disappear at a certain point sometimes, and it’s completely understandable now. From the age of about 26-30, every year I considered doing something different with my life. I wasn’t getting the roles I wanted, I didn’t know if it was going to work for me, you begin to question everything.
Guy Burnet. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
So those years were quite challenging but transformative for you? When did things start to take off and why did you stick with acting?
I’ll tell you what happened, I made a decision that a lot of things are perspective or perception, and I began to think to myself. ‘I do want to do this, I want to improve, I know there’s something there I can work on’ and then I started making some decisions.
I moved to New York. I saved up all the money I could, I did a side job at a boxing gym, I joined theatre companies in New York. I started from the first level again. I did little theatre shows and then I did an off-Broadway show which became bigger and I was the lead in it, and it got me a little bit of attention because it was written up in the New York Times, and that led to an agency, which then led to a little film role, and so a slow build. In retrospect it seems so quick but when you’re in it feels like forever and during that time I was still questioning whether it was going to work out for me.
But I remember turning 30 and starting to think I’d stop putting pressure on myself, and just see what happened. And I think things like close friends suffering in certain ways or family members who you lose along the way. You see things in a new light, I think it happens to everyone – you realise this doesn’t last forever. Acting isn’t everything but it is something I enjoy.
Guy Burnet. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
How did you get into acting to start with? I suppose a lot of people in the UK will remember you first from Hollyoaks.
Yes, I fell in that almost accidentally. I always loved cinema. Where I grew up in London, in the Notting Hill Gate area before it was gentrified. I went to a school called Holland Park School, and me and best mates, most days we’d bunk off and we’d go and hide in a place called the Gate Cinema where they’d play these sort of art house films.
I remember seeing a film called La Haine, a French film in black and white, and I remember looking at my two mates with me and I was a white guy, my best mate was Arab and my other best mate was black and it was like us watching a mirror of ourselves on screen and suddenly a world of possibilities opened up. We’re still best friends today and one is a writer and one is a director.
It wasn’t something that was available to us through schooling, we had to work, but when I was 18 or 19 my mum, who still works in the same hotel, had a boss who was a playwright, he’d translate Spanish plays into English and I had no job until I worked as an apprentice for him. He would put on these plays and anytime an actor didn’t turn up, I would do the read-through. One time there was an agent there who wanted to represent me.
Guy Burnet. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
I didn’t really know what he was talking about but he talked about drama school and that same month I applied, even though I couldn’t really afford it. I also went for a commercial audition for Orange [mobile phone] and booked that and the next day I was asked to go up to Liverpool, so I had to pay my own ticket up there to audition for Hollyoaks…
There were hundreds and hundreds of people. I’d never experienced anything like it, I felt like an absolute outsider. A couple of days later, I was visiting my dad and they rang up to say I got the part, I was just in shock.
Guy Burnet. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
What would you like to do next?
Well, there are a lot of us out there vying for the same positions and so I want to keep working hard at getting the next thing, there are a few film projects that I’m looking at. I’m about to do a London-based film called Burn about a kid who’s just got out of prison and is trying to find his way, and after that I don’t know, whatever I can find.
by Tara Wheeler
Photographs: Justin van Vliet