‘Alexander changed everything for me. Suddenly I was getting ridiculously drunk with Colin Farrell’

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APRIL 2011 G XX ‘I was on set with Brad Pitt, Jared IT’S a long way from Luton to Pitt, Jared Leto and Jonny Rhys Leto and Angelina Los Angeles, and Neil Jackson Meyers with Oliver Stone. It was Jolie. It was a has had a more interesting a baptism of fire.” baptism of fire’ journey than most. At school he This was followed by a variety was cast in plays such as The of parts on TV, including in Little Shop Of Horrors and Annie Blade, where he played vampire and went on to act in the Marcus van Sciver and as National Youth Theatre, but his chauffeur Harry Spargo in the real passion was boxing. So reboot of Upstairs, Downstairs. rather than Rada, Jackson You might also recognise him as studied sport at university in the baddie Mr Slate in Quantum Cardiff and boxed competitively, Of Solace who is fatally stabbed earning a gold as a light in the neck by Bond in Haiti middleweight in an inter- – with the obligatory cheesy university competition. joke when Bond asks it to be But after a few years of boxing reported back to M, “Tell her and supporting himself by Slate was a dead end.” working on the door of Cardiff Today he can be seen playing clubs the allure began to fade. the Headless Horseman “So someone suggested I Abraham van Brunt in the TV should get back into acting,” he series Sleepy Hollow. “Film is says. “More specifically thanks my first love but the beauty of to a few evenings singing TV is that it’s so accessible and drunken songs I was advised to there is so much of it that is get into musicals. I had no idea good. In a film you have 90 how to do this so I decided to minutes to tell a story, but there write, put it on at the Fringe or is something so satisfying about something, with me in it so that building a character over the agents would see me. So I wrote course of ten episodes.” a musical – basically Rocky set He is now in New Zealand to music – and recorded the filming Steven Spielberg’s music and entered it into a TV fantasy drama Lumen. He national competition. This has also written and produced brought me to the attention of two films himself and has both the writer and director Michael a TV show and a film currently Armstrong, who gave me a in development. There are no scholarship to his acting course.” plans, however, to revisit the His big break came when musical that started it all off. “I Oliver Stone cast him as the think I have been beaten to the general Perdiccas in Alexander. punch – pun intended – as the “It changed everything for me,” real Rocky The Musical actually he recalls. “Suddenly I was closed last year on Broadway.” getting ridiculously drunk with For the record, Jackson has Colin Farrell. I was on set with had a lucky escape as it hit the Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Brad canvas and lost a fortune. RJ

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XX G APRIL 2015 APRIL 2015 G XX ‘There is something so satisfying about building a character over the course of ten episodes’

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XX G APRIL 2015