Maev Mac Coille

When people talk about that "old-school theatre" acting vibe, what they really mean is that these performers learned their trade the hard way, treading the boards night after night in repertory companies. Actors such as Patrick Stewart and Brian Blessed both came out of working-class Yorkshire families - Stewart the son of a textile worker, Blessed of a coal miner - while others like Anthony Hopkins, from a baker's household in industrial Port Talbot, Albert Finney from a northern working-class background, and Ian McKellen - despite going to Cambridge - from the mill towns of Lancashire, spent years in regional rep theatres taking on every kind of role and refining their craft under real pressure before anything like fame arrived. For many of them the Royal Shakespeare Company then offered a further proving ground, giving them major classical stages on which to display the authority and technical command they had already built up over years of weekly rep. That long, grounded apprenticeship is what produced the presence that later carried so well into both London West End theatre, television, and film. It stands in sharp contrast to so many of today's instant stars, who tend to come from more comfortable middle-class backgrounds, leave drama school, and move almost straight into television or film stardom without that same prolonged period of learning by doing on the boards.