With one of the most recognisable voices in entertainment, star or stage and screen Craig Kelly’s soft, natural tone has made him into one of Britain’s most versatile performers. Growing up in St Anne’s near Blackpool during the seventies and eighties, Craig’s ambition was to play up front for Liverpool but by the age of sixteen he realised that this sadly wasn’t to be. With an interest in sociology, he was determined not to follow the usual trajectory of working in a factory and instead wanted to do something different. He registered to study psychology and sociology at St Anne’s College but on his way there, Craig spotted an eccentric looking gentleman called Brian Hindle who recommended him to enroll on a two year acting course which would prepare him for drama school and the rest is history.
Such an unconventional path to his chosen profession would astonishingly put Craig on the path to success. Studying the Stanislavsky approach to drama allowed him to understand and become the characters he was playing in a more naturalistic way. Essentially, with Stanislavsky, actors are essentially finding the similarities between themselves and the characters they are portraying so that acting becomes a state of being. This was a vital lesson for Craig and made him a more rounded performer as a result.
Meeting John Simm at Drama Centre, Craig became part of a generation of young creative artists who had their sights set on a different career. Northern England was now once again a hotbed of creativity. However, London was still the place to take a career in entertainment and so there seemed little option but to move to the capital. Thankfully, this has changed dramatically since the nineties and thanks in part to the internet and social media, people don’t always have to make such a big change. Yet in the early nineties London was still considered the epicentre of Britain’s entertainment industry.
Following a successful run as a freelance voice artist, Craig auditioned for a role in James Cameron’s blockbuster Titanic. Aged just twenty five, this was an invaluable experience for the young actor and his youthful confidence endeared him to the passionate nature of Cameron. His strong belief that he could and should have been playing Leonardo DiCaprio’s role was evident and Cameron was extremely impressed with this sense of passion which he demonstrated. However, Craig would have a shock at the premise when he discovered that half of his scenes were cut from the final movie. Nevertheless this experience had been vital to Craig’s development as an actor and he was extremely proud several years later when they revealed these deleted scenes in the director’s cut on DVD.
Beyond film cameos, perhaps Craig’s most defining role came in 1999 when he was cast as Vinca Tyler in Russell T. Davies’s coming of age masterpiece Queer As Folk. This was one of the first drama series to depict the homosexual community as rounded individuals, devoid of the 1970’s stereotypes of John Inman and Larry Grayson which was a very outdated version of homosexuality in the 1990’s. Queer As Folk surrounded a group of gay young men navigating through the hurdles of adulthood on the backdrop of 1990’s Manchester. Originally thinking, he was up for the part of Stuart, Craig was unsure whether he would be right for the part as a result of the extroverted nature of the role. Not feeling it, he took the script towards the bin but as he was about to discard it, he found a note which read “we want you to read for the character of Vince”. This note would change the direction of his career!
Playing a homosexual character as a heterosexual male was a process that Craig wanted to perfect. He didn’t want to ham it up through fear of losing some of the legitimacy that the script had. Essentially Queer As Folk is a tale about the power of human relationships and the complexity which they bring. The fact that all of the protagonists are gay makes little or no difference to the storyline. Therefore Craig could lean on his experiences of previous girlfriends and how they interacted to refine the character of Vince. In hindsight Craig is extremely proud to have been involved with such an influential drama which helped to bring about positive change within the LGBTQ+ community and the legacy of Queer As Folk looms large in almost every TV drama hereafter.
With the success of Queer As Folk, Craig was able to rediscover his natural voice for narration as his profile increased. In January 2000, months before the launch of Big Brother, Channel Four premiered a reality series in which a group of strangers were stranded on a desert island and had to work together in order to survive. Craig’s youthful tone made him the perfect person to preside over the fascinating consequences of human relationships and behaviour when they’re stripped back to basics. Popular with teenagers and hungover students, Shipwrecked was the perfect accompaniment to lazy Sunday mornings and appealed to the reality zeitgeist of the time.
For almost every actor, the invitation to appear in a serial drama is a common rite of passage. In 2008 Craig secured the role of factory owner Luke Strong in the heavyweight Coronation Street. Being a fan of the show throughout his life, it was a very surreal experience to find himself walking along those famous cobbles and heading into the Rovers Return. As owner of Underworld, Luke spent much of his time in the factory where the iconic Mike Baldwin had worked for many years. Finding himself amongst TV legends including William Roache and Barbara Knox just brought it home to Craig that he was at the heart of British television drama and that felt extremely exciting.
To accurately sum up Craig Kelly’s formidable contribution to British television is something impossible to achieve. Whether it’s his timeless performance of Vince Tyler or his soft narration on Shipwrecked, what viewers see in his work is a sense of truth which remains incredibly endearing. It was a fantastic pleasure to welcome the great Craig Kelly to Beyond The Title and it’s exciting to see what awaits him next.
Beyond The Title