A Quote by Lydia Leonard

Professionally, I was at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did lots of things there, and then I won the BBC Carlton Hobbs Award, so I did some BBC Radio drama work, which is a lovely way to start out because you work with lots of great people, and you're working all the time, so you're learning rather than sitting around and waitressing.
My first job was at the BBC but was really dull. I was working in the BBC's reference department, where I did a lot of filing. I had always been interested in films and theatre, so I thought that getting a job at the BBC would be a good idea, but the job was really mundane.
I got a job right out of drama school as assistant stage manager at the Bristol Old Vic. I've been lucky enough to stay in work ever since.
Partly because of the way I write - I don't work with an outline or in a straight line. I work where I can see things happening, and so I get lots and lots of little bits to start with, and I'm doing the research at the same time.
I stayed a year in the sixth form and there was talk of Cambridge, but I wanted to go to drama school. At 17 and three months I went to the Old Vic School in London. This most remarkable and brilliant drama school lasted only six years because the Old Vic Theatre hadn't the money to go on funding it.
A lot of people want to know why did I leave the BBC: did I have an argument with them? No! I had 13 wonderful years. But it was time. Since I left university, I'd only ever worked for the BBC. It was simply time.
I'm pleased it turned out the way that it did, because I know lots of other people who did fantastic work and did not see this particular kind of recognition [like Emmy].
Once, BBC television had echoed BBC radio in being a haven for standard English pronunciation. Then regional accents came in: a democratic plus. Then slipshod usage came in: an egalitarian minus. By now slovenly grammar is even more rife on the BBC channels than on ITV. In this regard a decline can be clearly charted... If the BBC, once the guardian of the English language, has now become its most implacable enemy, let us at least be grateful when the massacre is carried out with style.
The problem is you have people who are keenly aware of what their time span is. Governments work towards the next election; BBC governors work for their time there. You have extraordinary regimes that run at the BBC and different people have different outlooks.
I found myself at Cambridge, loved my course, and met these amazing people who got me heavily involved. I presumed I would have to go to drama school, but I did a play with my uni friends, who were doing lots of pub theatre in London, and through that met my agent. She said 'Don't go to drama school. I'll get you a job' and two weeks later she did.
I studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which was founded by Laurence Olivier and has alumni like Jeremy Irons and Daniel Day Lewis. It's a very erudite institution; its ethos, really, was always theatre-based.
I've done a lot of radio in my life. I've done radio plays for the BBC when I was young so I was absolutely used to that style of work, of working with the voice. I have a very distinctive voice so it's always great for me because I open my mouth and everybody knows who it is.
I really love the BBC, and my wife works for them, and they've given me lots of work!
When I didn't work on TV, that was OK because I was doing lots of theatre but I did begin to panic a bit.
I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertakers assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertaker's assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
All I can do is advocate changes at the BBC while respecting editorial independence upon which the success of the BBC rests. I can't do anything that requires the BBC to pay certain people certain amounts.
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