Insider View - Meet the cast

Many of the roles for Faintheart were cast through the internet. Meet some of the first actors ever cast online.

Phil Lester
Phil is playing SAM, Richard's co-worker at the DIY store. Phil is at university and has never acted before.

Sam, the part I play, is Richard's co-worker a the DIY store, a keen pupil of the Viking battle techniques that Richard teaches. I was about to go bowling when I saw a banner advert on the MySpace page saying AUDITION NOW. I work part time in a shop so I chose the Sam character and improvised a job interview in character. I tried to make it funny by suggesting this character was a bit of a layabout and didn't want the job. Two weeks later I got a calls saying I had made a and I started jumping around the house - I couldn't believe it. I got on the train to London, met the casting director and now I've got four days on the film. I've never done any proper acting but I do shoot a lot of stuff for YouTube with my mates, so perhaps I have learned to be relaxed on camera. Maybe that helped...

Calum Chalmers
Calum is playing KEVIN, another sidekick to Richard at the DIY store. Calum is a university student and has never acted before.

I read the guidelines and decided Kevin was in my age range. I put a monologue together for the job interview, rehearsed it for a week and then a friend fired the questions at me off character. I did GCE and A-Level Drama but I've never been involved in any productions or done any acting. Studying drama probably helped in another way because I was able to break down the character and, at risk of sounding pretentious, get at the truth of who he was. The description was of a guy who was an underachiever so I had to work out how he managed to get the job. I tried to make him sound witty, so whoever watched the casting would know he was a guy who pretended he was stupid to avoid getting jobs.