It was, but the material is all there for you to absorb, the way he walks, talks, his personality. It is a big deal because he's such a critic, so it was a bit scary in the beginning, but I love that. I take a lot of time for that kind of work, when you have to really dig in deep. You've got to get it right because if you don't then you're screwed. And hopefully we got it right…

WHAT RESEARCH DID YOU HAVE TO DO?

I was really interested in the years before his career, what inspired him, where he started and what he was like as a teenager, his inspirations. The main thing that people know about David Bailey is that he's this rock 'n' roll photographer of the ‘60’s but it was my job to understand what got him there. I met him after we shot it all and just thought, 'Shit, here we go...' he decides if he likes you in the first 10 seconds that he meets you, so you haven't got long! He's such a lovely guy, you've just got to know how to take him.

I CAME ACROSS A LITTLE VIDEO WHILE RESEARCHING YOU...EUROVISION?

Oh! Ah, shit. Wow… that's probably the worst video you could have found… Shit! I have tried to put a ban on that video! Let me explain; there's a Welsh language channel called S4C and… I didn't enter the Eurovision Song Contest, you're OK it wasn't that. I started singing when I was very young and these writers wrote this song for a competition called ‘Caneuon Enwog Cymru’ (Songs for Wales) and they asked me to sing the song… I was just the guinea pig! I did that and did a music video to go with it. I was 13-years-old! I was a boy you know? I'm probably blushing!

HAVE YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A PERFORMER?

Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be an actor. I started watching films, dancing, singing, sword fighting and horse riding when I was really young, so I already knew what I wanted to do. It got to a point when I could take a music route, because I was getting approached by record labels and managers, or I could pursue acting, and I love acting so I decided to back off the music industry. Music’s more personal to me, it’s something that I like to do in my own time or as a hobby, rather than as a profession.

YOU’VE DONE BOTH IN HUNKY DORY THOUGH…

Yes, it’s funny how they cross so much. I’ve done a few things where acting and singing is combined and it’s a lot of fun, as long as it’s classy in some way and not cheap and nasty. I’m very particular about my music, I get really uptight about what music I do. The music industry is just so messed up at the moment, it’s lost a bit of credibility and that’s why I’m moving away from it. I’m a bit old-fashioned when it comes to the industry, you should believe in what you’re writing rather than just doing a one-hit-wonder and buggering off.

WHAT SORT OF AN ACTOR DO YOU WANT TO BE?

It’s important for me that every role is different. In all the films I’ve done, every role has been different - different age, different accent - I’m very lucky. Now I really have got to start to think about becoming a better actor!

WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT MEANS?

I don’t know really. As long as the audience believe the actor, then the job is done. It also comes down to the career choices you make; I know that I would only do roles that I feel passionate about because if I’m just doing a job for the sake of it then there’s going to be someone who’s missed out, who really wanted to do it. For me, it’s about being committed to a project.

YOU’RE PLAYING AN AGORAPHOBIC CHARACTER IN CITADEL

Yes and I’m really excited about it if I’m honest with you. I really believe in the director, Ciaran Foy, it’s his first feature and he just understands how to tell a story. He’s a very talented man. When you first meet my character, Tommy, he is newly married and moving out of a council estate and into a new home with his heavily pregnant wife. When he goes out to pack the car, she is attacked, and he goes up to find that she’s been stabbed with a dirty needle, she goes into shock, has a caesarean, goes into a coma, and my character is left with this baby. Of course he loves the child but all it does is remind him of his dead wife.

He’s left as a single father, a young man, petrified and that fear grows into chronic agoraphobia. The art director worked on Inception and it just looks very, very dark! The first half of it is very documentary-based and the second half goes somewhere completely different, it’s like JJ Abrams comes in and starts messing around! I’m really excited to see it. I think it’s going to be very intense to watch.

DO YOU ENJOY DOING THOSE MEATIER ROLES?

Yeah! That movie killed me, because I’m in every scene. It was a two-month, six-day, 14-hour-a-day shoot, and I just got lost in what I was doing, but that’s why I love it. I’d go to the gym at night because my character had to be really tired and I wanted to make him a little worn, then I’d collapse into bed for a few hours and get back up and go again. For me, that’s good work, you feel like you’re earning the right to do what you’re doing.

DO YOU FIND IT QUITE EASY TO SHAKE CHARACTERS?

Forget about them? Yeah. I’m very good at switching off. You’ve got to turn off the clock, because otherwise you will end up an agoraphobic, an insomniac - you’d drive yourself insane. Whenever I go to a meeting or an audition, for instance, I walk into the room with all the confidence in the world, but I leave as if I haven’t got the job, because if you get the call then it’s a bonus.

SO YOU AREN’T DISAPPOINTED?

Yeah, you can trick yourself in some ways. It is really hard though. For Citadel I was filming up to three days before Christmas when we wrapped. I got back to Wales, completely ill and was bed-bound for about two weeks because my body just needed to relax. It’s a bit mental sometimes, but that’s why you do it and that’s what’s exciting about it, every job is different. In another movie I have to ride horses and do twelve stunts a day, and that’s a different thing again.

HOW DO YOU FIND DOING THose MORE ACTION-HEAVY FILMS, like IRONCLAD?

I love them. I’ve been sword fighting since I was 11-years old and horse-riding since I was a teenager, and I do all my own stunts. If I’m honest, I get very annoyed when the producers say, ‘We haven’t got the insurance!’ I say, ‘Well you’ve got to get the insurance, because no one is doing my stunts for me!’ I think that’s probably my biggest diva trait as an actor… In the ‘50s everyone did their own stunts! I like danger… the bigger the stunt, the happier I am!

YOU WON AN OLIVIER AWARD FOR SPRING AWAKENING, HOW DID THAT FEEL?

It’s still surreal to this day. It was just a really weird moment, I mean, I was up against Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean, Blackadder himself!

Truth be told, on the night I was happily sitting on the table, three bottles had gone by, we were up for around seven awards and after the first two wins, I was like, ‘Now we can all relax, it’s done’. My friend, Iwan Rheon (Misfits) was in the show with me and when he won I shot out of my seat. Everyone was really civilised there, and I was just up going, ‘Whey!’ and the spotlight was right next to me… I quickly sat down, very embarrassed. (Laughs)

Then when I got my name called, I literally sat at the table and I’m not joking you, I’m not saying this for dramatic effect… you literally do just go, ‘Was that my name? Oh shit, there’s a light on me and everyone’s clapping at me… it must have been me...’ Then you get pushed up and have a moment of realisation. It was a very, very big moment for me. I don’t even have the award, my mother has it. It’s beautiful but I don’t know what it means, I don’t know what to do with it! My mum loves it because she has something to polish!

DOES IT FEEL LIKE A SEAL OF APPROVAL?

I guess so. If you’re a young actor and you’re in a room with some of the biggest actors in the world that you watch and see win awards, and then you get presented an award and they’re looking at you clapping, it is like, "Oh…maybe this is right, maybe I’m alright then! Maybe I cando this." So yeah, it kind of is, I don’t think anyone could say that they don’t have that thought; they’d be lying if they said they didn’t. But, at the same time, it doesn’t make anything easier. I wouldn’t want to get a job off an award, because that’s just…

PEOPLE ARE JUST LOOKING AT THE AWARD AND NOT AT YOU?

Yeah, it’s like, ‘Hello, I’m an actor, I’ve got some skills.’ I would never take a job off an award, that’s just a complete cop-out.

DO YOU FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE ON STAGE OR SCREEN?

There’s no preference really. When you’re on stage you’ve got to drive the whole show and you can take the audience wherever you want, if they’re with you, that is! First you have to earn their respect and attention and if you’ve got that then you can take them wherever you want, respectfully, so that’s really fun but it’s very difficult. When an audience isn’t coming with you, you’ve got to really work hard to get their attention and turn it around and I think that’s when you do your best work because you’re completely in there.

With film it’s a lot of waiting around and post-production. We could be shooting three scenes at most a day, so you can take about three takes in each scene with different set ups and angles, but you can wait around for about 10 hours to do just 30 seconds work. With a show you come in for two hours and you’re done. Filming is a long process, but you get to fine-tune, so it has its different perks. I love both of them, there’s not one that I love more.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU LIVE ON?

I’ve been very fortunate with lots of advice. One thing I really live upon is, ‘You’re only as good as your last job’ - in that case you should always, always try to raise the bar. Another thing, in terms of theatre, is that no matter if you have a full house or there’s one guy sitting in the audience, that one guy has bought a ticket so he deserves as good a show as anyone else- I really believe in that and it’s very important. I hate when actors are just coasting through shows and they can’t be bothered, it’s just silly and disrespectful.

DO YOU EVER SEE YOURSELF GOING BEHIND THE SCENES, WRITING OR DIRECTING?

It’s funny, I have written lots of stuff, I understand the camera very well, and I would love to maybe do one movie, or maybe even a play, but it would have to be later on. I’ve got my acting career to concentrate on now and I’d probably go mental if I tried to do both of them, but yeah, in the future I would definitely like to do my own, but it’s difficult getting your own film and story together. I’m a terrible perfectionist, so if I did it I would want to do it properly, it would have to be the full shebang.

WHO IS YOUR IDOL?

Richard Burton. He was a valley boy like myself, and went on to become one of the biggest and greatest stage and screen actors of all time. I loved his persistence and his work, he was never bad, he never missed the mark, no matter how drunk he was or what woman he was with at the time. He always did his job with complete passion and admiration and he knew how lucky he was. Also, his voice is probably the best voice ever; I could listen to it for hours on end. He was a bloody good actor and my biggest regret about him is that he died and I can’t bloody work with him.

WHAT’S YOUR BIG AMBITION?

I’ve got a few different roles. I’d love to do Hamlet one day, but when I’m older in 15 years time maybe and I’d also love to play Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire. But there is this one role, the only role that I know I could show my Grandfather's, if they were alive, what I do, the only way I could really say thank you - to play Bond. Whether that will happen is another matter, it’s a bloody high thing to try to get to but I may as well reach for the stars, right? I might reach the moon.

Hunky Dory is out 2^nd March

Citadel is premiering at SXSW Festival (runs from 9-17 March)

Interviewed by Emma Hurwitz

Photographed by Jessica Klinglefuss 

Still: Hunky Dory (Entertainment One)