Andy Nyman: The news is full of horrors that you can't begin to let into your head

Andy Nyman speaks to Yahoo UK about his career in acting, writing, magic and more for Origin Story.

Video transcript

ANDY NYMAN: The news every day is just full of horrors that you can't begin to let into your head.

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- What first sparked your interest in acting?

ANDY NYMAN: I always loved doing sort of school plays and stuff. So I always had that bug. I was lazy at school. And it used to drive everybody a bit mad because I sort of had ability, but never wanted to use it. And my mom, when I was probably 13, 14 or something, had seen-- there was a little local drama group in Leicester. So she sort of said, look, why don't you go there and see if that suits you?

You know, and I did and it did. And that was it. Then the bug bit. And I knew-- I already had a feeling that I loved drama and stuff. I'd done sort of little shows at the other youth club I'd been to. But the real change for me was when I went to see "Jaws" at the pictures. And as a little curly-haired Jewish kid with glasses sitting watching this incredible film and seeing up on the big screen this little curly-haired Jewish guy with glasses, Richard Dreyfuss.

And I just saw that and thought, oh, my god, oh, my god, you can be in films and you don't have to look like Paul Newman or Robert Redford, as it would have been then. Or Brad Pitt. Or, you know, pick a ludicrously god-like human being now who stars in films. Well, I suddenly realized, oh, my god, you don't have to look like that. You can look like that, which I kind of did. So that was the moment then that I knew, oh, I really want to be an actor and I want to be in films.

- You've worked in lots of films and TV, but you've also worked significantly on stage and in theater. So I wanted to ask, how would you kind of describe your early experiences on stage?

ANDY NYMAN: Well, stage is just thrilling. I mean, I'm very blessed to be an actor. And I love it. And I always feel incredibly grateful that it works. Any time I get to act, I just love it so much. Being on stage is so wonderful because it's such an immediate form. So to get the last big stage thing that I did was "Fiddler on the Roof." You know, so to play Tevye on a West End stage is just-- it's just the most amazing feeling.

You know, and next year, I'm going to be doing another musical actually. I'm going to be doing "Hello, Dolly" at the Palladium. So it's the whole package. Walking through a stage door as an actor is-- it never gets boring. It's always a thrill. Let alone being in the wings and walking out on stage and just feeling like, wow.

- Is there any role that you've played in film, TV, theater, et cetera that you would approach differently now you think?

ANDY NYMAN: That's a really good question. I actually-- the honest truth is no. Not because I think I've done them perfectly. But what's interesting is I remember when I left drama school-- so I'd have been 21. And you sort of think, come on, I'm brilliant. Let me play King Lear. I can act. I know everything about life. You know, but the reality is you kind of play-- the parts seem to-- as long as you're drawing from yourself, it's always the right time.

So the fact that, again, to talk about Tevye for a minute, the fact I played Tevye, who's married for 25 years and his children are leaving home, well, the fact, I managed to play that as a man who was married for 30 years-- or 29 years at that point-- whose children are leaving home just means you're playing it in a different way than you would have done if you'd have got the role 15 years earlier.

Equally, you know, I think that it's easy to beat yourself up over things and look at them and think, oh, you blew that. You could have done it like that. Why didn't you do that? And, of course, if you're forensic about things, you can do that. But I've sort of tried to retrain myself to just be-- only choose work that I think I can be proud of, and then work really hard and hope that the results show when you do it.

You know, I don't mean, oh, they show what a hard worker he is, but so that you can walk away from it. And when you're asked a question like that, not think, yeah, I wish I could do that again because I blew that. I just feel like I've played an unbelievable variety of roles and blessed to have done that, and feel like I've given them all my best shot.

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- You also work with magic, which I think is so cool. [LAUGHS] I wonder, when did you kind of first begin getting interested in magic and wanting to perform it?

ANDY NYMAN: Well, I loved magic when I was a kid. My uncle bought me a magic set and I kind of got into that and practical jokes the two go hand in hand often a magic shop would sell jokes as well of jokes and tricks. So I always loved that. But then I really properly got into it about 30 years ago, about the same time I left drama school.

And Jeremy Dyson, who is my co-writer, co-director on "Ghost Stories" and the war art novel "The Warlock Effect." He's always done magic. And he moved to London and said, let's go to this magic shop. And I was like, I'm 22. I don't want to go to a magic shop. I'm not a kid. And, of course, I walked in, and it was like, oh, my god.

So I just fell in love with it then. And then I've done it ever since. And I've-- you know, it's a major obsession in my life. I absolutely love it. My son loves it, and he's very good at it as well. And he also creates. So it's a great shared passion for us.

- And how did your collaboration with Derren Brown first start?

ANDY NYMAN: I got a phone call out of the blue from a guy called Andrew O'Connor, who had a company called Objective. And they said-- and at that time, nobody was doing mind-reading magic. It was-- apart from, like, three of us. It was not in fashion. So I was quite well-known in the magic world for the stuff I was doing. And I got this phone call out of the blue saying, we want to offer you a one-hour special on Channel 4 doing mind-reading magic.

To which I said, thank you, but no thank you. I'm an actor. That's what I love. That's-- I'm not interested in getting famous as a magician. But whoever you find, I'll work with them and I'll write for them. And I'll-- and that-- they came back about six months later. It was a slightly longer process than that. But they came back and said we found this guy, Derren Brown. Had you ever seen him?

And I had. I'd seen him at a magic convention. He was incredible. And they said, well, we want you to work together. And that's how it happened. And that is 24 years ago. Something mad like that. So we worked together. I wrote and directed with Derren the first 10 years of the telly. Up until the lottery prediction, I sort of wrote everything. Derren and I wrote everything up until then. And then I've written and directed all of the stage shows, apart from one.

- And how would you describe your experience writing for the stage? You know, you've got these magic shows, of course, and your "Ghost Stories" play as well. But how would you find your experience writing?

ANDY NYMAN: I love it. I've always worked in collaborations, Roxy. It's the best way for me to work. And it's funny. I don't-- it's hard work. Creating anything is hard, hard work. And you have to learn to kill your darlings and ideas that you love that you realize aren't going to work. You have to let go of them. Or ideas that you love that the other person doesn't. You have to either compromise or let go of those.

But I really love it. It's endlessly tricky and challenging. But when it works, the results are really rewarding and exciting. You know, I mean, the pride of going to see something like "Showman," the last Derren Brown show, or "Ghost Stories." You know, hearing an audience reacting to the play of "Ghost Stories" or the film of "Ghost Stories." I mean, it's just nothing like it.

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- What were the movies that you loved growing up. But, also, do you remember your first cinema experience if "Jaws" wasn't the one?

ANDY NYMAN: We were a big film going and theater going family, you know? So I have very, very fond memories of all going to the ABC or the Odeon in Leicester, you know, to see whatever, you know, the big Disney release would have been. Or we went all the time. So I don't have-- there are lots of sort of memories within there. You know, "Jaws" is an absolute banger of a memory just because, again, it's easy to forget that that film changed cinema.

Literally, you know, you think cinema is only 100-plus years old. And that film is-- I don't know. How old is it? 45, 50 years old now. Something mental like that. So literally halfway through how long cinema existed, here comes a film that transforms the way cinema is released and invented what a blockbuster was. Everything led on from that. It's quite incredible.

So to be able to have seen that, let alone the Richard Dreyfuss connection, let alone as a kid who was scared of horror films and stuff to have to go and see what is basically a monster film, a monster movie that had some proper horror jumps in it, I mean, you know-- and then the other absolutely massive one was "The Fog--" John Carpenter's "The Fog."

My sister wanted to go see it. But as I said, I was a scared kid. So I'd have been 14. It was a AA, as the rating used to be. And I didn't want to go see it. And she said, oh, come with me. It'll be fine. It's not scary. It has to be an X if it's scary. So we went to see it. And, of course, I mean, it is an absolute roller coaster ride masterpiece of sort of thrilling ghost story. And I was terrified, but loved it. Loved it.

- You've kind of touched on it just now, but I wanted to kind of ask about your experiences with horror, like, growing up and how that kind of interest in the genre I guess developed because you kind of talked about how it started.

ANDY NYMAN: I can't underestimate-- no, wrong-- overestimate, overstate what horror has meant in my life. And that is a real surprise to me because I was, as I keep saying, a scared kid. You know, I did not watch anything. I'd run away from it. Anything that scared me. So I can't quite believe that horror has become this, you know, sort of obsession in my life.

But it's funny as you grow and change because when you're younger, around the video Nasty Boom, you want to see the worst thing you can possibly imagine. You know, the most violent. There are no taboos. You just want to see anything and everything you can. But as you get older and you become more aware of your mortality, and you get married and have kids, and there are people around you that you worry about and worry for, your tastes change.

I mean, I saw a film recently, "Speak No Evil." I don't know if you've seen that. I wish I'd never seen it. I mean, it's so-- I mean, it's an incredible piece of work, but it's so wretched and so profoundly upsetting and haunting. Well, that would have meant nothing to me when I was a kid. The news every day is just full of horrors that you can't begin to let into your head. I mean, I don't really watch the news. I don't really go on social media. It's just too much.

Asian horror is very akin to British ghost stories, I've always found, because as culture-- you know, there's sort of-- there's nothing within Asian horror or the British ghost story that feels akin to America or Americans. It is a completely different sensibility because the sensibility of the Asian cultures-- and I realize that's as a broad generalization, but it's the same as the British culture, which is terrible fear of embarrassment, terrible fear of being judged publicly. Absolutely being buttoned down in private.

You could epitomize both of those cultures like that as generalizations. Consequently, a lot of the horror that comes out of those two cultures, I think if you look at "Dark Water," that could be an MR James story. "Oldboy" has sort of Hitchcock's Britishness stamped all over it.

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- If you could go back in time and give young Andy any advice to change his origin story or change his story, what would it be and why?

ANDY NYMAN: I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn't change anything. I'd love to come out with some wise thing. I would tell him not to worry. Everything will be fine. But, no, life is what it is. I've had a fantastic life. Ups and downs, like all of us. Pain, happiness, like all of us. That's what life is. It's unavoidable. But I wouldn't change a [BLEEP] thing. And I love that I still get to swim in the same sea that I have loved since I was a kid. Still get to do all the same things. My god, that is a blessing and a half.

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