Max Bowden is 'fearless' after five years of acting in EastEnders

Max Bowden says starring in 'EastEnders' has made him "fearless".

The 29-year-old actor played Ben Mitchell in the BBC soap for five years until his departure in March and believes it is one of the "hardest gigs" in TV as he was always reliant on "impulse" during frequent scenes on the show.

Max is quoted by the Daily Star newspaper's HotTV column as saying: "'EastEnders' is one of the hardest gigs, if not the hardest gig, in acting because a lot of the time you have to strip away your technique and rely on impulse.

"I carry quite a lot of 'the method' in my approach to my acting, and it's easy to get a bit lost in the work as a result.

"So it's shaped me in that I no longer approach anything with fear.

"It's a brilliant place to hone your skills, so I'm very grateful for my time there."

Max left Albert Square after his alter ego Ben was extradited to the United States for credit card fraud but he felt it was the right time to leave the soap as he was suffering from burnout after "nearly six hundred episodes" of emotionally demanding stories.

He told YouTube series 'The Lewis Nicholls Show': "The important thing was my time was ready. I was very tired, and like I said, I wasn't me, I wasn't.

"The Max sat in front of you today was kind of a ghost, and they recognised that – I recognised that.

"I did nearly six hundred episodes in five years, which is a hell of a lot, and it was time for a rest. The character was tired, I was tired, they [the producers] were probably tired of me being tired.

"From an honest perspective, I think yeah, a lot of it was that I needed to go for a bit. I needed to go work on me, get myself back to a place of really good mental health, focus on healing and also be a dad."