The chances of anyone being able to sustain a career by acting alone are slim. The business is colossally oversubscribed; and for every actor who is employed, there are nine who are sitting at home staring bleakly at the telephone. In fact, these damning statistics don't tell the whole story. The truth is that the same 10 per cent of actors tend to work a lot, while the same 90 per cent hardly get anything at all.

So the trick is to make sure you're in the 10 per cent. Or if not, to recognise the fact before it's too late and you've wasted your best years waiting for the break that's never going to happen. They don't tell you all this at drama school, of course; and even if they did, you wouldn't listen anyway. Drama students are nothing if not optimistic.