An actor’s life for me!
A butcher, a builder, a greengrocer….it looked like the one thing Gary Mavers would never be was an actor!
When Peak Practice star Gary Mavers won his place at RADA, the prestigious London drama school, he soon realised he wasn’t their usual sort of student. Unlike the other earnest young hopefuls, the wannabe actor had never even seen a play before!
‘I wasn’t that way inclined,’ says Gary, 32. ‘When I left school, I worked on building sites, served in a fruit ship and started training as a butcher. After a couple of years, I realised I was going nowhere fast so I decided t try acting. To me, acting was just a job that most people fancy as a career, It was either that or become a footballer!’
There are similarities between Gary’s life and that of his Peak Practice character, Dr Andrew Attwood. The Beeches’ handsome doctor was an electrician before his father died of a heart attack. ‘Andrew’s fictional background and my own are similar,’ agrees Gary. ‘We both began our working lives in normal trades and have working-class values. It’s through a twist of fate that we’ve entered what are thought of as middle-class professions. ‘Id never have guessed in a million years that I’d be doing what I do today. I’ve been terribly lucky. I just keep on learning.’