More Than Talent

Welcome to the second episode of Building Resilient Futures, the podcast where we explore resilience through the lens of innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. Tune in to discover actionable insights and tools to navigate an uncertain world, straight from leaders across industries and disciplines. Whether you're building a business, breaking into an industry, or chasing a dream, listen carefully because these conversations are here to future-proof you. On the podcast today is a storyteller who defines resilience. Whether he's appearing in a Marvel film or being spotted by paparazzi with Jamie Oliver, his story is about so much more than his films and TV roles. He's an actor, philanthropist, and the master of reinvention. He's faced rejection, unpredictability and the ever-changing landscape of the film industry. Yeah, he's built a career that spanned over 3 decades. So how do you stay relevant in such a cutthroat industry? How do you bounce back from setbacks? And what can we all learn from someone who's navigated the highs and the lows of Hollywood? Welcome Jason Fleming onto the second episode of Building Resilient Futures.

It's really great to have you on the podcast. I just wanted to start by asking, could you give me a little bit of a background and a little bit of information on your story?

Okay, certainly. My name is Jason Fleming. I'm an actor of just over 3 decades in the UK film business. I trained at LAMDA, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Which then led me on to doing— my sort of entry into the business was at the Royal Shakespeare Company where I spent 3 years understudying and sort of being a glorified extra but studying under great theatre directors. And then I limped into TV and then into feature films and have stayed in the latter two for the past 25 years really. So yeah, it's been a prolific and exciting career of which some of your punters will know and some won't.

That's great to hear. And if you could just give me a couple of your highlights, what are some of your favorite projects you've worked on?

Well, I guess the ones that people know most will be the Guy Ritchie movies Lock, Stock and Snatch. I'd done maybe 15 or 20 films before that, but in our business it's about the success of a project gives you the opportunity to do other projects. So I did that, those two, and then after that there was a sort of plethora of British films, gangster flicks, that came out after that, which I did. And then about a decade ago, just when I was beginning to feel that I wasn't as relevant I wanted to be. I did The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was nominated for 13 Oscars. That, that sort of put me back into a castable place. And then more recently I did Boiling Point with Stevie Graham, which was nominated for BAFTAs. So that was in the last 4 or 5 years. And since then I've been in and out of British TV and keeping my head just above water and keeping the wolf from the door.

That's amazing. And you say you've been working in acting and film for over 3 decades, which is fantastic. What has helped you sustain career across theatre, indie films, and major Hollywood productions for that time?

Well, I think, you know, our business is a lot to do— all media is a lot to do with how you present yourself, how you are amongst others. Not being too self-effacing, but there are great actors have a certain amount of mental struggles because it takes that to be a great actor. If you think of all the actors that, you know, the listeners love, my generation, like De Niro, Pacino, Brando, all those actors have all struggled with their mental health for, you know, generations. Struggled with alcoholism, of them struggled with addiction. But what I managed to do is find a niche where I'm easy to be around, quite reasonably priced, and that means a lot in our business. You know, the time you spend on set is intense. You know, they're 15, 16-hour days, and unless you're exceptional, people would rather be amongst people that are easy to be around for that period of time and understand that it's not an exact science and that they'd have to bend to the will of the day and how much you've got to shoot and how quickly we've got to shoot it. So that's really me. I've just really, really enjoyed being part of a community of people making films, and that's what it is, you know.

You said that many great actors and actresses have battled addiction and mental health challenges. Why do you think that is?

Ah, it's difficult. It's like what came first, the chicken or the egg, you know. I think, I think definitely for actresses It's been a tough road for, you know, since the film began. I think for the actresses, the pressure on them has been immense to be a certain way, to be a certain size, to put up with a certain amount of abuse. That's always been there. There's always been like, you know, for me, there's always been like one actress and 11 blokes, you know, because there's always going to be coppers, there's always going to be soldiers, you know, there's always going to be gangsters, and they're usually generally men. So it's much easier for me to work, it always has been. It doesn't really matter quite what you look like. You don't have to be 23 like the actresses have to be. So I think for them it's been really tough and I think that puts a strain on you because, you know, acting, it involves a lot of rejection, a lot of people telling you no, a lot of people saying, you know, you're not, you don't look right, you're not this way, you should be that way. And that takes its toll. I've been really lucky, my journey Whenever I've got to a point where I've been thinking, oh man, I can't take this anymore, something's always arrived just in time. Like I was saying, you know, just when I thought it was getting— I was getting a bit naff, a job comes along which does really well. And that's happened. So my ebb and flow of my career has been quite constant, and I've been very lucky. And it's not that way for a lot of people. It takes its toll on a lot of people. And that's why I think you see people who are not successful turning to drink and drugs and trying to work out what to do with their life. And the opposite as well is when they are really successful, they turn to drink and drugs and think, what's my life about? It's, you know, it's a difficult journey for a lot of people.

What personal strategies have you used to help you manage the stress and the uncertainty throughout your career?

I think it's really important to ground yourself in your family. I think it's really important to realize it's a job that it may be a lot more fun than working on the bins or building brick walls, but it's the same principle. It's how you earn your living. It's how you bring home the bacon and it's how you put your kids through school and feed the family. So I've always thought of it that way. So I've never, even though I love what I do and my mum weirdly said to me, she was Scottish and she said, Jason, if you have problems with your love life or if you have problems financially, then come to me. Come to me and say I've had a bad day at work. I don't care because I've hated every day of my work for 35 years. And I was like, okay, fair enough. I do love what I do and I'm lucky to do it. I think a good safety net is always good too. If you're, if you're in the media business, you need to have a side hustle. You need to think of a way that you're going to keep the wolf from the door when no one wants you to be in X-Men: First Class or Curious Case of Benjamin Button. You've got to think of a way that you can do that. And so I've always realized that it's not about how much you earn for this job, it's about how much you earn for the month or the year. So today, like we were just saying, today I was up in town pretending to be Scottish for a Grant's whisky commercial, and I do talking books, I do— I work at the prison. There's all sorts of things that I do which keep me from waiting for the phone to ring for acting.

You spoke a little bit about the prisons. You've worked with these prisons for over 30 years. What first inspired you to get involved with the work in prisons?

So I kind of grew up in South London not in such a posh road. And I realised that acting for me was a way of keeping me on the straight and narrow. It was something I focused on. It gave me direction. It gave me a reason and a place to be, and that was an amazing, amazing asset. When you get out of bed and you're 12 and you go, I'm going to be an actor on, in films, it's a great feeling because then that was all I cared about. That was all I wanted to do. And so the focus was really easy for me, but You know, if you don't have that, it's a difficult journey. But the truth is, for anyone who's out there who wants to be in media or who thinks that might be the world they want to drift into, you just gotta keep going forward in that world. So whatever you wanna do, whether it be radio or film or TV or cameraman or lighting or whatever it is, just dive in. You can't do it unless you're on the road. You can't find what you want unless you're looking. And the only way to look is to do it. And to just keep going. You know, if you go into the film business, if you start in camera, you might go, actually, you know what, the thing where you have to find the places where they're— the location manager, that's a really interesting gig. Let me do a couple of days with him and see what that's about. And you will find it, you know, you'll find your feet. So my advice is always get out of bed and go work, do whatever you need to do, because you'll trip over what you're looking for.

We will come back to your work in the prisons a little bit after. But I just wanted to touch quickly on— you spoke about how you got into acting and how you wanted to do it from quite a young age. Could you just tell me a little bit how you did break into the industry?

It's not an exact science, that, and it's hard, you know, it's really hard. It wasn't for me, but it— for the majority of people, it's hard to get started. Nepotism still exists. It is about who you know, but really it's about making the most of the opportunities you're given. If you're not given the opportunity, it's very hard to make the most of them. But for me, since I was a kid, since primary school, I wanted to act. There was a girl called Alice Overy who was playing Dorothy, and so I auditioned for the Scarecrow so that I could snog her. We were 11, and she ran off with the Tin Man. But it did start my passion for being on stage and being watched and making people laugh, and it progressed really, really in a really kind of like almost classic way, you know. I just, I did the National Youth Theatre, then I did drama at school. It took 3 years, but I got into drama school. And then went to the RSC. And so that progression was almost a cliché, but for me it was great. The point is that the opportunities you have, you have to maximize when they come, if they come. And I think now, what's easier now for people your age, what's amazing now, is that you can make— you don't need permission. You know, when I was younger, you had to shoot on film. There was no video, which by its very nature was expensive. So you could do like small plays, church halls, but that was the best you could do. Now you don't need permission to shoot a feature, you can do it on the phone, and I think that's an amazing thing is that you now can— you don't have to wait to be given permission to do what we love to do, which is shoot films.

That's really interesting. So could you tell me a bit about some of the biggest and the best actors you've worked with, and what do you think sets them apart? What really gave them an advantage over the rest?

I think talent will out, you know, so if you're asking me who's, which actors I've worked with that are great, it's never to do with nepotism at that, by that point. It's to do with talent, you know, the classics, you know, Brad Pitt, who I did Snatch and Benjamin Button with, De Niro, who I worked with, Johnny Depp, all of those, Mark Wahlberg, all of those actors, film actors, are amazing at what they do. When you watch Brad acting, you suddenly go, okay, I get it. He's in a different place. You know, with football, the thing about acting, right? If you play football with Ronaldo, you look ridiculous. If you play cricket with Gough, you look terrible because their talent is so exceptional. With acting, if you act with the best, they pull you up. If you act with the best actors in the world, you give the best performances you've ever given. In Benjamin Button, when I sat down at the read-through and went, oh my God, Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, directed by David Fincher. This is going to be so hard. I'm going to get caught out. And of course, what happens is they're the best in this, in the business, and it means you're the— you give the best performances you could ever give. It's a very different thing to any other profession. The better the people you're with, the better you, the better you perform.

And you shifted into directing quite late, quite recently, with a series called Eat Locals. Could you tell me a little bit about how you got into directing and producing as well.

I think by the nature of the beast with any profession you're in, eventually you become an elder statesman for that job. You know, like I said to you, 30 years in the business, watching young directors directing and going, that's the wrong call, I wouldn't have done it that way, oh, that's such a big mistake, why are you doing that? And I think eventually you go, I've got to do this, I have to, I have to take control of the means of production, I have to stop being a foot soldier and start becoming a general, because by osmosis you gain so much information and experience that eventually it becomes blatantly obvious that you need to take control of the reins. And that's what happens. And if you're given the opportunity to do that, or you have the desire to do that, then a lot of actors event— like my mate Dexter Fletcher, who did the Elton John film, and he's doing so well now, but it's because eventually after 35, 40 years he was, he was babyfacing Bugsy Malone and now he's directing Hollywood movies.

And there's been a lot of shifts in the entertainment industry in 30 years, from streaming to changing the audience. How have you adapted to those shifts across your time?

The truth is, it's the same. You don't really have to, like, there isn't a form of acting. Acting for theatre is different to acting for camera, but camera encapsulates TV, film, video, right? This is the same thing you do, no matter how big the screen is, the performance is the same. So that performance-wise, it hasn't changed. What you mentioned about the streaming networks, etc., just really mean that there is— when I first started, there was film and then there was TV, and TV was ITV and BBC and then latterly Channel 4, but that was it. So there weren't that many platforms, and the TV platforms were people were slightly snobby about. It was like you're a feature film actor, and if you didn't make it as a feature film actor, you'd be a TV actor. But now that, with, like you said, with Apple and with Netflix, what's happened is the money is in TV, right? So the— so for instance, when we made like X-Men: First Class, cost $180 million, and that's a lot of dough. But The Crown cost £50 million per episode. So the big actors are in TV, big directors are in TV, the quality of the TV is amazing. So that's the big difference. It's just more platforms, more ways to earn your living, more places to get work. So it's a good thing for all actors.

And what skills would you say are really, really important in the acting and media industry that isn't actually acting? How important is your network and building your network?

The media is about confidence, not David Tennant, I can produce the BAFTAs confidence, but the confidence to, to put your hand on a door, open that door and walk through into the room and not know quite who's going to be in there and hold yourself and go, this is me, this is what I do, and I can engage with you and look you in the eyes. That confidence is vital to being in my business, in the film business, in TV and media, but also in life. And my advice would always be protect your confidence. Protect it. If anyone is messing with it, if you feel anyone is trying to needle you or take or make you feel insecure in any way at all, just smile, say thank you very much, and walk away from them and don't look back. Don't let anyone touch your confidence.

Did you always have that confidence, or is that something you had to learn?

What I think is really important is you remember your small victories, right? So put them in your back pocket, don't forget them. If you succeed today, You have to take that success into tomorrow. This is day one. Day one was yesterday. This is day two, and you have to take from what happened yesterday into what happens today. So you, you bank those tiny successes, those tiny victories. That's really important.

We'll go back to the directing, if you don't mind. I'm just going to ask, you originally intended Eat Locals to be directed by your friend Dexter.

Yeah, I did.

Um, what changed that you made you want step in?

Again, it was confidence. I just, I thought, I can't direct this. I was producing it. It was a script that I developed, and I was producing it, quite happy with that. Still, still think my niche or my future is in producing rather than directing. But at this point, Dexter got busy and couldn't direct it, and I was like, well, the project's either gonna collapse, I'm gonna have to find a new director. And then I was like, well, I might just do it myself. And the reason I hadn't thought of myself as a director was one, obviously I hadn't done it before, but it was again confidence. It was self-belief. And once I had no choice, I had to have the self-belief, and we knocked it out the park. It went really well. But again, that's all to do with confidence and self-belief.

What was the hardest part of directing compared to acting, or how does directing challenge you in a different way?

Acting is like being a foot soldier. You turn up, you're driven to work, you're fed, and you do what you're told, and then you go home. Directing is like being pecked to death by 1,000 pigeons. Directing is making every decision, whether it be, is it this watch or is it this watch? Is it this prop or is it that prop? Should the actor stand here or stand there? Should we put the camera here or put the camera there? Is it too light or too dark? And all of those questions are constant, like all day, and that is a huge pressure, but you have to go with your instinct. There's another thing which is vitally important in life, and that's prep. So as a director, you would storyboard the whole film. So you have the whole film as a sort of graphic novel. So when they go, where are we going to put the camera, Jace? You're like, well, as you can see from this picture, this is where I want to shoot it from. These are the people in the— these are the people in the frame. These are the props I need. This is the staging. And that gives you the safety net. Now you can change that safety net, but the prep prepares you and gives you the confidence to change it. So prep and confidence.

Um, what lessons in leadership and adaptation have you learned in that transition? And you you'd probably be a more experienced actor in most scenarios you'd be in now.

Yeah, I guess so. I guess I'm a kind of, we call it an old player. You know, when I walk on set, my mates, you know, the cameraman says, he goes, hey Jay, you're an old player. And I'm like, yeah, I guess I am an old player now. Leadership-wise, I am not a natural leader, but what I do try and do is make the place that we're working, a set, a film set, a comfortable place. That people are not in awe of it, you know, it's not like some religious church, it's a place of work, a place of fun. The more relaxed young actors are, the better they perform, so I'm like, my job really is to put them at ease, make people feel that they deserve to be there, and I guess that's what I'm good at. I guess I'm good at creating an atmosphere where people are comfortable and feel that they can do, make mistakes, that they can get it wrong, it doesn't matter, you know, it's not theatre, if you get it wrong we do it again.

You've probably seen over your 30 years working in film lots of young actors face many challenges, and you've probably faced different challenges yourself. How has resilience played a part in your acting career?

Resilience is massively important. I mean, I do truly believe I've been very lucky that, like I said earlier, that just when it begins to get too much for me, things fall right for me, you know, whether that's karma or whether that's luck or whether that's just the road that I'm walking. That's always happened. So for the others who have suffered more rejection, who have had less success, who have earned less money, who have had more knockbacks, I don't know how they do it. I really don't. I've got friends, you know, who don't work and constantly get turned down, and now even worse, don't even get the meetings to get up for work. Resilience is finite. You know, I think you can only be resilient for a certain amount of time and then you're battered. And I think that's what happens with actors. I think if you don't get the breaks, you can't, you know, you can smell it on an actor. You can smell the rejection. You can smell the desperation. It's a horrible scent and one that we all try and avoid, but it's there and you can feel it. And so when those actors, say an actor, maybe an older actor who's done well, who's come onto a set for a day and the truth is he's probably better than the day's work he's doing. But, you know, it's not a hobby, he has to go to work, and fashion changes and actors become less, um, desired. So whenever I meet those guys, or the young actor who's just out of drama school who's terrified, who I can smell it on him, I try and, uh, make sure they feel as special as they need to feel and as as cared for and as safe as they need to feel. And I think that's probably one of my strengths, that I can do that, and I recognize that.

We touched a little bit on the new technologies in film and media. Now, the entertainment industry has always adapted to these new technologies. What's one innovation or change that you think will have the biggest impact on filmmakers?

I think we touched on it earlier, the fact that you can— the quality of film without using film, you know, the electric phones and video and other means of recording without using actual film footage has meant that everything's easier. Film was really tough and almost, um, it kept people out because you had to be very, very technically savvy to use it. And now, as you know, you can use your phone and shoot whatever you want, which has been really, really interesting that It means that no one's life is private. It means that, you know, actors are recorded at every corner by everyone doing various things, some nefarious, some not. But it's a new thing that every single person in their hand or pocket has a device that can shoot a feature film.

And if you don't— I hope you don't mind, but I'm just going to touch on the prison rehabilitation work that you did.

I didn't talk about that. So basically I work at Brixton and what I do is I train, you know, in a group of people of which, of whom are much more devoted than I am. I'm a kind of a prison tourist. I sort of drift in and out depending on work, but we train listeners and listeners are people who are prisoners who we train in basic empathy so that when someone in the prison is in trouble, they knock on the cell door and they say, I need to speak to a listener and the screw goes to get a prisoner, a fellow prisoner who's been trained by the Samaritans to become a Listener. And he gets into the cell and he sits with them and stays with them until they feel they've spoken enough. And it's about that, it's about listening. It's not about advising, it's about listening to someone in their darkest moments. And it's an amazing system that has halved suicide in prisons in the last 20 years. So it's something I'm really proud to be involved in. There are people who put a lot more hours in than I do, but I'm a key holder at Brixton, which is exciting. So I can go in there, open the doors, and let everyone out if I needed to.

If I'm not wrong, you had your own podcast called More Than My Past.

I do.

What stories from More Than My Past have stuck with you the most?

So More Than My Past was a sort of progression on from working in the prisons. There's a company called— a charity called the Forward Trust, which works with prisoners who are in recovery mostly, and they asked me to work with them, which I which I was very happy to do. And we're in our third series, and what we do is we interview people who have managed to break that cycle of prison, release, reoffending, reincarceration, and that circle that goes round and round and round. And we've interviewed, I don't know, probably 50 people, all amazing stories of people who've managed to escape that path. It's really, really hard. It's like, um, the path from children's home to prison is almost inevitable, unfortunately. 80% of people who go through, through children's homes end up in trouble with the police in some way or another. Anyone that manages to escape that path, or then after they've been arrested or served prison— but not obviously, not all criminals could come out of children's homes— but that as an example of like, there's a destiny for some people that they're going to end up in trouble, and it's really hard to turn away from that, you know. If you grow up in crisis, if you grow up in a state of anarchy like a lot of people do, then it's very hard to take the right path or to not be influenced by what's happening around you. And I find that, that path fascinating. And I also think that people in prisons are the most maligned people we have in our society. And I think also that none of us are as far away from that point of crisis as we think we are. You know, it's 3 or 4 bad decisions, one very bad decision, but 3 or 4 bad decisions, you end up on the streets. Once you're on the streets, you do what you need to do to survive, and none of us are as far away from that as we think.

That's really deep, and it's really nice to hear you talk about that. If you were advising a young filmmaker or actor or someone who wanted to get into the media industry today or tomorrow, would you highlight any particular skills or practices that you would say they should start?

I think, like I said earlier, I think the really important thing is to get started. You know, do what you do. You have to get going. You can't wait to be given permission. You have to start writing. Doesn't matter if they're crap. Write your scripts, shoot your scripts, edit the scripts, do it yourself. Get out there and do it because you will, you will meet a community of people by doing that. Filmmaking is about community. It's what I said to you earlier, it's about a team. You'll trip over the right people, and it doesn't matter if you're not going to be a filmmaker. Make films, find people, gain experience. By the way, it's the best job in the world, and the people involved in it are the kindest and nicest people in the world. So you could do a lot worse than getting involved with young filmmakers, young people working in media. It's, you know, it's an exciting place to be.

What's next for you, and how do you you see yourself continuing to evolve as a storyteller?

Next for me is I'm doing a thing called Trigger Point with Vicky McClure, which is an ITV show. No spoilers, but I kill everyone as usual. And I work job to job. I'm, I'm developing— I've got a company called The Kernel Factory, which is developing ideas for TV shows and film, and that's a long, long process. So I've got about 6 projects, 2 or 3 of them much further along the line. One of them we're just waiting waiting for one of them, which is called Ankle, which I want to direct, which is a Scottish story about a kid who leaves prison and how he struggles to stay out of prison, which is what I know about, as you know, from my podcast. We're just waiting for an A-list actor to say yes to being directed by Fleming, which isn't easy. So I'm really enjoying that, and I think, again, you've got to keep evolving, as many fingers in the pie as you can. And I think that's what I've tried to do. So that's what I'm doing next. My kids, little Cassius and Noah, have just started. They're doing, they've just done Lord of the Flies for the BBC. They're 13. So they're joining the clan. Yes. So that's the circle of it, you know, and that's what you gotta keep doing. Keep rolling forward. Keep, keep pushing forward. And if you can put your hand out behind you and give someone behind you a bit of a hoik up, I think that's a really important thing too. That you don't forget where you come from. And the more you help, the more you give, the more it comes back to you.

And what does success mean to you now compared to when you first started?

Well, success is freedom, really. Success— fiscal success, financial success— means you can do the things you want to do. I grew up pretty poor. I grew up— my mum worked really hard to bring me up, me and my big brother, alone, doing 3 jobs, you know. And it helps to have a nice base and a safe place for your family to be. And so that, that's what success means to me. Professionally, success is a byproduct of good work. So if you make Boiling Point and you make Benjamin Button and you make Lock, Stock and Snatch, people love those shows, they want to see them, and therefore there's an interest in you as an actor. So success breeds success, but it's not an exact science and you can't predict it, so you just have to keep keep going, you know, and keep struggling. It's not an exact science, and if you're lucky enough, it lands well.

What's the best career advice you've received?

If you've got a meeting with someone, clean fingernails, good jacket, and do your research on them. If it was a film director, find the film that you think is their favourite, probably their first film, their least known film, watch it and mention it when you see them. Even now with the internet, it's amazing to see how chuffed they are that you know their early work.

Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

Thank you.