After finishing at drama school, Mark appeared in several TV dramas, including “Peak Practice”, "Soldier Soldier”, “Heartbeat” and “Dangerfield”, before fulfilling his ambition to appear in a lead role at Nottingham ’s Playhouse.
Mark is keen to embrace the latest technology and has created his own website for his latest venture, “Hard Graft”. This is a theatre company which he set up with a fellow actor, performing their own work in the most unlikely of settings.
“Thick as Thieves” was first performed in Mark’s own living room, before being performed in living rooms all around the country. “Bert and Joyce” was performed in a charity shop, receiving rave reviews from the theatrical press.
Currently, Mark working on several projects, including a possible TV series adaptation of “Bert and Joyce”. A warm and affable character, Mark is sure to be performing his own work regularly on our TVs in the future.

For a detailed Filmography see the Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/

Top of page

Stainforthonline Interview

Adge Covell - Mark Whiteley - (Addy / Faith)

Adge: Hello Mark. First of all, can ask you for your date of birth?

Mark: Twenty fourth of the third nineteen sixty seven.

Adge: And where are you from Mark?

Mark: I'm from Nottingham.

Adge: From the city?

Mark: From the city of Nottingham, yeah. Not Nottinghamshire, and you're the first I've told.

Adge: Really?

Mark: Yeah, apart from my fellow actors, but I haven't said anything because I'm stood here in front of everything, aren't I?

Adge: Yeah…, well…. Scabland we call it round here.

Mark: Exactly! (Laughs)

Adge: Can you tell me why you chose acting as a career?

Mark: Well, I've been acting since I was…, probably…, well since I was born probably. I was a show off and stuff. I went to a really good school with a really good drama teacher. I was in all the school plays. And then I finished school…, and I didn't do any acting for ages, and then, I slipped back into it. Then …, an ex-girlfriend of mine was going to drama school, and she talked me into going. So, I went when I was twenty seven.

Adge: What did you do in those preceding years?

Mark: I've done lots of things. I trained as a carpenter, I was a carpenter for a long time. I was a cabinet maker, I was a shop fitter, I've been a bouncer, I've been a….., debt collector, I've been…, well, everything. I've been everything really, like most actors, and I came back to acting cos its something I've always enjoyed doing.

Adge: When you did get back into acting, you got into performing plays at Nottingham Playhouse….

Mark: Yeah. I left drama school ten years ago, and I had nothing. I didn't have an agent, I didn't have anything. I was offered a part in Peak Practice. Straight away, straight out of drama school and I got a little job in Peak Practice. Then I did Heartbeat, Dangerfield. The story of the Playhouse is good to me, cos I'm from Nottingham, so Nottingham Playhouse is my…., it's my theatre. My ambition was to play lead at Nottingham Playhouse, and I got a phone call one day, to go and do a play reading, a new play, by a writer called Barry Heath. I'd loved him, since I was sixteen, this writer. He made me laugh. I fell off me chair with laughing, that's how much I loved him. And so I went and did this play reading, and I did three days on that, and then they offered me the lead. I played a fourteen year old kid, so I'd done my ambition, probably two years after leaving drama school. So, I've been looking for new ones ever since.

Adge: Can you tell me a bit about "Hard Graft"?

Mark: Hard Graft…. Hard Graft is a theatre company set up by myself and Sara Poyzer, another actress. To be honest with you, it just started because we didn't have much work. So we thought if we set up our own company we can just present our own work. So we started up and we did…, our first play, which was above a pub…...

(Knock on door. Lady from wardrobe dept enters and checks Mark is almost ready to go on set. It's November and freezing outside, and Mark has to dress for a scene in July, so there is a short discussion about which T-shirt would be suitable)

Mark: Yes, right, so we started Hard Graft about five years ago, and we did our first performance in a pub. And, because we're both actors, we got working with other things and we walked away from it. Then I did loads of commercials, for television, and I earned a lot of money in a very short period of time. Then I got into writing, and I wrote my first play, called Thick As Thieves, and I decided to produce it. I thought that the best way to produce it would be under Hard Graft, so Hard Graft became….. Hard Graft, and the first performance was performed in my living room. It's about two burglars, is Thick As Thieves, and I wrote it in a living room, so I thought that's how I'd perform it, cos the whole geography of the set is based on my living room. So I did it in me living room. I had up to twenty people, did three nights, and then we toured the country, to fourteen other living rooms. We even did a long boat as well…, you know, a narrow boat. We ended up in London, where I got offered…., well, I got offered loads and loads of things along the way actually. We came back to Nottingham and we decided to do the play in a shop. We bought an old shop, and we turned the shop into an old man's living room, and a sixty seater studio theatre, with a bar upstairs, and we had it for a month. We were sold out there, then we went to Edinburgh, and we performed it at The Underbelly, at Edinburgh, where we got rave reviews and sold out there. Then I came back to Nottingham, we'd been offered to go to a theatre in London for a month, with Thick As Thieves….., and I wrote my next play, which was called Bert and Joyce, which we toured through charity shops. We decided that…, it was just a fluke that we did it in my living room, but it was something we were known for. I quite liked the idea that it became something we were known for, and we'd quite a reputation for. So we did Bert and Joyce in a charity shop. I went down to London and did Thick As Thieves in a theatre, so it had transformed from living room, to shop, to stage show…..

(Knock at door again. An assistant calls in to say they're almost ready on the set)

Mark: And…, Hard Graft was born really, and that's the story of it. We just went from strength to strength. In fact, it's probably more famous than me. More people know about Hard Graft than know about Mark Whiteley.

Adge: We seem to be running out of time, so I'll press on. Can you tell me a little bit about Addy, your character in Faith?

Mark: About Addy? Addy's a miner. He's quite a hard miner, anf he's one of the fighters. He doesn't say a great deal, but he fights a lot. He's on the front line, and he's a very passionate man., and….., he wants to fight for his community, which he loves, He knows nothing else, it's where he was born and went to school, left school and became a miner. He knows nothing else. So this is.., well, he's fighting for his life.

Adge: I can relate to that, I've been there.

Mark: Yeah.

Adge: Can you tell me who influences you, as far as acting is concerned?

Mark: Well…, I'm a massive theatre actor really, to be honest. I don't watch a great deal of telly. I think that most television is rubbish. But I love the stage, I love theatre. To me, it's like being Barnum, you know, in the old American showmen. It's just showing an audience something new. It doesn't really have to be new, you just have to put a new twist on things.

Adge: You sing as well

Mark: Yeah, I do a bit. If you asked who influenced my singing, I'd say Sinatra. I think that most people have a hard time. They work hard , so when they got out they should have fun. I like comedy. You know.., I love…, and I think most people like comedy.

Adge: What are your future plans?

Mark: Well at the moment, I've just written Bert and Joyce, into a pilot for television, after slagging off television. I've written a pilot episode of Bert and Joyce, and hopefully that will get made into a sit-com. I've started to go more into the writing world. I've kind of…., kind of.., given up acting, but I haven't. I know I haven't, and I know it'll be with me forever. I go through stages where I love things and I really go for them. So at the moment I'm about to start writing a Brian Clough play. I'm a big Nottingham Forest fan, and when Cloughie died, I couldn't believe it. I mean, I loved the man. He'd taken my team to Europe twice, and he was such an amazing character. I mean, most people loved Cloughie, and I want to put something on stage. So I'm writing a play called…, erm.., I won't tell you that, cos someone will nick the idea. Anyway, it's going to be great.

(Another knock at the door and it's time for Mark to go)

Adge: Well thanks for talking to Mark, it's been a pleasure.

Mark: Yeah it has. It's been a real pleasure.

Top of page