With the second series of Beaver Falls now in full swing here in the UK, Talent Management thought we’d do a little digging on Scottish actor Sam Robertson, who plays Flynn in the E4 comedy-drama.

Read on to find out about Sam’s modelling past, his unconventional route into acting, and how he managed to bag and quit a role on Coronation Street in this revealing interview…

You had a pretty unconventional route into acting, didn’t you?

Yes, absolutely. I came via the model-turned-actor route. I was at University in Manchester, studying English and drama – drama was very much the subsidiary part of the course – and I was doing a bit of modelling part-time to help fund my studies. And through that I got asked to audition for a part in Coronation Street. I was 18, and I’d not done any acting whatsoever. But they were casting a Scottish character who was 18 years old and very like me. I went along to the audition, and after a couple of call-backs I got it. So that was me, going from being a student with no acting experience to suddenly being on the set of Coronation Street within six weeks.

Did you quit in the course?

I did, unfortunately, yes. I juggled both for about two months, but Coronation Street took priority, and I was missing lectures and all sorts over the course of the first two months. My tutor said ‘You can carry on, but you’re best probably taking a year out and seeing how things go on Coronation Street.’ A year down the line I was sat in the middle of a two-year contract, and things were looking good there, so I never finished my course. That’s always a bit of a bee in my bonnet, but hopefully that was the right move.

It must have been a weird experience going from being a complete unknown to starring in Britain’s biggest soap.

It was such a massive thing, I don’t think I fully comprehended it until about three or four months into the job. It’s a monster of a show, and I just didn’t get to grips with that at first, especially in the first few months, when I started to get recognised by people, and being deemed ‘a celebrity’ of sorts. Going from being a student to being in a show watched by 10 million people every time, it was a bit of a culture shock. That was probably the hardest part of all, to be honest.

Is it true that one of the reasons you left The Street was because you’d had enough of being recognised everywhere you went?

Yeah, it was the main reason, really. I’d not had my mind set on being an actor as a career, I did it as a bit of a jolly. Then I had to decide, after two-and-a-half years, if it was something I wanted to stick with. Being recognised really wasn’t something I’d taken to. Since then I’ve done more acting work and I’ve matured and it’s something I’m fine with, but back then I found it really tough. Some people love it. To be honest, most of the time people were really lovely, but I felt like I was public property.

Do you think it all happened too young for you?

Definitely. Not only too young, but too quickly, in terms of where I was as an actor, what I knew and what I was capable of, and how confident I felt about being an actor. A big part of my problem about being recognised was that I didn’t feel I was worthy enough in the show. If people asked me what I did, I felt really strange telling people I was an actor, because I didn’t feel like I was an actor. I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing for the first six months or year. Looking back on it, looking at some of the old footage, the difference between me now as an actor and back then is palpable.

So do you cringe when you look back at your early work?

Yeah, definitely. And I think that was another reason I decided to leave – I wanted to cut my teeth somewhere with a little less profile and scrutiny. When I left I had a year-and-a-half out and decided to travel and figure out what I wanted to do. I weighed up my options and came back to the UK with a different mindset. Since then things have slowly-but-surely taken off, and I feel like I’ve been working on some great stuff. Beaver Falls is very definitely part of that. It’s been a real vindication that I made the right decision.

You’re quite a handy footballer yourself, aren’t you?

I’m not really that good. What happened when I was in Coronation Street is we used to play charity football a lot, and a lot of people would come down, and occasionally I’d score a great goal or have a really good game – I think it was more luck than anything. And there’s a story that I went to play for FC United, and I did go for a trial with them, and things went okay, but the story seemed to grow arms and legs. I just went for a trial, and it ended up not working out. I think I wasn’t good enough, first and foremost, but I wouldn’t have been able to do it with my schedule on Coronation Street anyway – I was missing games and training sessions. But I think the press in Manchester ran with the story that I was some sort of an ex-professional – that’s not really true. When I was a kid I trained with local teams, but that was it. But I’m happy for people to run with that story all day long, saying I’m a fantastic footballer.