Star of award-winning Netflix show breaks down as he shares thoughts about quitting acting after a year without work
AN ACTOR from hit Netflix series After Life has revealed his struggle to find work for the past year.
Ethan Lawrence, 31, had tears in his eyes as he admitted he’s thought it might be time to give up on the big screen and find a different job.
The star is best known for playing James in Ricky Gervais’ dark comedy.
Ironically, his character spent season three struggling to find financial stability so he could move out of his mum’s house and get a place of his own.
Ethan loved the experience of acting in the award-winning show, and later gushed to the Express: “You learn more from a week on a set than you ever will in like a year of drama school.
“Working with someone like Ricky, it’s such a freeing experience because you realise, especially in the way that Ricky works, there’s no sort of hard and fast rules of writing.
“And you know like I’d been drilled at university about certain styles and disciplines but working on a set like After Life, it’s so freeing because we do one take where we’re doing the script as written, but the whole energy came from the fact that after that we were given the opportunity to play.
“We could find areas in the script that maybe Ricky hadn’t seen and then fill it with our own comedic potential.”
Despite the show’s success, Ethan has now shared that he may give up on his acting dreams after a year and a half of constant stress over being unemployed.
In a heartbreaking TikTok he shared how much he has been struggling for money while not being cast in any new roles.
He told viewers that his landlord is “selling the house from underneath me”, adding: “It’s not because of anything I’ve done, the industry’s in a state of collapse, I don’t know how else to say it.
“There just aren’t the jobs there once were. The creative industry is one of the biggest in the UK and yet 70% of people who work in it are unemployed. It’s so wrong.
“I had the best years of my life professionally a few years ago, but since then I’ve not worked.
“I can’t rely on anything or make plans for the future, and I can’t live like this anymore.”
Already anticipating that some trolls would tell him to get a ‘real job’, he shared that he is thinking about changing careers, even telling one fan: “I’d delete all social media and go work in an office or something.”
The actor already previously had to work as a pizza delivery boy when he was struggling to make ends meet between starring in Bad Education and After Life.
But fans flocked to the comments encouraging Ethan to keep on trying, with one writing: “Will Mellor almost gave up and then landed the biggest job of his career. Get a side hustle and keep going!”
Another agreed: “You were great in After Life. Had me in stitches. Keep at it.”