With leading roles in a Yorkshire stage premiere and a film, North-East actors Richard Glaves and David Leon are two of our brightest rising stars. Steve Pratt talks to them about Scuffers, playwrights and working with Lauren Bacall.

NEWCASTLE-BORN actor David Leon has seen both sides of the movie industry with roles in big budget Hollywood epic Alexander and low budget British independent movie These Foolish Things, going from skirts and sandals in the desert to the world of pre-Second World War Britain.

For someone who didn't decide to become an actor until after leaving school, he's been doing well. "I've not acted in the North-East. It was only when I left school and moved away from the area that I decided to act. I'd always wanted to be a professional footballer and played at a high standard for a long time," he says.

"I got to 17 or 18 and wasn't sure I wanted to go to university, so I went travelling to Australia for a year. Then I was beginning to enjoy film and met a few people in acting and thought I'd give it a go."

He auditioned successfully for the National Youth Theatre and then turned down a drama school place to go straight into acting.

The historical epic Alexander was pretty much his first job and he "felt flattered to be in the company," he says. "On the first day the director Oliver Stone came over and said, 'I don't care what you do, just make yourself look busy'. It was a great experience."

These Foolish Things is a period drama in which his playwright is part of a love triangle in which he rivals Andrew Lincoln's theatre director for the love of rising actress Zoe Tapper. The movie is notable for the presence of Hollywood stars Anjelica Huston, Lauren Bacall and Terence Stamp in the cast.

Leon learnt he'd got the part in These Foolish Things while being directed by fashion photographer Rankin in another movie, Lives Of The Saints, in Ireland.

Although he was one of the leads, the schedule had to be worked around the commitments of the "names" in the cast. "You're always slightly anxious of working with people of such stature, but it was very happy crew," he says. "They were the stars but Zoe, Andrew and myself were carrying the film. You feel an awful lot of responsibility. They were very supportive and couldn't have been more helpful."

THE almost-angelic looking photograph of Richard Glaves on the display board in West Yorkshire Playhouse foyer hardly suggests the Scarborough-born actor as the ideal person to play a debt-ridden dropout.

Looks can be deceiving, although he owns up to playing "a few public schoolboys and posh people" in the recent past, including a naive 18-year-old newly-arrived in the First World War trenches in the classic play Journey's End on tour and in London's West End.

The role of Danny in Leeds-born playwright Mark Catley's new play Scuffer takes him out of the lower middle class into a social strata which he reckons is closer to the real him.

The title refers to people too poor to be "chavs" and subscribe to the required fashion trends. This rom-com set in the Leeds district of Beeston has Danny needing to find £800 by the end of the day or get his legs broken by loan sharks.

Glaves knows he looks younger than his age - he's 27 - which may account for the roles he's had in his six years out of drama school. They've included The Tempest, three Shakespeare plays at London's Globe Theatre, and an Oxford Stage Company tour of Candida for which he was nominated for the 2004 Ian Charleson Award.

The Scuffer cast took to the streets of Beeston for a photo session. "It was an interesting experience taking all those photographs in costume. People didn't think we were actors, they didn't all know it was a play set in their part of town," he says. "Hopefully the production will attract a different kind of audience who wouldn't necessarily come to the theatre."

His mum and dad still live in Scarborough and his brother is in Leeds, so there'll be no shortage of family members to see him in Scuffer. It was seeing the Royal Shakespeare company as a youngster that alerted him to acting. He began performing in local shows, youth theatre and school plays from 11.

He's had a good run of roles on stage but has yet to do any TV and hopes to remedy that soon. Meanwhile, his aim is to keep on working. "You just don't know how it's going to go. I've been very lucky, I've had a great few years," he says.

* Scuffer is at West Yorkshire Playhouse until April 1. Box Office: (0113) 213 7700

* These Foolish Things (12A) is now showing in cinemas.

Published: 16/03/2006