What's On in London - April 2003
Despite his much photographed six-pack, Adam Rickitt is feeling beaten-up. He's just spent the entire day going over the fight sequences in Office Games, the new comedy he's appearing in at the Pleasance Theatre. But the ex-Coronation Street teenzine heartthrob still has plenty of breath in his lungs to tell me about his latest role.
"The play is set in the Foreign Office a few years after 1914-18 war and it's centred around three young men - an Alpha male, his spotty sidekick and my character Wilkes, who's basically the gimp the others pick on."
Given that Adam's the one with the natural beefcake, it's surprising that he chose to play the meek and mild one who is a target for everyone else. " Yes, but he goes on a much bigger journey in the play," he responds. "He's a deeply religous young man who has been brought up by his mother in a very repressive manner and then gets thrown into a world of promiscuity. Young chaps like Wilkes came back from the trenches and they were horny as hell. All they wanted to do was get laid".
Learning about the period has been a wake-up call for Adam. "I always thought the sexual revolution was in the '60's but that's complete bollocks. The '20's were when it all started - there was a sudden rush of sexual freedom."
It's hard to believe that I'm listening to a 24-year-old who has usually been described as a himbo. But then post-Nicky Tilsley in Coronation Street Adam has given himself the space to grow up and prove to his fans that you can stay blond and pretty and still have a brain.
He left the Street in 1999, having ben snapped up by Take That's management for a six album recording deal. He returned to the soap briefly last summer, having walked out on the album deal, with a strong storyline that gave him a chance to prove he really could do grown-up acting.
But the big catalyst for change he says was starring in the national tour and West End run of Rent. "Rent altered my approach to acting 110 per cent. You've got to remember that I went into Coronation Street only two weeks after leaving school. I had never done a single day's acting in my life and was literally thrown in front of the camera. If I look back on some of my performances they were goddamn awful.
But being onstage in Rent was the benchmark of how you learn as an actor. And I know that when I finish Office Games I'll be a better actor than before I started it. That's the great thing about this job - you can always improve and never reach a plateau."
His short-lived pop career helped with the acting, he says. "I hated doing it. I had to put on a face all the time, so I was acting 24 hours a day. Some of it was great fun, like going around in a tour bus and performing in front of 100,000 people. It was the manipulative side I couldn't cope with. I was told what to wear and how to have my hair done. I'd sit in on A & R meetings and it began to sound like grown-ups planning to steal candy from children. I don't begrudge them making money. But every second of the day was filled with publicity and the gigs were not enjoyable, so I said I would quit after the first album. I'm sure no-one cut their wrists over it. But it made me realise how much I wanted to be an actor and not a celebrity."
Adam's clearly determined to move on from his Nicky Tilsley image. He's made a short film called Emergency Exit that was screened in Cannes and has other movie projects lined up. He's also set up a film production company with his older film director brother Mark. "We both feel rather creative about working behind the lens. We decided to call the company Narcissus, because I want to put myself in all the films we make.
