The Street
Mark Benton plays Wayne
Mark Benton has made a huge success out of failure. He has played a string of much-loved losers in productions such as Early Doors, Murphy's Law, I'm With Stupid, Catterick, Northern Lights, Booze Cruise, and Career Girls. Now he is adding to this already impressive list by playing Wayne, a postman to whom life has been less than kind, in The Street.
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Wayne's world has collapsed. His wife has left him, taking their two sons and the dog with her, his dodgy back is deteriorating which makes his postal round harder by the day, he is flat-broke, and tempted by a life of crime.
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Things get even worse when he befriends Damien, an illiterate, 15-year-old truant. People misinterpret their friendship, and Wayne's life
rapidly spirals out of control.
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Mark, an actor who generates immense warmth on screen, outlines what appealed to him about portraying Wayne: "He's a complete loser who has reached the point where he can't get any lower. The episode is about how he finally fights back and tries to get out of this hole.
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"It's brilliant to play a broken man and see him regain his self-respect and claw his way back. He has seen what he has become and said to himself, 'I'm going to change now'. Sometimes you can only see what's happened when you've hit rock bottom and you say, 'oh my God, look where I am now!' But the great thing is, the situation is absolutely true to life."
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The actor, originally from Cleveland, goes on to stress that what makes The Street such gripping viewing is that so often it focuses on the dispossessed and the powerless, people, in fact, just like Wayne.
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"People on the margins are really interesting. They have another perspective on the world. When you're on the outside and have nobody, you look at life differently. I love the challenge of playing those characters and trying to find out why they do things."
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A striking sense of honesty has always characterised Mark's screen appearances and his performance as Wayne is no exception.
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"Early on when I made Career Girls with Mike Leigh, I learnt that as long as you start from the truth, you can go anywhere. So I always begin by looking for the truth and from there it can lead in any direction you like.
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"If you make these characters human, people will instantly warm to them. The aim is for viewers to identify with your character. You want them to say, 'I recognise that man. I know someone just like that', or even better, 'I'm just like that'."
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Mark concludes by paying homage to the lead writer on The Street.
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"I've wanted to work with Jimmy McGovern for as long as I can remember. Like Alan Bleasdale or Dennis Potter, he is a great writer for TV. So often the writer is the forgotten man in television, but actually he is the most important person in the whole production. We have to prize people like Jimmy because they don't come along very often!"
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