The Big Issue

DANIEL MAYS

I was always quite extroverted, I wanted to be the centre of attention.

At 16 I was probably fairly obnoxious and loud. I think all of that extrovert stuff is a veneer though, isn’t it, to hide insecurity. I wouldn’t say I was over-confident with girls. I had a lot of friendships with girls, but I was very self-conscious about my looks.

At 16 I was already at the Italia Conti stage school. I was very fortunate in that I knew I wanted to perform from a very young age. I’m one of four boys – I have two older brothers and one younger – so I had that classic middle child syndrome thing. All my brothers were brilliant sportsmen. I played a lot of sport, but I was never as good as my two older brothers. So I fell into trying to do something else, which turned out to be performing. At secondary school I was the class clown. When I

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