Roger Harding

In his youth, Harding trained at Guildhall in London, where his tutor was Peggy Batchelor. Having had his passion for acting re-ignited by killing an archbishop every night during a run of Murder in the Cathedral, Harding went on to work with American actor Ed Bishop, founding a studio theatre with him in 1991. Despite his pacific tendencies, he signed up to fight training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School - specifically to satisfy the playwright Christopher Fry - for a production of his last play, "One Thing More" at Wells Cathedral. For the record, Fry thought the choreographed fight was much too violent ! "I just wanted a suggestion of wrestling" he said. After a spell honing his skills in short films, during which time he earned a medal at the Houston Worldfest, a Best Actor nomination at Gijon Film Festival and a best drama commendation from the BBC, Harding moved into feature length films. In Triple Hit (Entanglement Productions), he played roles in each of three parallel universes. The film now has LA representation. Another feature, Signal Failure (Jason Fairley) is in post production. In 2006, Harding became a director of Two Hats Theatre Company and worked the Live & Local circuit with four Chekhov plays (tip - the key to selling Chekhov is not to mention his name - hence "One Night in Russia" helped to ensure a sell-out tour). The company has mounted many more successful touring productions and produced many videos. For the last eight years, Harding has been working with David Jinks of Fridge Productions, to produce The Impossible Escape, the true story of the escape from a Siberian gulag by a Polish man in 1940. It's an amazing story of chance and endurance and deserves to be made into a full length feature. Cameraman Steve Nelson (Quantum of Solace) and Editor Dan Jones have been doing some spectacularly good work on the project - and the new pitching trailer is expected to be ready by summer 2015. Harding admits to being rather critical of BBC Radio 4 so-called "comedy dramas". When you hear that phrase, you just know the programme is unlikely to be either a comedy or a drama. His rather cutting complaints led to an invitation to review three of the week's programmes for Radio 4's Feedback programme, with Roger Bolton. No stranger to controversy, Harding voiced one of the characters in the video game of Reservoir Dogs. He is proud to announce that the game was banned in both Australia and New Zealand. The New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification dubbed the game "objectionable", meaning it is not only banned from sale, but that it is illegal to possess or import a copy ! The Office found the game "tends to promote and support the infliction of extreme violence and extreme cruelty...for the purpose of entertainment". Among his most enjoyable projects, has been The 13th Day, the story of the Marian appearances at Fatima in Portugal in 1917. Harding helped to audition dozens of children for the parts of the three child leads. Interestingly, kids from drama schools were the least well suited to film work; their actions and reactions were just too exaggerated for the big screen. In the end, the talent was drawn from the local Portuguese population - and just how good were they ! After a programme of games, mental exercises and role playing devised by Harding, the kids were well bonded and squabbling just like a real family - which was perfect, as they were playing siblings. Harding has done much voice-over work for Sky TV based programmes and radio commercials. He has written for corporate events, radio, studio theatre and film. His latest feature length project with Two Hats is The Wrong Funeral.