Adam Leese filmography and biography

Date of birth: 6 March 1976, Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK

Adam Leese biography

Adam was raised in the quaint town of Arundel in West Sussex, and schooled at the nearby Bishop Luffa School in Chichester. He left school at 16 to pursue his love of his skiing and, whilst training to get his relevant qualifications in Ski Instructing, he worked as a groundsman for Lord and Lady Arundel (now the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk) at Arundel Castle. Adam always had a love of film and saw several film sets come and go at the Castle including the fantastic 'Madness of King George'. They would also have theatre companies like the 'English Shakespeare Company' and also the 'Oxford Stage Company' perform Shakespeare in the grounds every summer for the local summer festival. This gave Adam a wonderful insight into the business that he would one day become a part of. Adam left the Castle and went to work as a ski instructor in France and to travel around the States. On his return, there was a letter informing him of his first audition for drama school. His mother, (herself a veteran Opera singer from the Royal College of Music) had sent off for auditions, unknown to him. He sought the help from a fantastic, local actress, Isabel Higlett, wife of Internationally acclaimed set designer, Simon Higlett. She helped him with his audition speeches and the rest is history! He studied for three years at Arts Ed and in his final term he landed his first TV role in the award-winning series Dinerladies with Victoria Wood. Adam has later gone on to say that he learned more in that one week than in three years at drama school. A true baptism of fire!

Jobs then luckily started to come regularly for Adam, and his first year in the business he met two great directors, James Erskine and Joe Harmston, both of whom would give Adam the opportunity to fulfill two of his dreams. Joe Harmston found Adam through Isabel Higlet, whose husband Simon was designing the set for Tour de Force's production of Henry V. The play was performed in the grounds of Arundel Castle. Adam was cast as the Dauphin and fulfilled his first dream of performing in front of a home crowd on the lawns that he once cut. He performed there regularly for the next three summers, with 'A Midsummer Nights Dream', 'Macbeth' and 'Much Ado About Nothing', all of which were critically acclaimed and Ned Sherrin was reported to have said that Adam's performance in 'A midsummer Nights Dream' was the best performance of Flute he had ever seen. James Erskine on the other hand was fundamental in Adam's second dream of having a lead role in an award-winning Feature Film. James was an up and coming director at the BBC and cast Adam on recommendation, in his short film 'Skint'. James then went on to use Adam for several BBC projects including 'The Human Face' with Liz Hurley and John Cleese, 'Omnibus' and 'Eastenders'. Adam impressed the producers at the BBC so they went on to give him his own guest leads in 'Holby City' and 'Waking the Dead'.

In 2003, James Erskine, along with his friend and colleague Danny McCullough, set out to write the feature Film 'EMR' with Adam in mind for the lead role. Adam took the proposition with a pinch of salt but six months later, true to their word, James and Danny managed to get Tom Hardy, Kate Buffery, Gil Bellows, Guy Henry, Jeremy Edwards, Gemma Walker, and George Calil on board and then they were filming in London, LA and San Francisco. It was an extremely intense schedule for Adam, shooting a feature film in three weeks, in two different continents, and being in every scene but one! Six months later an incomplete version of 'EMR' was shown at the DC Film Festival in Washington, as work in progress and it went on to win the Audience Award for best feature. A fully completed version was then shown at the Raindance Festival in London where judges such as Edgar Wright (director of Sean of The Dead) voted it Best UK Feature. It went on to win two more Best Feature Awards at Nuremburg and San Francisco and was in Official Selection at a further four film festivals including the World Famous Jeanju Film Festival in Korea. Distributers and critics around the world were now starting to take notice and the film can now been seen a bought worldwide. ' EMR' was also the first film in UK film history to have a simultaneous release at cinemas, on DVD and downloadable from the Internet, a method of distribution that has now been copied by Michael Winterbottom. 'EMR' has brought Adam a lot of welcome attention.

Adam has more recently been a series regular, Felix (the Stalker), in ITV1's TV series 'Rock Rivals'. Adam now lives in Kent with his partner and children, and has several other projects in the pipeline.

Adam Leese trivia

- Adam left school at 16 and went on to work as a groundsman at Arundel castle.
- Adam used to work as a personal ski instructor in Megeve, France.
- On the first day of filming 'EMR' in San Francisco, the lock failed on Adam's hotel bathroom and he broke his toe kicking his way out!