Feature by EMILY COOK
Lee describes his route into directing as “rather circuitous”. After graduating from the University of Exeter with a First-Class Honours degree in drama and English he trained as an actor at RADA. “For a few years I was doing both acting and directing,” he says. “My last theatre job was at Theatr Clwyd about four years ago, when I played Hamlet.”
Lee says his experience as an actor helps him to direct. “It gives me a short-hand with actors. An element of trust is engendered, simply by knowing I’ve been on the other side of the camera. Tending to the acting is a really important part of the directing process, and it seems to me that on a film set the actors are the only department not to have a head. Somebody has to take on the mantle of that and I see it as primarily my job as director, amongst lots of other things.”