‘Wrath of Man’ Star Chris Reilly on Finding Catharsis Through Acting

The following Career Dispatch essay was written by Chris Reilly, who appears alongside Jason Statham in Guy Ritchie's new movie Wrath of Man, which premieres on Amazon Prime in the UK on 10 December.

What advice would I give to my younger self? Absolutely none. I wouldn’t change a thing — not because my upbringing was lovely, but because I like the person it made. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’d leave him be. He isn’t perfect, and that’s what I prefer.

It was my privilege to have had a very unusual childhood, one that took me away from comfort into crisis and situations of trauma, grief, poverty, and peril. My experience connected with hundreds more in every form of social abandonment I could imagine at the time. These challenges and the challenges I witnessed showed me how to face difficulty; and the friends I made along the way did too, either by pulling me up or showing me how to climb. 

Acting has allowed me to analyse how humans cope in a way that forgives my own sins against others and others’ sins against me. I had an excellent beginning for studying character. Adversity hardens and art heals, and I want more people where I’m from to have that: to sit quietly with their younger selves.

I’m not satisfied with myself at all. That’s never going to happen, and there are many things about myself I work on constantly. But I can be content knowing I’ve done the best I can — because I really did, and I really will continue to. Carrying that process into the work I love is one of those “get out what you put in” situations, and that’s easy because I’ve found something I love. I’m able to immerse myself in a task I enjoy in order to work toward an end I find even more satisfying. Every human emotion is available for me to explore. By porting my own understanding of adversity into the characters I play, I can experience it again from different perspectives and benefit from the catharsis of it — their controlled trauma healing my own, I think. I want more people where I’m from to have that opportunity.

I get to work with actors I look up to very much. Whatever their background, watching them create shows me that everyone has a need for this. Life is all emotions, even in “privileged” situations, and there is always further to fall. A start better than mine does not immunise a human from pain. 

The great actors I’ve worked with play with emotion — but most fascinatingly, with status. They build character through interactions with others and acceptance of other characters’ decisions. Rarely have I heard someone who’s experienced ask for a line to be delivered to them a certain way. They know that in life, we must accept the decisions of others and still find interesting ways of telling the story. Audiences want to see authentic human interaction — a cast of characters working together, humans coping with change, drama resolved to a satisfying conclusion. But then, of course, real stories never really end.

Humanity is exponentially more diverse in individual experience than we are in any physical or cultural identity. Archetypes are general shared assumptions — the vicar, the tart, the regal prince saving the helpless princess, James Bond. More than ever before, we’re cutting across archetypes and reject prejudices. Archetypes can be absurdly funny, but they are never real; and they only help those assigning them to communicate an idea about who someone else is without bothering to ask.  

I’m blessed to have friends of all sorts. Some are very different to me. They are my friends because they helped me and allowed me to try and return that favour. They hold me in high esteem and no esteem simultaneously — they both hug me and dig at my ribs, quietly poking fun at my character and status in the world. I love that acting has brought me to friends who accept and love me. I feel very lucky.

I found acting near the age of 30, and my journey of artistic development has also become one of self development. It flattens ego and allows new levels of contact, expression, and discovery. The best, most interesting aspects of human character can be found when asking or doing the work to discover someone’s true story. All I need to do in order to help tell that story is my best. And just as importantly, I must trust and believe that others are doing the same.