I must be the only person in 'Strictly' history who's actually put on weight during rehearsals.
The process of rehearsal means you learn so much and really get the chance to develop your work on a character.
I'd think the house was the source of great sadness or pressure. I knew it wasn't. I knew it was just where I lived. But I'd walk up the stairs and the second floor was just desolate. My old bedroom: empty. My old rehearsal room: empty. First floor studio: messy and empty. Middle room: broken gear everywhere.
I'm used to working with a rehearsal process and your body. It's a different thing to just be a voice. It's liberating, on one hand, because you get to show up in sweatpants and with Doritos on your fingers, but on the other hand, it's limiting because it's just your voice.
I always check my harness before I do a stunt; I test-drive the cars I have to race or explode; I'm present at all pyrotechnical rehearsals; and I walk through everything step-by-step. No man should put their life in someone else's hands unless they have covered their own safety from all angles.
I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It's kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It's a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.
Some films, you're lucky enough to get some rehearsal, which is just basic going through the scene, and, 'These are my questions, and this is what I'm trying to achieve,' and you work things out, and maybe a few line changes here or there.
Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I've never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn't take advantage of a rehearsal process.
I started off writing TV adverts. I saw those as rehearsals for a feature film.
I started out as a duo with Mis-Teeq's Sabrina Washington, and we worked for four or five years before signing a record deal. I had no money, and I was taking part-time jobs just to earn the train fare to get to rehearsals.
