Interview from Backstage.com

English actor Sean Maguire, who now works in Los Angeles, spoke with us immediately prior to shooting the season finale of CBS's The Class. He began acting as a 5-year-old (in the 1982 TV version of John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father, starring Laurence Olivier) and made his mark in the long-running BBC soap EastEnders. He didn't work on the stage until he was 21, and he trained independently with a teacher friend instead of going to drama school. "I started doing a degree in speech and drama so that I could possibly teach later," he says. "I'd love to be able to give something back and teach kids the basics of drama. It helps your confidence a little bit, to have that in the basement. But ultimately, when the acting has to be done, that has to come from the person."

Maguire extols the immense value of training through work. He gained what he deems "incredibly valuable training for a sitcom" in the British stage production Funny About Love, saying the experience taught him the basic rules of comedy. About his current job in The Class, he says, "I've found myself spending more time on this than any other jobs since I did Shakespeare. A lot of comedy comes from the little idiosyncratic qualities that one has. Making jokes in a different accent, you can lose the funny things. I play American and gay in this role, and I have to find an entirely new guy and a slightly different sense of timing and rhythm."