The Camden-based performer, last seen playing the social worker boyfriend of female lead Poppy in Mike Leigh’s award-winning film Happy Go Lucky - partly shot in the streets of Camden with a few forays into Kilburn - is current filming his first serious baddie role in the seventh JK Rowling blockbuster Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I – though it won’t be released for at least a year.
In Deathly Hallows, Samuel plays one of four Snatchers, the evil henchmen of arch villain Voldemort. He admits: “Running around a forest with a wand is really good fun. The cast are like a big family. I’d say that on the nasty scale, Snatcher is the nastiest role I’ve played so far.”
But Lancashire lad Samuel, 28, has another passion apart from acting – working with wood. It led him to enrol for a one-year daytime course in carpentry and joinery last September at the College of North West London, having found it was the nearest and most congenial place to get properly qualified.
He is so committed that not long ago he flew back to England from the States two days early so as not to miss any more classes than necessary.
The kind of thing he has in mind is building shelves, hanging doors and installing skirting in his two-bedroomed flat in Kentish Town, when he’s not on the stage or in front of the camera.
It’s a useful and money-saving skill, but also an agreeable change from the huge range of parts he has played since leaving his Southport home and his Liverpool school Merchant Taylor’s to take an acting degree at Hull University and train for two years at the celebrated Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
What with appearances at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, culminating in the lead as the adult Pip in Great Expectations, followed by screen roles in Victoria Wood’s ITV drama Housewife, 49, and the BBC’s 2008 drama Miss Austen Regrets among others, Samuel never had time for trade skills.
But he has managed to fit his studies round his Harry Potter filming commitments, which have taken him to various film locations since May and continue until August.
Despite this, he missed very few of his twice weekly evening classes at the Brent college’s Willesden campus in Dudden Hill Lane, and in fact by coming in extra days over Easter he completed all his carpentry assignments a month early.
Samuel, who can be seen in a support role in the film Bright Star about the Hampstead-based poet John Keats, has lived in Kentish Town for three years. He loves the area because it’s close to London and convenient for the Heath, where he goes running several times a week.
He says: “I was looking round my flat, and thinking I’d like to do this and that, so I thought I’d take a course. It’s nice to do something hands on and practical, when your job is different. At college I don’t have to think about language at all.
“My granddad was a builder and it was something I’d been thinking about for some time. I’ve always wanted to work in wood. But I wanted to learn how to do it properly. The internet had lots of short courses, but they didn’t seem thorough enough.
“This college ticks all the boxes – it does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s just brilliant. If you turn up to classes and get on with it, you can’t really lose. The staff will give you attention and one-to-one time if you want it.
“Just because you are at college learning, it doesn’t have to be boring. Education should be something you want to do.”
Samuel is best mates with fellow actor Leon Ockenden, who also enrolled at the College of North West London on a plastering course last September, and both plan to return to the College to complete Level 3 of their courses.
In June Leon was the guest speaker at the College’s Young Learners Awards (see separate story), while Samuel was a special guest at the College’s Open Day to coincide with national VQ (Vocational Qualifications) Day, featuring skills demonstrations to highlight some of the courses run by the College.
PICTURE SHOWS: Samuel Roukin in a CNWL carpentry workshop
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