Ashley Walters has credited Stephen Graham with saving his life, as he opens up about his struggles with addiction and anxiety and how directing his first feature film, Animol, has changed his life.
The 44-year-old star of Top Boy, who recently appeared in A Thousand Blows and earned an Emmy nomination for Adolescence, admitted that acting has become a source of intense anxiety. "It just takes a lot for me to step in front of the camera, and to be watched and criticised and judged…sixty people just watching you all day," he said. "The anxiety that I have acting was really getting to an unbearable place…how it affected my family, my home life, and just me and my mental health. It's been really hard to cope with."
A Journey from Addiction to Sobriety
The Peckham-born former rapper, known as Asher D in UK garage outfit So Solid Crew, turned to acting in the early 2000s and won a British Independent Film Award for most promising newcomer for Bullet Boy. He revealed: "I was an addict. I was an alcoholic for 15 to 20 years. The last six years, I've been sober. That's when my anxiety has been the biggest. I traded off my addiction to get that my feelings back, and that's what I was left with. So it's like learning to deal with a new normal now and trying to navigate that."
Walters, a father to eight children and married to actress Danielle Isaie since 2013, found relief behind the camera. Directing the 2021 short Boys led to helming episodes of Ackley Bridge and A Thousand Blows. "I just felt calm in that space," he said. "It changed my life."
Bringing Prison Experience to the Screen
His first feature, Animol, is a raw jailtime drama inspired by his own past—in 2002, he was sentenced to 18 months in a young offenders institution for possession of a firearm. The film stars Tut Nyuot as Troy, a juvenile held in a detention centre for conspiracy to commit murder, who must survive by smuggling contraband for unstable inmate Dion (Sekou Diaby).
To prepare, Walters visited prisons and young offenders institutions, speaking to inmates. "They knew who I was, but that made it even worse," he admitted. When he told them he'd been locked up for firearm possession, they laughed. "I was sitting in front of people doing life for murders and they're looking at me like, 'You haven't got a clue what we're going through' and I realised I didn't." He added: "I had to honour those people."
Scripted by Nick Love, Animol explores the dangers of loyalty to the wrong crowd. "You see in this film, loyalty seems to kill," Walters said, "and that's been my experience with it. I was loyal to a fault to some people that really didn't care about me, and it led me to all sorts of crazy places."
A Lifelong Bond with Stephen Graham
Walters casts Stephen Graham as the prison welfare officer, following their work together on A Thousand Blows and Adolescence. "I love him," he said. "He saved my life. I've saved his life. Not physically… but we've supported each other through a lot of stuff over the years, and we've come through some of the same experiences, and that has kept us as kindred spirits." Their friendship dates back to the 2004 sitcom Top Buzzer, where Walters also met his wife. "I've seen him at his lowest, and I'm now seeing him at his highest, and he's seen me at my lowest and my highest, and we just stuck with it."
Walters also reflected on the success of Adolescence, the four-part Netflix procedural filmed in one take, where he played a Detective Inspector. "Celebrating Adolescence and seeing what it's done—the success of it and how well it's translated—is amazing, and so I live for that. I live for these moments. I don't mind the pain that often, going through it."
Despite his anxiety, Walters insists he still loves acting, with upcoming roles in the second season of Dune: Prophecy and Remain, a psychological thriller from M. Night Shyamalan alongside Jake Gyllenhaal. "I don't ever want to stop acting. That's not what I'm saying…I still want to work!" he laughed. "But I now understand what triggers me, what makes me feel a certain way or not. And I do really [want to] indulge in the beauty of directing."
Animol is in cinemas now.
