In dead men's shoes

Published on Sunday 19 August 2007 00:17

ASHLEY Walters first achieved notoriety as Asher D, the prettiest member of the garage outfit So Solid Crew, the 30-strong band of brothers who burst on to the scene with a No 1 single, '21 Seconds', then rapidly burnt out amid a series of controversies up to and including arrest and jail.

So when the former rapper was spotted begging at a tube station near his childhood home last summer, the commuters who swept past him registered little surprise at the slight black figure crouched by the doorway in a heavily distressed and highly aromatic coat.

In fact, Walters had been forced to don the mufti of a junkie, then dumped at the train station by his producer as a test of the actor's commitment to his new film Sugarhouse, in which he plays a down-and-out crackhead.

"It was a good test because I didn't know how I felt about playing the character in front of people," says Walters. "Suddenly I was out begging in front of people who knew Asher D, and they actually believed it had all come to an end - and I only made about 3.50."

Since So Solid combusted, Walters has been doing rather better than expected, with a praised starring role in the powerful urban movie Bullet Boy, and good work in Sing Your Heart Out For The Lads at the National Theatre. Yet his best performance to date may be in Sugarhouse, as 'D', a fast-talking, rapid-scratching, paranoid junkie who steals a gun and tries to sell it to a businessman.

Both onscreen and off, guns have provided an unexpected route to redemption for Walters. Aged 19, he was caught in a possession of a loaded firearm and sent to prison. He bought the gun through a mix of paranoia, bravado and naivety some weeks earlier after being threatened near his home.

On the day of his sentence, Walters' solicitor told him to expect to spend between three and seven years in jail: Walters cried, then prepared for the worst.

"When the judge said 18 months, I was overjoyed. I actually smiled a bit because he saved my life. Of course I had to go to prison, but the judge said to me: 'I can't let you walk out of here today - but I don't believe this should ruin your life.'"

Walters is living proof that it is possible to learn from past mistakes, but when he first tried out for the role the film's director, Gary Love, was sceptical of his abilities. Walters was not offended.

"He said to me that I didn't fit his vision of D, that I wasn't ugly enough for a start. I think he felt I was just laying myself in my other work. Most people think characters like Bullet Boy are based on me. They ask me: 'How much of that was you?'"

For those who know Walters only from So Solid Crew, it would seem a good question. Growing up in Peckham, he says his first role model was the drug dealer next door "because he had all the money and jewellery". As a child, he led a double life, hanging on the streets in a gang, but also attending the Sylvia Young stage school on a Saturday, ballet classes included, which led to a successful career as a child actor on Grange Hill and The Bill.

When he took up acting again at 22 for Bullet Boy he admits he didn't need to build a background, because the back story of an ex-con trying to find his feet again was all too familiar; he first read the script while he was serving out the last few months of his sentence. However, for Sugarhouse, Walters engaged with the business of research for the first time, meeting with crack addicts, watching documentaries, dieting down to junkie weight by restricting himself to steamed fish once a day, and living away from his girlfriend and their three children.

"I wanted to come out of character, but the director wouldn't let me and the pace of filming meant I could never really relax. Gary made me get out of my comfort zone and so I stayed in my character's clothes all the time so they did actually smell and I stuck a stone in my shoe to get a funny walk. It got to the point where I had an indentation in my foot where the stone had sunk into my foot so it didn't work anymore. So we had to get a bigger stone. I was prepared to do whatever he asked of me.

"I think you have to keep reinventing yourself. I'm trying to get a production company off the ground and there are going to be a lot more movies in the pipeline. I wrote a book, I'm writing a script and I've just shot a documentary I'm hoping to get out soon."

With three films under his belt, and a role in the BBC series Hustle, ultimately he'd like a shot at Hollywood, and has already had a taste of this working in the Fiddy Cent feature Get Rich Or Die Trying. For now though, he's happy to work over here.

Since shaking So Solid and jail from his shoes, Walters feels like he's been given another chance.

"I know a lot of the headlines that I had when I was with So Solid, and a lot of the negative press that was surrounding me kind of turned people off me for a while. I'm very happy that people are starting to accept what I did in the past but understand that I've changed. I made a mistake."

Sugarhouse, Cameo, tonight, 7.45pm; tomorrow, Cineworld, 10pm. Released on Friday www.edfilmfest.org.uk