Actor Adrian Lester navigates his way through balancing home life and parenting with working in the creative industries.
My wife, Lolita, and I are both freelance creatives. Our jobs can be booked months or days in advance. Work isn’t guaranteed, and when we do get the chance to work on a project, it can be all-consuming and may demand irregular hours. Trying to maintain a good work/life balance in this competitive, freelance profession is difficult.
We book holidays at the last minute, and can rarely commit to anything that is more than a month away, because work might materialise. On the odd occasion, we have not even been able to properly plan celebrations for Christmas or birthdays, which is especially disappointing, particularly when our kids were small.
In order to paint an accurate picture, I had better describe what the balance means to us, though it’s going to be different for everyone.
Lolita and I met at drama school. We studied a year apart, learning to prepare ourselves for this erratic industry. We both felt we were part of a new wave of classically-trained actors who needed to change the industry from within. The role models we saw in our profession were unsung heroes whose contributions were completely overlooked, or who were mentioned as a side note.
We left drama school and, luckily, began to get theatre work up and down the country. Before we had children, it was relatively easy for us to see each other wherever we were working. We would travel regularly, visiting each other as much as we could, and would see each other’s shows. We performed Shakespeare all over the world, and we worked with some great international artists.
While Lolita was pregnant with our first child, she was on a two-month tour in the U.S. A few months later, our first child was born while I was in the middle of a year-long world tour. Once the jobs were over, we made an agreement not to tour anymore! We needed to put down some roots and rules for our new family. We were aware that we were going to have to create a sense of stability from a profession where there is none.
Any work either of us did had to be truly worth the other one not working and, basically, staying at home. There is no system of using a crèche or day care in order to help an actor, who is also a parent, carry out their work. The hours are too irregular and the wages are the same. If you are in theatre, your hours shift from a basic nine-to-five to a few days of twelve hour calls, and then into a period where you’ll start work at 6.30 p.m. and finish at 11 p.m. By the time our second child was born we tried, as much as possible, to juggle our opportunities for work between us. We have both turned away from work that we wanted to do because we knew that the other’s opportunity was more important.
In the past, like many actors, we found that some of the work we had been offered looked at the world with an ignorant eye, and was best avoided, while, at other times, we jumped through hoops to chase the smallest chance of being involved in a project, only to have the opportunity disappear.
The best way to navigate all of this has been to remain very focused on what we want. We have been together for over thirty years and, in that time, we have learned to create the work we seek to accomplish. This is especially true for Lolita, as a writer.
Every job is hard won and offers us the possibility of a better place in the industry, which could lead to a greater sense of security for future work but, sometimes, we have had to put the stability of our children ahead of our personal ambitions. I have often taken something closer to home where I could see the family more regularly. I know Lolita has done the same. Our principles as parents have no doubt cost us money, but at least they have left us with peace of mind, so far…..
Adrian Lester CBE is an award-winning actor, director and writer. Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti: A Working Diary is available on Methuen Drama.