Early Life
Originally from Govan in Glasgow, Robertson grew up part of a family of seven in a two-bedroom tenement. He had no thoughts of becoming an actor until he received a report from his primary school teacher Mr O'Kane saying, 'this boy has a special aptitude for drama'. He joined a local dramatic arts group at the age of 11 and quickly set about producing his own play, co-written and directed by his friends, Leah Beattie, Kelly Mitchell and John Rennie. He soon looked around for further opportunities and noticed an advertisement offering scholarships to the Sylvia Young Theatre School. He was among 2,000 children to audition.
After winning the scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School at the age of 12, he went to work appearing in what are now regarded as classic dramas such as Kavanagh Q.C., Silent Witness and Bramwell for example.
Gillies Mackinnon wasted no time in casting him as the lead in the award winning feature film Small Faces alongside Kevin McKidd, Laura Fraser and Claire Higgins which received world wide critical success and earned Iain a Best Performance BAFTA.
Read more about this topic: Iain Robertson
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)