Why Bradford-born Game of Thrones star Enzo Cilenti nearly quit showbusiness

The actor, who attended Bradford Grammar School, was interviewed last year as part of Bradford UNESCO City of Film's Screen Talk series, which are being streamed online each Friday during lockdown.

The interview with Cilenti - who played Yezzan zo Qaggaz on GoT between 2015 and 2016 and the organisation's director David Wilson was shown today.

"There are lean times," he said. "It's all great when you get invited to do lovely things like this and celebrate Bradford.

"But it's very easy to forget how miserable it can be. You look back at a year when you've worked like five days."

Asked by Mr Wilson about auditions that had not been successfuly, he said: "There are lots of them. I remember seriously thinking in my 30s like, what am I going to do? Got to do something else. I was going to retrain as a bike mechanic or something like that."

He added: "The thing that sustains you is a passion for it, when especially on great projects and being involved in great stories.

"My job's like anyone else's. A lot of the stuff you do, you do to pay the rent and feed yourself and some of them are actually really great, and it's worth being unemployed for, for so long."

He said that 40 per cent of his work was "quite fun".

The actor also joked that GoT was the worst paid acting job he has had.

"I think it was like season three at that [point. It had become the phenomenon that it was

I was determined that I would get a role in it. Absolutely determined I would get a role in it."

He added: "It's the worst paid job I've ever done.

"It's really bad but you kind of triple your amount of Twitter followers straight away and it means you have lots of people waiting for you at the stage doors with Yezzan zo Qaggaz pictures you've got to sign."

Cilenti, who is 45 and married to actress Sienna Guillory, has also appeared in Luther, Wolf Hall, NCIS, House, Rome, the Les Miserables mini-series and films such as Guardians of the Galaxy, The Martian, Kick-Ass 2, The Theory of Everything and Bridget Jones’ Baby.