JAMES SWANTON
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Professional

Jewell Wright Limited - All acting enquiries - film, television, theatre - through this channel.

Spotlight - My casting directory profile, including showreels.

Internet Movie Database - Another convenient place to view my showreel.


Twitter - Bitesize wafflings. Overwhelmingly about old horror films.

Instagram - Gruesome photo after gruesome photo.

Facebook - Semi-regular updates. Sometimes including those gruesome photos.

Interviews

The Evolution of Horror - An involved discussion of Häxan (1922) and The Black Cat (1934), as well as my macabre artistic roots.

Entertainment Focus - On the red carpet at FrightFest, Leicester Square, ahead of the premiere of Frankenstein's Creature.

Premiere Scene - More from the Frankenstein's Creature red carpet, this time prefaced by Sam Ashurst.

FrightFest - A change of pace: a sit-down interview for Frankenstein's Creature, with Sam Ashurst and Mike Muncer.

Arts York - My thoughts on Sir Henry Irving ahead of the first run of Irving Undead.

The Press - A lengthy print interview for the 2018 rendition of Ghost Stories for Christmas.

Blog Entries

My Desert Island Discs - Eight favourite scraps of music: tarnished Spektor, constrained Jay, perfectly imperfect Newley.

Familiar Old Ghosts - My flights to Cambridge, Leeds, Blackpool, as well as the flight of a dear friend.

The Funny Man is Me - More 2015, and much more Newley: love's long memory, living twice, beginning again.

Drowning in Your Dream - Personal excavation suffused with Newley: laughing men, enough to hope, dreams where I win.

The Mystery of Christopher Lee - My last goodbye to a towering influence: Lord Summerisle, Grigori Rasputin, Count Dracula all.

Creature Ascending - Mastering myself before rehearsal: from transformation to enmeshment to lightness.

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Island Dreaming - Adjusting the compass. By becoming Crookback, honouring the underdog, owning the island. 

The Fool Must Die - Laying bare the tragic clown. Gwynplaine's smile, Stephen Fry's armour, Anthony Newley's hands.

Last Lessons - Taking stock of months of murder. Looking back to university, forward to January, revelling in Trafalgar. 

Meeting the Villain-Hero - An encounter with David Leonard. Also Halloween theatrics, review avoidance, raw egg ingestion.

Dreaming to Order - The nightmare realm of Sikes. Angular graveyards, faceless spirits, the ghosts of dogs.

Forcing the Soul - Sikes flits from industry to the seaside. Dungeon-bred warriors, charity-shop rescuers, truth-telling streetwalkers.

The Hertfordshire Horror - Sikes in the Home Counties. Frankenstein's bride, Stanislavsky's black hole, Karloff's stomach trouble. 

Into the Black Lagoon - Rehearsing the one-man play: Swanton's panicking, Aram's dreaming, Bryan's impaling.

Happier Tortures - Horror cinema's most artful sadism. Skinning alive, spike-infused hammerings, a pound of flesh.

The Comedy of Torture - Unwittingly amusing tortures in classic horror cinema. Whippings, Iron Maidens and Lugosi's pendulum.

Fires of Industry - Bits and pieces of work in the next six months: Dickensian tour, torturous opera, horror pantomime.

Devil Music - Because the Devil gets all the best songs. Various villains: Judge Claude Frollo, Chernabog, Mephistopheles. 

Living in Film (2011-13) - Three more years of films. To the below, add schizophrenic horrors, the fabulous forties, the unexpected.

Living in Film (2008-10) - Why I like the films I do: a combination of academic subterfuge, running away and forgetfulness.

The Curse of Ham - A treatise on 'ham', that most destructive of theatrical terms. From Hamlet to ham fat to (h)amateurs.

Neo-Gothic Shakespeare - Melodrama takes charge. Classically tinged antics from Sweeney Todd, Louis XI, Cardinal Wolsey. 

What Halloween Is, As I Grow Older - The history of an obsession. The Old Witch, the Panto Villain, the Opera Ghost.

Scrooge & Marley: The Return - Reviving a Spirit of Christmas Past: Lee and Cushing, Wolfit and Richardson, ham and eggs.

The Knight from Nowhere - A salute to the legendary Sir Henry Irving. Dead men walk, bells ring, dogs die.

Fantasy Noir III - Five films, five faces of Karloff. Includes the chief executioner, the apothecary general, the sorcerer.

Reviewing the Reviewer - A criticism of criticism. Opinions without value, Price without credit, blogs without readers.

Sublime Misanthropy - Gay saints of the twentieth century: dislocated Wilde, benevolent Crisp, shape-shifting Williams.

A Letter to the Friar - Thoughts for Friar Laurence. The Cambridge summer, the Wildean garden, the cave of buried love.

Fantasy Noir II - Five further studies in sinister cinema. Blackened demons, toxic-waste Technicolor, red-tipped leaves.

A Demented Fictionalist - My magpie literary habits laid bare. Slavers of Stephen Fry, Simpsons, Sun-Maid Raisins.

Fantasy Noir - Appraisals of five fascinating films. Look fast for glass-aperture coffins, silk-stocking murders, picket-fence skylines.

Night Thoughts - A delusory pool of self-appointed titles. Wolfit's ruin, Falstaff's wit, children's television.

Preparing for Death - Hunchbacked reflections on mortality. Chaney's coffin, Lee's impalement, Karloff's skylight. 

Bits, Bobs and Odds - Sarcasm unending, announcements three: Website, Imaginarium, Dungeon.


James Swanton vs. Musical Theatre - A caustic appraisal of the acting that sings: feast-begging, facade-wearing, flesh-eating.

Sikes & Nancy: Character Sketches - Drawings of six Dickens characters. A glance at actor-artists: Sher, Petherbridge, Laughton.

Doing a Professional Theatre - Announcing my engagement in Colchester. Points on Rembrandt, Henry VIII, Captain Kidd.

The Other Half - The first six months of 2012: utterly ghastly, strangely hopeful. Meetings with Stafford-Clark, Callow, Quasimodo.

Horror of Draftula - A Christmas breather from wrestling Dracula. Thoughts on Narcissus, the Baker's Wife, Wilde.
 

Grotesque Thoughts - A tongue-in-cheek theory of acting: unfashionable theatre, reconstituted flesh, painterly ugliness.

The Curse of Draftenstein - Thoughts in the vein of Frankenstein: otherworldliness, killing sprees, multiple tentacles.

Most Goodliest Announcement -
The day I found representation. Hubris concerning the artistic, the dynamic, the Swantonian.

Sikes & Nancy: The London Adventure - The Tristan Bates experience. Surprise entrances from Dahl, Seaward, Callow.

Sikes & Nancy: An Exercise in Quotation - Some Dickensian explorations: Oliver Twist, a Madman, a Prisoner of Charles II.

Sikes & Nancy: Re-Rehearsals Underway - Companions in crafting a one-man play: Cruikshank, Russell Beale, Macbeth.

Sikes & Nancy: First Re-Readthrough - A wide-ranging romp through the script: Jew of Malta, Night of the Hunter, Joan of Arc.

Two Goodly Announcements - One West End play, three Dungeon awards. Sidelines on Guinness, Slaughter, Hammer.

War of the Dungeon: Part 2 - An actor's perspective continued. Points on Doctor Prospero, Miss Trunchbull, Witchfinder General.

Carry On Don't (Not) Cho-ose Your Head(shots) - Picture after picture of me, me, me. Also stars Hatfield, Thesiger, Leonard.

The Edinburgh Report - Appraisals of shows from the 2012 Edinburgh Festival. Highlights include Adolf, Churchill, Bereavement.

Acting and Obsession -
Why I will never make a straight actor. Deviations sexual, spiritual, spinal.

War of the Dungeon: Part 1 -
An actor's perspective on The York Dungeon: thumbs screwed, tongues torn, chappies chopped.

Dracula Research Project - An optimistic bibliography of all which is Dracula. Visits from Jesus Christ, Henry Irving, Quentin Crisp.

A Quibble with Mamet - A critique of David Mamet's views on acting. Hammy muggers, questions of context, rugged individualism.

Draculean Derring-Do - An appraisal of Bram Stoker's rambling masterwork. Horror mysteries, ghostly vampires, lonely evil.

Return to the Dungeon - My traditional homecoming at The York Dungeon. Enthusiasm for newness: corpses, darkness, rugs.

Mission Statement - My blog's lofty intentions: shared passions, honest discussion, ultraviolet prose.
Copyright © James Swanton 2025
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