Valmike Rampersad

Fresh out of Drama school, Valmike Rampersad is already carving his niche in the independent film market. Xcel looks at the journey of one of Britains up and coming actors.

Valmike gave up his day job in communications at Ralph Lauren to pursue his ambition to become an actor. He spent his time juggling his demanding job with auditions, Drama school in the evenings and filming at the weekends. Whilst at Drama school he was picked up by top agency Finch and Partners (clients include John Malkovich, Anna Friel, Joely Richardson) who saw his short film 'Aisha and Nadeem', his first ever foray into films.  It was executive produced by Marc Boothe (Bullet Boy) and selected by the Canadian Film Centre for international distribution at the Clermont-Ferrand short film festival.

When asked why he gave up the day job, he responded with 'Acting was always a hobby I pursued after work, but it turned into a passion that I couldn't get enough of, so I decided to enroll into Drama School full time to get some professional training and luckily I got into Central School of Speech and Drama - I didn't think I'd get in to be honest, so I applied to almost all the credible Drama schools, which cost a fortune in application fees!'.

Upon graduation he landed the lead in a film shot entirely on green screen at Lars Von Trier's Zentropa studios, Denmark. 'I was so excited at the thought of working at Zentropa. Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg created two of my favourtie movies 'Dogville' and 'Festen'. The summer before graduating from Drama school he shot his first two independent feature films 'Right Hand Drive' by US Production company, Pine Road Pictures and independent flick 'Jen'.

His look crosses many cultures prevalent in film making today - he could easily play Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Spanish, Itialian, Asian and of course British. Valmike can speak fluent Italian and Spanish, and a bit of Hindi. Among his acting role models are Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman, Edward Norton, Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard. He would love to work with Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Dominic Savage, Mike Figgis and of course Mira Nair  'there are so many brilliant directors, I'm just scratching the surface'.