Ashley Walters wants men to be more open about their struggles

Top Boy's Ashley Walters wants British men to be more open about their struggles

Ashley Walters features in Lost For Words, Royal London's new exhibition in collaboration with photographer Rankin, which was an opportunity for the actor to open up about how losing his dad changed his life. He told GQ about how 2020 has forced him to confront things about his mental health he never knew before

David Levesley

Ashley Walters has been a fixture of British culture since he burst onto the UK garage scene in the early '00s, and has cemented himself as one of our finest actors with his role as Dushane in Top Boy and his breakout performance in 2004's Bullet Boy.

It was just after this performance, as the turbulent Ricky, that Walters first met the photographer Rankin. He first shot Walters after he'd won the award for Most Promising Newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards, and they've collaborated together since then, too. So when Rankin revealed he was working on a new project alongside Royal London to talk about grief, Walters signed up immediately.

"Loss, for me, has been a big part of my life. It's actually shaped my life," said the 38-year-old actor, whose father died of lung cancer in 2005. "I didn't have an amazing relationship with him. But I realised how important he was in my life, and how important dealing with bereavement has been. That's what the project is all about, how it can affect you. Especially if you don't deal with trauma well, and I was a person that didn't."

Walters is taking this opportunity, as part of the new exhibition Lost For Words, to be open about how hard his father's passing was for his mental health. "It's not something I talk about openly to people, so I thought it was time to inspire men who find it difficult to talk about it too." While Walters has always been open with his family, now is the time he wants to inspire British men to be more open about their struggles, in a bid to make silence less of a killer.

But 2020 hasn't been an easy year for any of us, whether or not we're riddled with the repercussions of a difficult loss. Walters opened up with amazing honesty about how hard this year has been for him at times, and the steps he's taken to make sure this year wasn't a total write-off.

Mental Health

"I'll be really honest with you, in the beginning when we had the first lockdown? I was in bits. It turned my world around, it stopped my work initially, we weren't filming anymore. For the first week I had a breakdown. I remember being on the floor crying. My wife had to pick me up because I really was not used to being confined to my own home.

"But then, as the days went on I realised that, actually, I wasn't used to having to sit with myself. I couldn't self-medicate with work. I couldn't self-medicate with throwing myself into the gym. All those things that I was using to get away from the trauma that was inside of me I no longer had access to. I had to sit with it, and sitting with yourself when you're so driven is the hardest thing in the world.

"I wouldn't call it a major breakdown. But I just remember one day, just crying. And my wife just holding me for 15 minutes, asking me, 'What's wrong?' At the time I just had to say: 'I don't know. I can't take this, I'm going crazy.' After that, I got myself back into a lot of things that I had left behind, ie, reading, spending really quality time with my family, with my kids, asking them about what's going on with them. Gradually, it just got easier."

Structure

"I think what we realised as a household was the importance of keeping a routine, whatever that may be. We were exercising on a regular basis, we were having barbecues every day, I got my chef skills going again and started cooking. Just occupying my time, keeping a routine of waking up early in the morning, going for my daily exercise, coming back, doing schoolwork with the kids, and I eventually found my way. But in the beginning, it was really difficult.

"I'm not one of those people that is willing to write 2020 off. After I found myself again, after that short stint of dismay, I did a lot this year. I wrote some scripts that potentially are going to be coming out, I directed my first short film, which will be on Sky in late January, and I signed a publishing deal for my music with Warner Chappell. So I really accomplished some really major things.

"We're going back into work now, we've just started filming Top Boy again. I am really not taking it for granted. Anything can be taken from you, it's really important to understand that. I think you view things differently when you have that in the back of your mind. It's easy for people like me to take this gravy train for granted sometimes, and just expect it to be there."

Exercise

"I'm a weight training guy, but without a gym I turned to cardio. I started to jog a lot, and if I'm honest with you, I jogged a bit too much and did some damage to my knee. I got up to running at least five miles every morning, which I don't recommend to anyone, and I had to stop. If you do feel your knees hurting you at any point, have a rest. But I was one of those people that was always trying to beat myself every day.

"I got into cardio, I got into using my own bodyweight, and – as a person with back problems as well – just working a lot on my core. I started to focus less on aesthetics and having big muscles, and more on my inner health, mentally and physically."

Nutrition

"I'm not gonna lie. There was a lot of Deliveroo and Uber Eats going on. But my wife is very much into healthy eating, especially now that she's training as well. She caught that bug from me. So, at some point, we started watching the calories because we were putting on weight we didn't want to put on.

"I've been moderating my meat eating. I'm eating fish at least four to five times a week, and then treating myself, maybe, to a bit of red meat at the weekends. I'm really limiting my carbs, too, and I've worked out that I have a slight intolerance to dairy. That's something that I didn't realise before when I've been on the run and just eating things as and when.

"I don't know whether a lot of people do this, but this was definitely a mistake that we made, and it was not really focusing on what the kids were eating. It was always what was quick and what was easy. We really got them into smoothies. As a family, I think, it is really difficult for one person to be eating a certain way and everyone else not. Now we're kind of all spurring each other on through that process, which is an amazing thing."

Guilty pleasures

"I'm a sucker for Haribo, fizzy sweets and stuff like that. I don't think I'll ever be able to give that up. But because I was doing so many Zoom calls and spending hours and hours on Zoom, instead of picking through crisps, I went for cashews and things like that.

"I hate chocolate, I don't eat chocolate and I don't eat cake, which no one can understand. It's been a thing since I've been a kid. But when it comes to alcohol, I don't drink anymore. This is a thing from lockdown: I think I spent the first two weeks, probably like a lot of people that do drink alcohol, drinking too much. So I just knocked it on the head. I've literally been dry, if you want to call it that, for the last 40-odd days. That actually came from seeing how bad it could get through lockdown, and having all that time on your hands. I didn't want to jump into that zone: I have a slightly addictive personality. So I'm quite self-aware when it comes to those things at times."

Sleep

"I don't sleep that much. I get on average five hours a night, and I know that's not that good. Recently, the last 30 days, I've been pushing to get my eight hours. But during lockdown, at the beginning, it was really shaky. I didn't know what was going on, one day was rolling into the next. But I do completely understand how much sleep can affect your life, your day, and your career, and everything around you.

"I'm quite a bad-tempered person if I don't get enough sleep, and lack focus, and I'll be the guy on set at seven o'clock, falling asleep on camera and the director asking, 'Are your eyes open? Because it doesn't look like it.' There's me trying to pretend that they are, but just drained. So as much as I've been very shaky with my sleep, I do understand the importance of having it. It's really important to make sure that you get at least eight hours a night, which I do now."

Lost For Words, a Royal London exhibition in collaboration with Rankin to open up the conversation around death, is available to see here now.