Stephen Graham cut a casual figure as he departed BBC Breakfast’s studios in Manchester on Tuesday, after lifting the lid on his struggle with dyslexia.
The British actor, 51, seemed to be in high spirits as he stepped out in a navy zip-up hoodie layered over a matching T-shirt.
He wheeled out a big blue suitcase but made sure to stop to sign autographs for the fans who were eagerly waiting outside.
Stephen is hitting the headlines at the moment as his new Netflix show Adolescence is soaring to success.
The crime show, written by Stephen and Jack Thorne, was only released on Netflix on Thursday, but has already made waves and earned huge praise for its storyline and videography.
Stephen takes on the role of Eddie Miller, the dad of a young boy called Jamie (Owen Cooper), who is suspected of stabbing one of his classmates Katie (Emilia Holliday).
Stephen Graham cut a casual figure as he departed BBC Breakfast’s studios in Manchester on Tuesday, after lifting the lid on his struggle with dyslexia
The British actor, 51, seemed to be in high spirits as he stepped out in a navy zip-up hoodie layered over a matching T-shirt
However, the star’s triumphant successes have not come without challenges – one of those being that he suffers from dyslexia.
The learning difficulty poses obvious obstacles when it comes to reading scripts and learning lines, twin staples of the actor’s craft.
Stephen’s wife Hannah Walters, whom he has been married to since 2008, has offered her husband invaluable support, carefully vetting the scripts put before him and ensuring he makes the best decisions for his career.
‘I’m dyslexic, so I struggle,’ Stephen revealed on a Bafta Sessions panel in 2019.
‘My missus actually reads the script and says whether or not I’m doing it. She’s made some good choices.
‘I have to read it and read it and read it, then make it look like it’s the first time I’m saying it.’
The task is made easier by the fact that the couple have their own production company, Matriarch Productions, which they established in 2020.
Formed with the aim of providing a platform for underrepresented voices and stories, the collaboration yielded the Bafta-nominated film Boiling Point the following year, in which Hannah not only served as an executive producer but also appeared on screen.
As Stephen has revealed on Act on This, an online platform for TV actors, dealing with dyslexia necessitates a painstaking and methodological approach to his job.
He wheeled out a big blue suitcase but made sure to stop to sign autographs for the fans who were eagerly waiting outside
Stephen is hitting the headlines at the moment as his new Netflix show Adolescence is soaring to success
Stephen takes on the role of Eddie Miller, the dad of a young boy called Jamie (Owen Cooper), who is suspected of stabbing one of his classmates Katie (Emilia Holliday)
It is one he undertakes not only for personal reasons, but also out of a clear sense of collective responsibility to his colleagues.
‘I read the whole script and we can talk about the script and I find my way into my character and what’s happening through the journey, said Stephen.
‘It’s a technique that me and Hannah have developed; it’s not just me, I know a few other people do it.
‘I break it down in bite-size chunks, so I know exactly what I’m shooting on what specific day.
‘If you’ve got a couple of big days on the bounce, it’s no good having it all in your head.
‘It’s good to have it roughly there, but as soon as we finish work, I’m going back to my H๏τel room to sit and learn those lines for the next day, so when I come in the next day I’m ready to go.’
He continued@ ‘Different actors their own techniques, and I respect all of them.
‘If I was to give any kind of advice to any actor, [it would be to] do the work – because you need to do the work in order to make it look like you don’t do the work.’
Speaking about her on-screen collaboration with Stephen in the BBC prison drama Time in 2021, Hannah said she landed the role by dint of their ‘quite good chemistry,’ adding that ‘it would have been shocking’ had they failed to deliver a convincing performance as husband-and-wife duo Eric and Sonia McNally.
However, the star’s triumphant successes have not come without challenges – one of those being that he suffers from dyslexia
Stephen’s wife Hannah Walters, whom he has been married since 2008, has offered her husband invaluable support, carefully vetting the scripts put before him and ensuring he makes the best decisions for his career
Read MoreEXCLUSIVE Woman behind Stephen Graham: How Brit actor’s ‘rock’ has been at his side long before Adolescence 
Their real-life romance began not on a Hollywood set, but in the draughty drama halls of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, in Sidcup, Kent, where the couple first met while training as actors.
It was a connection that would only deepen over the years, particularly when they reunited professionally on This Is England in 2006. By then, their bond had strengthened, and just two years later, on June 6, 2008, they tied the knot.
And Stephen has always been his wife’s biggest fan.
Reflecting on her talent during an online Q&A about 2021 prison drama Time, he gushed: ‘I watched Hannah back in the day at drama school and always thought she was brilliant.’
Speaking on the Graham Norton show last month, Stephen explained how Hannah was also key to getting the production of their other current streaming success on Disney+, the Victorian London crime and boxing drama, A Thousand Blows, off the ground as she presented the story to Peaky Blinders creator, Steven Knight, who was fascinated by the idea.
The couple settled in Ibstock, Leicestershire, close to Hannah’s family, where they are well-liked in the community and live in a modest £450k four-bedroomed semi.
The showbiz pair were chosen to cut the ribbon at a newly reopened doctors’ surgery in the village, following a revamp two years ago.
Meanwhile, Adolescence is showing signs that it will be a rating smash after episode one has been watched by 2.7 million people in just two days.
He said: ‘My missus actually reads the script and says whether or not I’m doing it. She’s made some good choices’
Reflecting on her talent during an online Q&A about 2021 prison drama Time, he gushed: ‘I watched Hannah back in the day at drama school and always thought she was brilliant’
Meanwhile, Adolescence is showing signs that it will be a rating smash after episode one has been watched by 2.7 million people in just two days
Fans have been left stunned by the psychological mini-series which has earned a perfect 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Its outstanding rating on review website has come from fans and critics alike praising its realistic portrayal of British society and its gripping plotline, with some even comparing it with Netflix’s 2024 triumph Baby Reindeer.
The series was filmed in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire, and the cast and crew were based at Production Park a studio facility near Wakefield, for six months last summer.
Some on location filming also took place, one being the Miller house, which is located just a few minutes from the studio.
Top Boy actor Ashley Walters takes on the role of DI Luke Bascombe in the critically acclaimed four-part production, uniquely sH๏τ in nearly hour-long continuous single takes.
The opening two episodes of four track Jamie’s arrest and follow the efforts of DI Bascombe and DS Frank (Faye Marsay) in getting to the bottom of the stabbing.
As an executive producer on the show, which aired on Thursday, Stephen, 51, said the idea for the series came to him from looking at the epidemic of knife crime in the UK.
Joining Hannah in chatting to Chris Moyles on Radio X, the actor said: ‘Okay, let’s get this serious nature of the show out the way, and then we can have some fun, with all due respect.
‘Look, it started when I read an article, and it was an article about a young boy who’d stabbed a young girl to death, and it just, you know, it made me feel cold.
As an executive producer on the show, which aired on Thursday, Stephen, 51, said the idea for the series came to him from looking at the epidemic of knife crime in the UK
‘And then a couple of months later, there was a piece on the news, and it was about a young boy who’d stabbed a young girl to death, and if I’m really honest with you, they hurt my heart.
‘And these two incidents were opposite ends of the country. And I just thought, “Why? Why is this happening?”
‘Not just because I’m a father, but I think any kind of human being with an ounce of moral compᴀss can look at that kind of situation and think, “What’s happening? What’s going on with society today that we’re in?”‘
Stephen added that the spate of stabbings was a sharp contrast to the world he grew up in.
‘We’re entering this kind of era where there was, like, four, five, six, seven cases of young boys – and I’m going to call them young boys, they’re not men – stabbing girls to death,’ he said.
‘And, you know, that beautiful saying, “It takes a takes a village to raise a child”, I just wanted to create something that kind of looked at it from that perspective, but also looked at it like, look, maybe we are all slightly accountable in some way, be that parents, be that school, be that government, community, society.
‘And now, let’s be completely honest, when I was a kid, when we were kids, we didn’t have these kind of things.
‘But today, the internet is as much of a teacher and a parent to our children as we can be. Do you know what I mean? And that was kind of where it came from.’
WHAT IS DYSLEXIA?
Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that mainly causes problems with reading, writing and spelling.
It’s a specific learning difficulty, which means it causes problems with certain abilities used for learning, such as reading and writing.
Unlike a learning disability, intelligence isn’t affected.
It’s estimated up to 1 in every 10 people in the UK has some degree of dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a lifelong problem that can present challenges on a daily basis, but support is available to improve reading and writing skills and help those with the problem be successful at school and work.
Signs of dyslexia usually become apparent when a child starts school and begins to focus more on learning how to read and write.
A person with dyslexia may:
Read and write very slowly Confuse the order of letters in wordsBe confused by letters that look similar and write letters the wrong way round (such as “b” and “d”)Have poor or inconsistent spelling understand information when told verbally, but have difficulty with information that’s written down Fnd it hard to carry out a sequence of directions struggle with planning and organisation
But people with dyslexia often have good skills in other areas, such as creative thinking and problem solving.
SOURCE: NHS
