Eddie Marsan’s response to a college bully has been making the rounds on social media – and for good reason.
The actor, who is best known for his leading role in The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe and appearances in Sherlock Holmes, Mission Impossible and Happy-Go-Lucky, recently spoke out about how he was intimidated growing up around white working-class men in the 1970s and 80s.
He said he “felt vulnerable and afraid” of people living on his council estate that was full of “toxic masculinity”.
The 54-year-old actor, who was raised in Bethnal Green in east London, recently starred in science fiction drama The Power – along with Toni Collette – which sees the relationship between men and women change.
Asked on the Channel 4 News YouTube show and podcast, Ways To Change The World With Krishnan Guru-Murthy, if he was afraid of men when he was young, Marsan said: “I remember being afraid of white working-class men”, adding there was always an “element of fear”.
But the actor was able to put that fear to one side in a recent Twitter spat.
One of the star’s former fellow students at the London College of Printing School posted on the social media platform, now named X:
“Many years ago my oppo was at the Print College @ the Elephant. Marsan came late to the class and sat infront of Russ. The lecturer said this is Eddie, be nice to him, Russ flicked his ears from behind and started singing “Eddie the Elephant packed his trunk”.”
This response from Marsan deserves an award all of its own:
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