John Campbell
MAC
by Lon Levin
According to IMDB, John Campbell-Mac was born in Canning Town, East London, England in 1973. John was brought up by his grand parents William and Mary Campbell. The family moved from Canning Town in East London to Colchester in Essex when John was the age of 5. After being bullied as a child he was encouraged by his grandfather to take up boxing and boxed for the Castle Colchester Boxing Club. He won the award for best prospect in his first competitive season and later became club champion eventually moving back to London to advance his career. His acting talent first came to the attention of his school teachers where he was regularly given main character in school plays and later in amateur theatre productions. Upon leaving school, he worked in construction, as a physical fitness instructor, model, dancer and as a professional boxer and continued his training in martial arts including Muay Thai (Thai boxing), karate and taekwondo. When did you first think about acting as something you wanted to do? How did that evolve into your present business? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors? I think I was born a natural entertainer straight out of the gate, my family were all these huge personality’s so I guess I was just finding a way to be heard. I think people are either born funny or their not and with regards to tough guy roles I grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood so that came pretty easy too. What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences? I was one of those cheeky naughty kids, full of fun and mischief. I was raised by an old couple who adopted me, I sure kept them busy. They were real larger than life characters from the East End of London, salt of the earth, amazing people. Both sadly passed now.
We were working class but there was never a shortage of love in our house. They moved out of London to Colchester in Essex when I was around 5 years old which is where I grew up. Early influences were probably the tough guys in our neighborhood, early performances? Well when I was about 10 I remember standing on a kitchen stool at the bottom of my garden and singing Nat King Cole, SMILE to the field full of sheep that were gathered there, If I remember rightly they were a great audience ha ha . Your style is very unique. Did you work on developing a style or is that what naturally came out of you?
I’ve done lot’s of comedy and tough guy roles, both come pretty easy to me. I was always the class clown and it just grew from there.
