TELEVISION viewers and movie-goers will undoubtedly recognise Mark Bonnar. The 56-year-old’s ability to go from intense to humorous in an instant has served him well.
He has appeared in the likes of Casualty, The Bill, Psychoville, and Catastrophe, as well as Litvinenko, Napoleon, and Lockerbie: A Search For Truth. The Edinburgh-born Bonnar can now be seen opposite bona-fide Hollywood stars Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu in the survival thriller Last Breath.
It tells the astonishing true story of Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), a deep-sea diver who had his cord severed and was trapped 100 metres under the sea, without heat or light, and with only a minimal amount of breathing gas left in his tank. It’s left to Lemons’s colleagues Duncan Allock (Harrelson) and David Yuasa (Liu) to somehow figure out how to save their nautical partner.
“The amazing thing about this movie is that the story is true,” Bonnar says. “That’s what makes it incredible. All the time you’re watching it, you’re thinking, ‘This actually happened!’. It’s an unbelievable story.”
Bonnar took his first acting class when he was 11.“That was around 1980,” he said. “Drama was seen as having a bit of skive. It was where you could mess around and bunk off for an hour.”
But the passion and enthusiasm of two teachers, Miss Parker and the aptly named Miss Cool, unlocked something in Bonnar: “They were full of vibrancy and love for what they did.”
Bonnar had always had a flair for the dramatics. “My mum and dad would probably say that I’ve been acting up my whole life,” he admits. He also loved to make people laugh. So it made sense then that he’d select drama as one of his next classes.
That was until he had a meeting with a guidance counsellor, who told him he should pick subjects to prepare him for a career. “They told me that drama wasn’t really going to give me anything career-wise. They recommended that I take a more academic subject. So I did. I dropped drama and did chemistry instead.”
Bonnar doesn’t hold any ill will. He said: “I think kids now are taught that you can do anything you want. That’s why acting is a valid occupation now. Because people know actors and their backgrounds. Everyone is much more visible these days. Back then though, it was like, ‘You want to do what!? No, you can’t do that!’ Acting wasn’t an aspiration to have.”
So Bonnar got a job working in the planning department of Edinburgh City Council and bought a flat there. Then one of his colleagues invited Bonnar to join his dramatics groups. Bonnar went along, and it immediately rejuvenated his interest in performing. “There were real sets and there was this contagious atmosphere. I remember thinking, ‘This is what I did back at school! I was alright at it, too’.”
Bonnar started appearing in plays. One of the directors told him he should consider drama school. He said: “I was around 21 or 22 at the time. It was a big decision. Because I had the flat. I was doing grown-up things!”
But Bonnar couldn’t resist the allure of really giving a career as an actor a go. He rented out his spare bedroom and took a one-year foundation course in drama at Telford College, where again he was inspired by his “brilliant teacher” Mary Carlin.
By the end of it, he thought to himself, “Yeah, I can do this! But the difference between thinking you can do something and actually doing it is quite substantial.”
He was thrown straight into the deep end of the profession when he won the Carleton Hobbs Bursary Competition run by the BBC.
“The prize was that one male and one female were given a six-month contract with the BBC radio company. So I did 50 plays in six months. It meant I could move to London and know I had work straight away.”
During this period, Bonnar played a variety of characters, including a mouse in Alice In Wonderland, an Australian, a football player from Belfast, and a king, to name but a few. “It was just the best learning experience for the professional world of acting,” he says.
Like any actor, Bonnar has experienced his ups and downs. But since 2001, he’s managed to work consistently across television, theatre, and film. Last Breath marks his second foray into a major Hollywood production in 18 months, following on from the Oscar-nominated historical epic Napoleon starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Ridley Scott (below).
After sending in a tape of him attempting an underwater rescue, Bonnar admits he forgot about his Last Breath audition. “You can’t hold on to anything in this profession,” he said. “All you can do is hope. But I heard back about three to four weeks later. My agent called and said, ‘You know that Woody Harrelson film? It has come good. You’re doing it’. I was very excited.”
Bonnar immediately watched the 2019 documentary that Last Breath is an adaptation of. Both were directed by Alex Parkinson. “It’s an astonishing bit of cinema. It’s really dramatic and makes you feel like you’re right there. That gave me an added impetus to do the film right.”
Bonnar contacted Craig, who his character is based on. He wanted to get a flavour of the man he was portraying, and he quickly learned that while he worked a “very intense and dangerous job as a dive supervisor,” he also took it upon himself to keep spirits up. The pair struck up a close friendship.
Ultimately, Bonnar just hopes that Last Breath does Craig and the others’ incredible stories justice. “You want to be as honest and faithful to the real events that actually happened as you can be in the context of a big blockbuster movie,” he said. “They’ve done an amazing job with it. It’s such a visceral experience.”
Bonnar also hopes that the film will inspire people to go and watch the documentary, too. “People should see the film then the documentary so they can see the real people,” he said. “They’ll be knocked sideways by the real story. These two films aren’t in competition. They go hand in hand and complement each other.”
