Capital Questions with Hayden Frost

For many, act­ing is only a pipe dream, but for Hay­den Frost this was nev­er the case. “I always thought of act­ing as some­thing I would do because I had to, because it is what I do. If I am not act­ing I feel like some­thing is miss­ing from my day-to-day life.”

It was early 2008 when Hayden’s dreams became real­ity, when he got called out of the blue for the lead role in the fea­ture film Pre­dic­a­ment. From this point things star­ted to hap­pen, and Hay­den found him­self immersed in the industry, includ­ing 24 epis­odes of the well-known fantasy series The Almighty John­sons. Hay­den took some time to relax and speak to Fish­Head at one of his favour­ite cafés, Espressoholic.

When I dine out… it’s usu­ally any­where cheap! It is amaz­ing that there are so many places where you can get a really fant­ast­ic meal for under $10. Places like the Viet­namese Mekong Café res­taur­ant on Vivi­an Street are ter­rif­ic. I have always been very fond of Satay Kajang on Dix­on Street, even though it is slightly out of my price range these days.

For a decent cof­fee and to unwind… I will usu­ally hook onto a loc­al depend­ing where I am work­ing. There are so many good loc­al places every­where that wherever I am doing plays there will always be a great cof­fee place nearby. I do love Espresso­hol­ic and Mid­night Espresso, and I par­tic­u­larly adore the Deluxe Espresso Bar, which is next to the Embassy.

For a slice of cul­ture… I will always default back to Bats Theatre. If I feel like going out to see some­thing, I will always look at what is on at Bats because it is warm, friendly and vibrant. It is one of those places you can check out some­thing you are unfa­mil­i­ar with and you will nev­er be dis­ap­poin­ted or feel like you have wasted money.

My favour­ite place in Wel­ling­ton is… the Cent­ral Lib­rary and Civic Square. There is some­thing so calm­ing and relax­ing about this area. For me there is noth­ing more relax­ing then going and find­ing a quiet area at the lib­rary and brows­ing through things you have nev­er heard of before. The gen­er­al vibe of lib­rar­ies has always appealed to me.

I became a pro­fes­sion­al act­or… by acci­dent. I happened to know someone who worked for an agent and someone who worked for a cast­ing dir­ect­or. I didn’t have an agent myself, but they gave me a call when the audi­tions for Pre­dic­a­ment came up. All of a sud­den I had just fallen into the industry.

My favour­ite aspect of Timon of Athens is… the sheer chal­lenge of it. This play is not per­formed very often and it requires more work to beat it into a watch­able shape. It is the first time in quite a while that I have been really scared, but in a good way! It is awful to be so ter­ri­fied, but at the same time it is invig­or­at­ing to be doing some­thing that is so challenging.

Timon of Athens reflects today’s soci­ety… because the play is very con­nec­ted to today’s fin­an­cial crisis. It is based around the way people deal with money. The first half is some­thing of a social satire, which you can read as being about how awful and selfish extremely rich people are. Which feels very rel­ev­ant. The play is about the con­sequences of unchecked excess, which seems to be some­thing of a theme of the past decade.

The best place I have per­formed is… the old Whitireia New Zea­l­and per­form­ing arts centre on Vivi­an Street. It wasn’t an amaz­ing per­form­ance space, the acous­tics weren’t great, it was some­times too big and the tech­nic­al desks were fall­ing apart, but I have so many amaz­ing memor­ies. I think I will have very spe­cial memor­ies asso­ci­ated with that place for the rest of my life. It sig­ni­fic­antly shaped who I am today.

Catch Hay­den in Timon of Athens at The Dell, Wel­ling­ton Botan­ic­al Gar­dens, from 13 to 28 February.