Michael Praed

He is kept busy doing audio books and seems to be in demand, owing to his distinctive vocal talents.

[on how he got the role of Robin Hood] Kip Richard Carpenter and Paul Knight came to see the show I was doing [the London revival of the Gilbert and Sullivan musical The Pirates of Penzance - I think because they wanted to see Cats and they couldn't get in. I suppose I was lucky in that I was very well cast in Pirates, so they saw me in a good light, as it were. At that time, I had long hair, which was for an actor unusual. I'd learned to fence when I was very young and am quite comfortable around swords - maybe that helped. They had an idea of what they wanted their leading man to look like, and I think I must have fit a version of what they were looking for. It's a question you don't really ask: 'Why did you pick me?' I never really had an official audition for them. They took me out for lunch and it was very low-key. I remember that they talked about this project, but it was so unlike the typical audition, where you go and you have a tie and you sit on a seat, and there's a whole bunch of faces behind a desk firing questions at you. It's a horrible process, the audition, because it's just very difficult to be normal. But at lunch, it was very quote-unquote normal. They explained to me what they were attempting with this Robin Hood. They wanted to do a Magnificent Seven, a big buddy picture, with all these very different-looking people. It sounded really exciting to me, and then the offer came through.