Valerie Bundy has been an actor for close to thirty years, working mostly in touring theatre, before building a second career as a writer and producer of her own short films.
Her break came almost by accident. A performer dropped out of a touring production with the Shakespearean Young People’s Theatre Company, and Val got a call asking if she could be in London that same day. She had an hour to think it over. The answer was yes.
She had nowhere to live and no time to sort it. By her first rehearsal, she was still working it out, Tube map open, only half-listening as the director spoke. Val’s the first to admit she tends to daydream, and this time it caught her out. He’d moved from addressing one actor to addressing the whole room, and she hadn’t noticed. He was not happy about it. “I can’t be daydreaming,” she remembers thinking. “This is full on.”
Years of touring theatre followed, including a run with Black Hat Theatre and a lot of work for CragRats.
Having children changed things. She stepped back from touring because she didn’t want to lose that time with her kids. She started making work she could build around family life instead. That included a short film called ‘Henry’, which she wrote, shot and edited entirely on her own. It got into the St Albans Film Festival.
Around the same time, she entered a writing competition in Grazia magazine, run in association with BAFTA, and won it. The prize was a one-off mentorship with a mentor of her choosing. She picked Miranda Hart. When Val admitted she was nervous meeting her, Miranda simply replied, “Why are you nervous? It’s only me.”
That confidence carried into her next project. On the train home from a directing course, after being told not to bother with comedy, she felt deflated at first. Then defiant. By the time she reached Manchester, she’d written the initial script for a comedy short called ‘What Would Julie Do?’.
She cast the lead by pitching in person, after spotting actress Julie Hesmondhalgh in the audience at a small theatre night featuring her own short play. Val introduced herself afterwards, and asked outright if she’d be in it. The next day, Julie said yes.
The film needed one more well-known face for a short cameo. Val had exhausted every contact she had, so she wrote a letter on the strength of nothing more than a shared name with her film’s title. She posted it not knowing if it would ever be read. Weeks passed. Then, on the day of the deadline her producer had given her, an email arrived.
“Julie Walters had done a little self-tape for our film. No contract, no money.”
It sounds like a lucky break. But even with two well-known names in the cast, festival after festival turned it down. “The film’s dead good and we were so proud of it,” she says, “but there were so many rejections.”
It eventually found an audience, won awards, and got into four BIFA-accredited festivals.
The conversation covers a lot more than the two short films. Val and Lee talk about imposter syndrome, which turns out to affect people at every level of the industry, the etiquette around actor and actress, and where AI does and doesn’t have a place in creative work.
There’s a feature film underway too. Val’s first attempt, in her own words, was genuinely terrible. The plot and structure just didn’t hold up, so she’s gone back to the drawing board and is rebuilding it properly this time.
Her thriller short, Facade, co-written with director Darren Westwood and crowdfunded with a crew of twenty-five, heads into the festival circuit this autumn. There’s also a sitcom pilot she’s tentatively planning with Westwood too. Though, as she puts it, they might end up writing something else entirely.
“I will make this feature film by hook or by crook.”
Watch or listen to all episodes via the Media Music Now Conversations page
More of Val’s work is at https://www.valeriebundy.com
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