Jonathan Pryce: I was told for years that I was worthless
Full Disclosure with James O'Brien
Global
4.5 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2026
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From a small village in North Wales to some of the most iconic stages and screens in the world, Jonathan Pryce’s career has been shaped as much by doubt and accident as by talent and ambition.
In this episode of Full Disclosure, James O’Brien sits down with the actor to trace an extraordinary life in performance, beginning with a childhood marked by class, kindness and upheaval, and moving through art school, repertory theatre and a late discovery of confidence in his own abilities.
Pryce reflects on failure at school, the teachers who held him back and the mentors who quietly opened doors, as well as the personal loss that shaped his most searching work on stage. He talks candidly about imposter syndrome, the slow realisation that he might actually be good at his job, and why acting only began to make sense to him later in life.
They discuss the freedom and chaos of seventies theatre, the strange mechanics of success, and the moments that changed everything, from Comedians and Hamlet to Brazil, Miss Saigon and beyond. Along the way, Pryce shares stories that are funny, bruising and deeply human.
Warm, reflective and quietly profound, this is a conversation about craft, luck and resilience, and about learning, eventually, to trust your own voice.
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Transcript
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| 1:02.2 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 1:19.8 | Hello and welcome to full disclosure, a podcast project conceived entirely to let me spend more time than I'd ever go on the radio with interesting people. |
| 1:21.7 | Jonathan Price, welcome. |
| 1:23.4 | Interesting people and me. Do you know, it's a mark of a few actors who balk at that. |
| 1:28.8 | Grandiose introduction and people from other professions tend not to, but we may explore some of that a little bit later in the programme. |
| 1:34.6 | It's hiding my vanity. |
| 1:36.9 | Yes, exactly that, exactly that. |
| 1:39.1 | Although, as we will discover shortly, as we work our way through your childhood, you didn't display the show off gene very early. A small North Wales village was home. Yeah. It was the sort of context into which |
| 1:51.2 | you were born. Was your dad a minor when you were a baby or had he already taken over the grocery |
| 1:55.6 | business? No, I was a late child. So my father went down the mines when he was 13, 14, born in 1905, and rescued by my mother, |
| 2:12.6 | who was the daughter of a shopkeeper, and they got married married and together they owned and opened a small |
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