BUDDING actor Drew Coleman has made a big impression at one of the country's foremost theatre schools during a work experience placement.

Drew, 14, who lives in Queens Drive, Swindon, managed to get work experience at the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Art in London in March.

He is the youngest person to have secured a work placement at RADA, as the organisation only usually takes on 16-year-olds.

Once he has finished his education Drew hopes to work in the theatre as a director, a stage designer and an actor.

Drew said: "On the first day the building looked small but inside it was intimidating.

"But then I met the receptionist Val she knows all the students by name and she's like everyone's auntie."

Drew went to construction, props, and set design classes with students aged between 18 and 21.

He said: "On the second day I was tasked to make a stool for a play and I was given all the measurements all the other students had been working on theirs for two days, but I finished mine in one."

At the end of the two weeks, Drew was given tickets to a performance by comedian Ricky Gervais.

During the interval he met Lord of the Rings actor Sean Bean.

Drew said: "I was a little worried about just going up to him because all the other students were used to having people like him around but I got chatting to him and he was very friendly.

"He is a lot smaller than I thought he would be the camera makes him look taller."

On his last day, Drew was given a mini-presentation under a portrait of Richard Attenborough RADA's president and told to apply for RADA as soon as he left school.

Drew is studying GCSE drama at Churchfields School. Recently he played Digga in a school performance of Willy Russell's Our Day Out and took part in a Royal Shakespeare Company show at the Arts Centre with the school.