Stuart Manning felt "really depressed" when he failed to crack Hollywood.
The ‘Hollyoaks’ actor – who has re-joined the Channel 4 soap as Russ Owen, nine years after he departed the show for the first time – headed Stateside for a year in an attempt to land some TV and film roles, and he felt down when he returned to the UK.
He said: "It was difficult. When I came back, I got really depressed, it was horrible for me. I didn’t really understand why it wouldn’t work out.
"I went to a bit of a lull and kind of gave it up for a bit, I thought, ‘I just can’t do it’."
Stuart threw himself into the audition process in Hollywood and isn’t sure why he wasn’t able to land a breakthrough role across the pond.
He said: "It just didn’t work out, I thought it was going to work out. If you go out there thinking it won’t work out, it won’t. You’ve got to give it your best, your all, your everything.
"I left just after doing ‘Hollyoaks’ and ‘I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, so I had a bit of money behind me.
"It is tough, you’re going out there thinking you’re going to get this and you’re going to get that work and everything else, but you’ve got to get out there and do the hard graft and casting."
The 39-year-old star suffers from "quite severe" dyslexia so he takes longer than most to learn TV and film scripts, admitting it takes him "double the time" as his ‘Hollyoaks’ co-stars to learn his lines.
He said: "It is difficult. My dyslexia is quite severe, so it’s very hard for me to learn a script. The film shoot that we’re doing in ‘Hollyoaks’, basically we’re doing six days per week – seven in the morning until seven at night – then you go home and learn the lines. It’s double the time for me."
Stuart’s agent helped him learn his lines during his stint in Hollywood by applying his scripts to a dictaphone.
Speaking about Hollywood on ‘Loose Women’, he added: "There’s so much more pressure. You’re given whole scripts and asked to pick scenes that you want to do.
"It depends on how much you want to go for. If you want to do a big monologue you can do it.
"My agent out there used to sit with me in the night and go through it with me. He had to read them to me first, then he put them on a dictaphone and then I’d listen to them over, and over, and over and over."
Stuart Manning ‘got depressed’ after Hollywood rejection
