Actor Hugh Bonneville says he found working in a pub "really bleak".
The "Downton Abbey" star says he took a job in a bar to fund a planned trip to Africa and India but hated the experience so much so that he opted to clean toilets elsewhere instead, reported Femalefirst.
"It was around 1982, and I had to save 400 pounds to travel across Africa to India. I tried working in a pub up Edgware Road in London. It was bleak, really bleak. There was a three-legged dog in the corner and one bloke at the bar and the room was full of cigarette smoke. It was depressing beyond hell.
"I thought, 'However much I want to fly across the world, I can't do this.' That's why I took up the toilet cleaning, at a legal firm in Marylebone," Bonneville says.
The 53-year-old actor says he had planned to become a barrister if his acting career had not taken off but thinks he would have been "terrible" in the courtroom because he is not focused.
"I'd have been terrible. My mind wouldn't have focused. I wouldn't have been able to retain case law and all that. I think I'm a shirker rather than a sherpa. I was attracted to the performance side, rather than being a sensible solicitor with a steady income.
"I used to spend time watching the law courts when I was a teenager. I would go along like a nerd in the holiday and just find out about it. In retrospect, I was probably watching the theatricality.
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