Nick Frost has 'stage fright' over art exhibition

Hot Fuzz actor Nick Frost says he has "the same feeling" of nerves about his paintings as he does about performing on screen.

The performer has picked up a brush in recent years and his first solo art show opens at Linden Hall Studio in Deal, Kent on Saturday.

"I suffer terribly from nerves," Frost told BBC Radio Kent, adding he had suffered from "stage fright" since he started acting.

"I've learned to deal with it now and I feel it's a way of my body showing that I care enough to be nervous about something," he said.

"You should always feel embarrassed to show people stuff you've made and it is embarrassing because you are putting yourself out there.

"As I've gotten older you just have to realise that it's alright if people don't like it, that's fine, but there will also be people who really like it."

According to the actor, who will play Hagrid in the forthcoming Harry Potter TV series, he first started painting six years ago while suffering from insomnia.

"I would just sit up all night - and at that point I was watching films and stuff - and then I started to draw and paint and doodle, as it was a better way to get me through the night," he told the BBC.

Frost took to drawing people and he says he used his experience as a writer and filmmaker to "give these people backstories and lives".

He said he would often people-watch before he took up painting, and "tell the story of where they were going to or where they'd been or who their partner was or were they having a secret affair".

"I love giving people backstories, I've always done that as a child," the Shaun of the Dead actor said.

"This felt like just a nice way to do that. I could make my own people up."

Frost described Deal, where he had previously taken his family on holiday, as having "a lovely little thriving art scene".

"I really like it and I'm glad that I get to do my first show in a place that's so close to my heart," he said.

The exhibition comes off the back of filming for the Harry Potter series for HBO, which is also set to feature John Lithgow, Paapa Essiedu and Janet McTeer.

"I've been doing acting and making films for about 25 years and honest to God there was not a day that I went on set when I wasn't completely amazed," Frost said.

"If you've done something for a long time you can often get on a set and just go through the numbers and get through the day but it wasn't like that at all."

He added that he was "never going to compete" with the work of Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, but hoped to "honour" the late Scot's performances.

"I'm going to hopefully take what he did and add a little bit of what I'm going to do," Frost said.

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