Actor Ciaran is flying high in Peter Pan production.

Byline: Matt Thomas 

AT 21, Ciaran Joyce may just have found the answer to eternal youth.

The actor from Llanishen, Cardiff, has already gained a lifetime's worth of experience in TV, film and radio.

He first trod the boards as an 11-year-old, winning a four-year stretch in the children's hit series The Story of Tracy Beaker, plus roles in Holby City, Torchwood and Young Dracula, plus a stint presenting for CBBC.

But now he has won a part in a new London production of Peter Pan, the character famed for never ageing. The role has breathed new skills into his repertoire.

"We're working with flying, CGI and computer projections," he says. "It's also the first time I've done theatre in the round which I'm pretty excited about."

He will use experience gained when, aged 11, he took a chance and made his pro-fessionadebut in a West End production of Les Misrables.

Ciaran said: "There was an open casting up in London, for the role of Gaveroche in Les Mis. It was too good an opportunity to miss, so I went for it and got it. The next thing I knew I was travelling up and down between London, three times a week, playing a role on the West End stage.

"My family were so supportive of my ambitions, especially my Nan, she's my biggest fan."

That role convinced Ciaran he wanted to spend the rest of his life on the stage, so he started attending the Cardiff-based acting workshops where Ioan Gruffudd was bitten by the acting bug.

"That was the ATSLI Casting Cardiff workshop, run by a man called Peter Wooldridge," explains Ciaran.

"That's really where I did my training and got my grounding in acting."

It was through the workshop that he won the role with which many will associate him.

"When I was 13 I was picked to play Lol, in Tracy Beaker," the former Corpus Christi High School pupil said. "It was hard work, I've got to admit, as a 13-year-old to be filming all day and then to go into sessions with a tutor after a full day's work. But I always knew it was what I wanted to do."

His left school after his GCSEs to move to Mold to pursue more theatre work.

Ciaran said: "I moved out when I was 16, to work with Theatr Clwyd up in North Wales, which was a real learning experience."

He will spend this summer playing Tootles, one of the Lost Boys, in the Kensington Gardens production of Peter Pan, but isn't planning to rest on his laurels.

"Film is what I love doing," Ciaran says of his plans for the future. "Don't get me wrong, everything else that I do I love, but I'd love to do more film more than anything."

CAPTION(S):

Ciaran Joyce in the new production of Peter Pan and, inset, Ciaran, top left, as Lol in the cast of CBBC's Tracy Beaker