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At age 12 I wanted nothing more than to be an actor. I didn’t particularly want to be a child actor but, being 12, I guess I was typecast.

Remember Bernard in Bernard’s Watch?! Great! Because that was not me.

Nope! I chose a different, much less successful path to old Bernie. I decided to get an agent, embarrass myself at a couple of auditions (including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang The Musical no less) and get out of it young.

It’s a young person’s game! I didn’t want to be thirteen and still auditioning for Nerf ads. That’s frankly too pathetic for words. And by fourteen I simply couldn’t keep up with the hard-partying antics of my more youthful peers.

Anyway, if you wanted to hit the dizzying heights I did you have to show your range. Your je ne sais quoi. So I had 25 pictures taken of my face. Or ‘headshots’ as they’re called – ranging from miserable to more miserable to visibly uncomfortable.

No smiles. Nope. I was sick of all thesps my age playing ‘happy’ children. This way I was sure to land a role in some kind of pre-teen version of The Killing.

*Aside alert* – The REAL reason I didn’t smile was because I was self-conscious of my teeth pre-braces. Which, coincidentally, is the reason I didn’t land my second audition – for a TV advert. The director told me I had to smile in amazement at what I was told was going to be a CGI fish winking at me – you know, that smile. However, I could only manage what would best be described as the close-mouthed, toothless gurn of a sickly Tudor prince.

Regrettably, I didn’t make it at 12. But I still wonder to this day what might have been? Or what might still be? Is that so crazy?

Now that I’m older, wiser and can drive to auditions, perhaps I would make it as a child actor TODAY?

First up, I needed headshots. I can’t use the ones I had from 2002. I’m 28 for crying out very loudly! That would be ridiculous.

So I just did the sensible thing and recreated them all – shot for shot.

As you can see they came out great and not at all terrifying in the slightest.

In fact, I’d go so far to say I’ve actually aged pretty well…

Yeah… pretty, erm, pretty well…

Pretty… OK yeah, that… that is haunting.

So, now that Hollywood beckons for Bugg, what did we learn? Well! I guess the thing to take away from this is never do anything. Especially age.

And if that doesn’t make you smile at a CGI fish, my friends, I don’t know what will.

Beaming.

Thanks to Queen of the Cameras Mark Fowler for taking the new and improved headshots and to Ken Allsop (@KenY2Ken) and Matthew Brazier (@matthew_brazier) for their beautiful photoshopping.