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.”