Tobias Menzies has always relished a challenge, whether it’s playing Prince Philip, or a New York therapist – or just keeping up with Brad Pitt
As a child, the British actor Tobias Menzies was a talented junior tennis player. At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, he decided to see if he could get his game back. He joined his local club in north London and started hitting, mostly on his own with a machine firing balls at him, at least a couple of times a week: for the first six months, he only struck forehands; then he did a similar stint on his backhand. Two years on, Menzies has finally felt ready to contest matches, mainly against the club pro.
“When I started playing again, I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to do my 10,000 hours, I’m going to start again,’” says the 49-year-old Menzies, referring to the principle, popularised by the writer Malcolm Gladwell, that it takes that amount of time to achieve expertise in any field. “I’m monomaniacal, I get slightly obsessive. I don’t get bored by hitting forehands for six months, that’s just how my brain is.”
