Tussle muscle

Things seemed to be looking up for Ncuti Gatwa. Though his savings had run out, a friend had given him some money and offered him a free room. "Great, I thought. An opportunity to get back on my feet and start paying people back." But then came a hammer blow: "On moving-in day, he changed his mind. As I was standing on the street with my suitcases, one thought came into my head: 'I'm homeless.'"

Gatwa had already discovered what it was like to go hungry - even with a temporary job at Harrods.  

"To the outside world everything seemed fine," he wrote.¹ "I'd wake up from the double bed I shared with my best friend, leave the house without a hair out of place in a slick-looking trench coat and polished broguesA type of shoe with patterns in the leather..

"I would get compliments for looking so presentable. When I lost weight due to eating only one meal a day, people told me how lean and healthy I looked."

Gatwa had moved to London at 21 to further his acting career, but came close to giving up. "Rejection became unbearable. Auditions weren't just acting jobs, they were lifelines."

Then, shortly after his friend let him down, everything changed. Gatwa was cast as Eric in the Netflix series Sex Education, and his career took off. It brought him three BAFTAAn award given at the British Academy Film Awards ceremony. nominations for Best Male Comedy Performance, and a BAFTA Scotland award for Best Actor in Television.

Then, last May, it was announced that he would be the new Dr Who. And yesterday the Radio Times named him the most powerful person in British TV.

"There aren't quite the words to describe how I'm feeling," he says of his new role. "A mix of deeply honoured, beyond excited and of course a little bit scared."

"It was a blazing audition. Our very last audition," says Dr Who's writer, Russell T Davies.  "We thought we had someone, and then he came and stole it. I'm properly thrilled."

Science fiction writer Tade Thompson² calls it "an inspired choice. He can pull off the mercurialOften and suddenly changing mood. madcap nature required. He has the energy and the physicality, and he brings youth to the role."

In 1994, two years after Gatwa's birth, his family fled the Rwandan genocideDuring a period of 100 days in 1994, more than 500,000 people were killed during a campaign of mass murder during the Rwandan Civil War. Most of the victims were members of the minority Tutsi group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa. . They found refuge in Edinburgh, where his father - a journalist and Christian minister - studied philosophy and theologyThe study of religious beliefs.. Later they moved to Dunfermline.

He was 17 when one of his teachers encouraged him to consider an acting career. After studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, he was taken on by the Dundee Repertory Theatre.

In 2014 he made his TV debut with a one-line appearance - buying a hamburger from Brian Cox - in the sitcom Bob Servant. But he had to wait four years for his breakthrough, and struggled with the anxiety that he was letting people down.

"But I never let people know how down I was feeling," he says. "That would have been another burden for my friends to take on."

Today he has 2.5 million followers on Instagram. "I want to play absolutely everything," he says, looking to the future. "My dream role would be a Bond villain."

Yes: The philosopher Friedrich NietzscheIn 1869, the German philosopher became the youngest person ever to hold the University of Basel's Chair of Classical Philology. He was 24.   was right to say "that which does not kill us makes us stronger". Those who have really suffered will go further than anyone else to change their lives.

No: Some people are simply born with ambition and some are not. Anyone with an inbuilt drive to succeed will get there in the end, whether they have a difficult or an easy time of it.

Or... Success does not necessarily bring happiness, which is the most important thing in life. Everyone experiences some kind of hardship and should be respected for whatever they achieve.