Lenny Henry, actor

'I was blown away by the recent Hockney exhibition'

Lenny Henry: 'I was blown away by the recent Hockney exhibition' (Rex Features)

Theatre

I've been to see Adrian Lester in two things, Red Velvet (written by his wife, the fantastic writer Lolita Chakrabarti) about the life of Ira Aldridge. Aldridge was the first non-Caucasian actor to play Shakespeare in the UK. It's a great play – I also saw Adrian in the National Theatre's recent production of Othello. He and Rory Kinnear were brilliant.

Films

Star Trek Into Darkness – I think Zachary Quinto gives a huge part in this movie, as does the Benedict Cumberbatch meister. There are really excellent special effects.

Books

I've just read a mind-blower: Into the Woods by John Yorke (who is a drama commissioner at the BBC). It's an incredibly dense but very readable tome about the art of storytelling. It doesn't try to instruct you how to write a screenplay (like Save the Cat by Blake Snyder and Story by Robert Mckee and Screenplay by Syd Field), it sort of tells you why. Why some rules maintain, three acts versus five, character archetypes and so on. It is really worth a read.

Visual Arts

I was blown away by the recent Hockney exhibition. I spent a lot of time walking around with my jaw on the floor.

Lenny Henry appears in 'Fences' at the Duchess Theatre, London WC2 (nimaxtheatres.com) 19 June to 14 September