The actor on being thrown out of school, serving snakebites, and a lucky break

Born in Bath in 1973, Kris Marshall landed his first major screen role in 2000, as layabout Nick Harper in the sitcom My Family. He went on to play Colin Frissell in romcom Love Actually and joined the cast of the cosy crime drama Death in Paradise as DI Humphrey Goodman in 2013. Marshall left the show in 2017 but later reprised the role in the BBC spin-off Beyond Paradise, which returned for a third series this month.

This photo was taken on Easter day and is one of my first ever memories. I was standing in the dining room of my grandparents’ house near Newark, Nottinghamshire. My dad spent 30 minutes trying to get me to sit still so he could take this picture. The moment I stopped fidgeting, my grandfather popped up behind him with a camera and said: “Click! Got it!”