James Brian Mark Purefoy was born and brought up in Taunton, Somerset, England, the son of Shirley (Taylor), who ran an employment agency, and Anthony Chetwynd Purefoy. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he took a succession of different jobs, including working on a pig farm and as a porter at Yeovil District Hospital, before travelling and working extensively throughout Europe. At eighteen, James returned to college to take his A-Levels, one of which was Drama. It was there that he realised that this was something he felt inspired by and so applied for and was accepted onto the acting course at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Whilst playing the title role in "Henry V" in the first term of his final year at Central, he was seen by a casting director from the RSC and invited to join the company, immediately, in Stratford. Although initially asked only to play "Ferdinand" in Nicholas Hytner's production of "The Tempest", he left the RSC two years later having performed i