A HOLLYWOOD actor who excelled in music at Sedbergh School has developed his life’s work into a feature film.

Fraser Precious wrote, produced directed and starred in the film, A Precious Life, which has so far been ‘met with an overwhelming response from every audience’.

At the age of 11, Fraser gained a prestigious music scholarship to Sedbergh School where he excelled on the trumpet and toured the world with the school’s combined cadet force band as well as being the principal trumpet in the Westmorland Youth Orchestra.

“My dad is also a musician and he was the one that created the pathway towards my love of music,” said Fraser, whose parents live in Kirkby Stephen. “He showed me how to play the piano when I was three-years-old and it was when I was five-years-old I began to play the trumpet.”

At 19 years-old, he travelled to Australia where he performed as a professional trumpet player with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the opera house.

After a series of unfortunate events, mainly due to mental health and work pressure, the musician lost everything and ended up living on the streets of Sydney.

The film is based on true events and focuses on Fraser’s life in Australia, from being a successful classical musician to suddenly becoming homeless.

“I lost everything when I was 19-years-old and I didn’t tell my family because I didn’t want to feel like I’d let them down,” he said. “I was achieving my dream but I was still very young and financially I couldn’t cope, and that was the start of it all.”

Since the short film’s debut at Cannes, Fraser has already won the Best Actor award at another international film festival in the UK and was nominated for best actor and best director at the Milan International Film Festival last weekend.

He is now hoping to raise £3m to make a full-length feature version of his story to be shown in cinemas around the globe to help others through ‘their struggles and journey in life.’

He says the film carries very important life messages with the aim of raising much-needed awareness for the mental health and homeless communities, as well as giving a rare insight into the classical world and power of music.

“This world needs more meaningful stories,” he said “People have been coming up to me saying my story inspired them to give them the courage to share theirs.”