Keith Coogan

For one year, I was Keith Mitchell Coogan on my headshots. The next year, I was just Keith Coogan. And I have gone by that ever since, maybe 1984 or 1985. That is my mother's maiden name, and it was out of reverence for my grandfather.

For a boy of ten, used to the coal bings and rust-coloured burns of Cowdenbeath, the fields and woodland of Kingswood, with its overgrown but stately avenue of copper-barked sequoias, felt like a local version of paradise.