AN aspiring young actor has landed his dream role in a fantasy feature film.

Callum Wernyj, who grew up in Thirsk, will star in Trapped Magic: The Broken Blade, directed by Heather Aspinall.

He will play Jack, a troubled and unassuming teen who discovers a magic witch’s bottle that contains the ghost of a malicious 18th century witch.

The film is a feature-length adaptation of the fantasy short Trapped Magic, in which the 22-year-old also played the lead Jack.

He said: “I initially went into acting as a confidence thing, trying to put myself through something terrifying to increase my confidence.

“It certainly did that but, in doing so I found myself fascinated in putting myself in other people’s shoes. It widens my own knowledge of the human experience.

“I see a lot of myself in Jack. He’s a fascinating character. Even though it seems like quite a simple concept, everyone has got a very personal way of finding themselves and, I think that’s a very interesting and a very relatable journey for people to follow.”

The drama graduate recently received the award for Best Production for Children and Young People at the UK Theatre Awards.

His performance as the protagonist Jack in the original short also won him the award for Best Actor in the Barcelona Planet Film Festival.

He recently starred in an original play entitled Blame it on the Bartle by Nobby Dimon, which was performed around the Dales in locations such as Richmond and Bolton Castle.

Trapped Magic: The Broken Blade is currently in pre-production and is to be shot in Dunstable.

It is loosely based on the legend of Sally the Dunstable Witch, a mythical character first chronicled in an 81-verse poem by local headmaster AP Wire in the late 18th century.

Following the success of the short feature, Mr Wernyj secured a role on BBC TV Points West in 2016.

He added: “It was really exciting. It was slightly surreal because of course you see the news day to day and to actually be behind the scenes just seeing all the monitors and everything, it was quite interesting.”