HE could have ended up as a painter and decorator.

But Howard Ford ignored his careers guidance mentor and pursued his dream to become a film-maker.

It was a determination that led to his latest movie, called Never Let Go, to pick up best independent feature at the National Film Awards recently.

The child abduction thriller co-stars Hove actor Heather Peace (as seen in television shows London's Burning and Waterloo Road) and theatre performer Angela Dixon, who plays the mother desperate to find her child.

After jetting out to the US to pick up his plaudits, the awards have kept coming for the director who lives near Palmeira Square in Hove. Last week (April 24) Howard won best director at a women-in-action film festival called Artemis in Beverly Hills. It is a celebration of films with strong female roles at the forefront.

The road to this relative success has not been straight-forward for the 40-year-old.

At Hove Park School some 25 years earlier, Howard recalled sitting across a table from "the careers guy".

Howard told The Argus: "I remember the careers guy when I told him I wanted to be a film-maker.

"He looked at me like I was crazy and flicked through a list of things and recommended something along the lines of painting and decorating.

"I recall him going out of focus and his voice drifting away as I tried to keep my heart set on what I wanted to do.

"Hove Park taught me that I didn't want to do what everyone else was doing."

While still at Hove Park, Howard along with his brother Jon (who was at Blatchington Mill) started making short films at the weekend, roping in friends as actors.

"They were terrible," Howard said, "I was frustrated as to why they did not look as good as what I could see on TV or movies.

"But we kept practising and they improved each time to the point where we won a number of awards for the films in festivals, some internationally.

"I remember winning the top prize in one festival in Spain and they sent us a VHS video player and I remember my parents looking at this brand new machine over the kitchen table. They looked impressed at this 'reward' and the endorsement it represented."

It was at this point he felt he could go on to a career in film.

After finishing school Howard worked at American Express for a few years following a youth training scheme.

Howard said: "They sent me on all sorts of training programs, even some outdoor adventure thing in Wales and a lot of expensive management-style courses and now I look back on it, these courses and the experiences really helped me define my people management skills, which are essential as a film director. As director Danny Boyle, who I have been fortunate enough to meet twice, says, film directing is 80 per cent people skills."

On turning 21, though, he had a tough decision to make.

Howard said: "I was called into a meeting with my boss, a great but tough guy in credit control. The management had become 'aware' of my late-night film-making activities that were, to be fair, making me fall asleep while on the phone to customers on a Monday morning.

"He gave me a speech about how he played golf at the weekend but his 'fantasy' of becoming a professional golfer was pie in the sky and it was Amex he chose to be with. So the question was put to me: who am I with? Amex or my film-making 'fantasy'? It was a good question: one option was stable and the other was full of risk and uncertainty."

So the next day Howard went into work and handed in his resignation. "He nearly fell off his chair," Howard said.

But Howard didn't burn bridges with his boss, who was cast as a gangster in his first feature film. Two months after handing in his notice, Howard's boss was on one of the same late-night weekend shoots firing a blank handgun in an old warehouse off Davigdor Road in Hove opposite star of the show Hugo Speer, from The Full Monty. The film was Howard's first feature release, called Mainline Run. It was released in the US, Japan and Germany among other places.

Howard's roots in Hove go back to when he moved to Carlisle Road in Hove with his parents, brother and sister when he was 18 months old.

He said: "I actually remember it as the floorboards were up and I recall being surprised there was a 'world' beneath the ground. I think it may be my first memory, and one that got me curious to explore."

He went to Windlesham School for four years with his brother but his parents could not afford the private school fees so they then spent several years at Somerhill School near St Ann's Well Gardens.

Howard said: "I remember the long hot summers and having grass fights when the lawn was freshly cut. It's a warm and somehow safe memory."

His memories of Hove Park were not as nice.

"I learnt how tough and cruel the world could be," Howard said. "I can laugh about it now but on my first day after break some older kids stuck me in the bin as soon as the whistle went and I was stuck in there for at least 15 minutes.

"There was a trend of 'gangs' cropping up and after some unpleasant results I quickly set up one of my own and tried to recruit people into it.

"One day I will vastly exaggerate the characters and make a brutal prison story from my experiences."

Howard has directed five feature films and more than 200 TV commercials.

His latest film, Never Let Go, was written after fearing he had lost his three-year-old son while in Malta.

Shot in Morocco, Spain, the US and UK, the film covers similarly raw emotional territory.

Brighton Town Hall even makes an appearance, standing in for downtown New York.

Howard added: "It has not been an easy shoot. To not only win the hearts of many people who see the film but have an award in your hand for the hard efforts of all our cast and crew is such an honour.

"I still have a lot to do but I have learnt though all this that you must follow your heart in the short time that you have.

"You never know where it might lead you."