 I was always trying to copy him in my first years as an actor, until I decided to imitate Noël Coward instead.In London theatre, he achieved success in the title role of John Drinkwater's play "Ulysses S. Grant", the follow-up to the same playwright's "Abraham Lincoln".Rains portrayed Faulkland in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The Rivals", presented at London's Lyric Theatre in 1925.