Hughes attended Aylesbury Grammar School,[3] and graduated in 2013 from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.
[1] In between acting roles, Hughes has worked as a bartender, a meet and greeter, and a sales and marketing representative.
[9] In the same year, he took the title role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Richard III, being the first disabled actor to do so.
[10][11][12] The Guardian's reviewer said that "Hughes's Richard is every bit the schemer, dead-eyed and unmoved by the body count he leaves on the way to the throne, but he also has a smarmy mischief about him, delivering news of another dispatched victim in a breezy tone of voice and eking comic asides out of his character's darkness.
"[13] Other stage credits have included Our Town, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Julius Caesar, Saint Joan and Romeo and Juliet.