Danny Dyer: East End Boy: The Unauthorized Biography

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

Michael O’Mara Books limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

Copyright © Michael O’Mara Books Limited 2014

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British library.

ISBN: 978-1-78243-295-1 in hardback print format

ISBN: 978-1-78243-380-4 in trade paperback print format

ISBN: 978-1-78243-297-5 in e-book format

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Contents

INTRODUCTION EAST END BOY

CHAPTER ONE THE ARTFUL DODGER

CHAPTER TWO INTERCHANGE

CHAPTER THREE BABY LOVE

CHAPTER FOUR HIGHER THAN THE SUN

CHAPTER FIVE STAGE ONE

CHAPTER SIX ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

CHAPTER SEVEN STAGE TWO

CHAPTER EIGHT FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN

CHAPTER NINE JUST FOR THE MONEY

CHAPTER TEN HEADING EAST

CHAPTER ELEVEN GET CARTER

CHAPTER TWELVE A FATHER AND SON STORY

CHAPTER THIRTEEN SOAPY BUBBLE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE FUTURE

SOURCES

PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

EAST END BOY

In 2007, Danny Dyer was preparing for the release of his latest film, Straightheads, a controversial revenge thriller in which he starred alongside former X-Files star, Gillian Anderson. At a relatively young age – he was just about to turn thirty – Danny was already considered an industry veteran, and Straightheads was just shy of being his twentieth film project. What he couldn’t have known at the time was that, despite a career that would see him star in at least another twenty movies by the age of thirty-six, it would be, to date, one of his last films to enjoy a wide release in the UK’s mainstream cinema chains, his future output relegated to preview screenings, limited cinema runs, video-on-demand and straight-to-DVD titles.

When interviewed for an article set to run on the LoveFilm website to coincide with the launch of the film, he was asked what his long-term ambitions were for his acting career. He insisted that he was always keen to stretch himself as an actor and keep his career moving forward. As he was on the verge of accepting his first job to shoot in America, he stated, ‘Being on a soap for sixteen years would be my worst nightmare, like Ian Beale or Ken Barlow, who’ve been in the same role all those years.’ He reasoned, ‘I do understand that they have a nice house and a family – they’ve got their security. I ideally want to try something new, but, having said that, I’ll probably end up working in EastEnders now, won’t I . . . Give it ten years!’

Well, it wasn’t quite ten years, but when it was announced in October 2013 that Danny Dyer would indeed be joining the cast of the BBC’s flagship soap, EastEnders, many were outspokenly sceptical about his suitability, while others wondered if this would be the final nail in the struggling soap’s coffin. Most speculated Danny would appear as a version of the clichéd East End gangster he had played in many of his films, just another two-dimensional villainous hard man – the kind of character that had become Danny’s stock-in-trade over the previous decade. As if to address this assumption head-on, in his first interview with the BBC News website after his EastEnders sign-up was announced, Danny said of his new character, Mick Carter, ‘There’s definitely something there – you really don’t want to cross him.’ So far, so Mitchell brother, and certainly familiar territory for both EastEnders and Danny, but he went on to explain that, while there might be more to Mick than initially meets the eye – something darker and more dangerous – he was first and foremost a devoted husband and family man.

Mick was a father of three grown-up kids, ‘a normal guy who loves his family’, and ‘a grafter’; even someone ‘quite in touch with his feminine side’. On the surface at least, this appeared to be a refreshing change of pace for someone who had seen his reputation torn to shreds by the media, and one which, potentially, could be the role of a lifetime for someone who was the first to admit his career had been marred by some hasty decisions and bad choices, both professionally and personally.

Since making his television debut in 1993 as teenage rent boy Martin Fletcher alongside Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect 3, Danny Dyer has acted in over forty feature films, appeared in numerous television dramas and comedies, hosted documentary series and taken to the London stage in a handful of well-received stage roles. Over the years he has made a name for himself as the poster boy for Britain’s low-budget, independent film industry, appearing in some of this country’s most profitable, home-grown, straight-to-DVD titles. In some respects, it’s a CV most actors would be proud of. After all, acting can be a precarious and unpredictable business – just ask Lupita Nyong’o, 2013’s Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actress.

In the same weekend Nyong’o picked up the Academy Award for her much-lauded, heartbreaking performance in the universally acclaimed 12 Years a Slave, you could also catch her as air stewardess Gwen Lloyd in Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop. With less than twenty words of dialogue, Nyong’o’s character was lucky to even have a name check in the credits – she could have just as easily been billed simply as ‘Stewardess number two’.

Similarly, when the panel that hosts movie magazine Empire’s podcast responded to a subscriber’s question asking them to name an actor with a ‘flawless’ filmography, they struggled to come up with a single actor who could unequivocally hold their head up with pride – even the likes of Daniel Day Lewis and Michael Fassbender have on their CVs, respectively, dire musical misfire Nine and comic book catastrophe Jonah Hex.

There are two universal and obvious truths recognized in the making of movies – the first, as William Goldman, the acclaimed screenwriter of such classics as All the President’s Men, Misery and The Princess Bride so eloquently put it in his book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, ‘Nobody knows anything … Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.’ The other is that actors are, almost without exception, forced to take roles they don’t want because they need to keep working or the money on offer is simply too tempting to ignore.

To his credit, Danny Dyer has rarely been out of work in his twenty-year-plus career and has managed to maintain a consistently high profile – more often than not attracting unwanted attention and tabloid headlines for his behaviour off the screen rather than on it. What Dyer has achieved, and what should afford him the degree of respect he is so often denied, is his ongoing willingness to challenge people’s expectations of him as well as his unfaltering determination, if largely fruitless, to be taken seriously as an actor. Most people who meet him for the first time are shocked to discover that, despite an unexpected, awkward shyness, he possesses an unmistakable old school movie-star charisma and a down-to-earth charm that completely contradicts the hard-man persona that precedes him (a persona, admittedly, that Danny has had more than a hand in perpetrating himself). In the aforementioned interview with LoveFilm.com, Danny said, ‘As an actor, I don’t think I’ve proved anything yet. I want to get a job where I don’t know if I can pull it off . . . I want to think to myself each day, Can I do this? Am I right for this? I want that pressure; I thrive on it.’

It was with that attitude, side-stepping his initial reservations about putting himself, and his family, in the firing line, that Danny accepted the role of Mick Carter in EastEnders. It was obvious that the part would dramatically heighten his public profile and challenge many people’s perceptions of him. While it would open him up to a new, largely untapped, fan base, in turn it might also leave him at the mercy of the increased press scrutiny that went hand in hand with being part of the soap. Danny approached his decision to take a high-profile role in one of Britain’s most popular TV shows with the same instinctive certainty he had shown throughout his career – with his eyes open and confident in his own abilities. This was a man unafraid to challenge himself, put his career on the line and defy his many critics.

CHAPTER ONE

THE ARTFUL DODGER

When asked by the Sick Chirpse website in early 2013 what he thought his enduring legacy might be, Danny Dyer replied, ‘I hope that I can inspire a few working class kids who are in a ghetto somewhere, with no hope, that I’m living proof that anyone can be whatever they want to be. As long as you believe in yourself and you’ve got talent, then you will make it.’ It was with this slightly deviant attitude, while retaining a strong connection with his working-class background, that Danny managed to make something of himself, achieving a level of success and recognition most can only dream of. Danny’s story is made all the more incredible when set in the context of the struggles experienced by the majority of people living in the run-down areas of East London he grew up in.

Danny Dyer was born on 24 July 1977 into a changing Britain. On the surface, things may have looked unremarkable – Liverpool FC were crowned English League champions for the tenth time, while Red Rum romped home to claim his third Grand National victory. Star Wars, released in the UK towards the end of that year, was about to become one of the highest grossing films of all time, while the world mourned the passing of glam-rock superstar, T.Rex’s Marc Bolan, in a tragic car accident. What the outside world failed to notice, or chose to ignore, was the groundswell of social unrest and economic hardship that had hit the UK since the turn of the decade.

While most of the country may have been distracted by the extravagant celebrations taking place to commemorate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee year, the working class of Britain was facing one of the bleakest economic downturns since the end of the Second World War. Job prospects were limited and reports had shown that in the three years since the 1974 general election, when the Labour government had unexpectedly snuck into power in a hung parliament, the price of the average shopping basket had risen by nearly 70 per cent and it was becoming increasingly hard to make ends meet. The country was experiencing a wave of political and social instability, with striking workers at the Leyland car manufacturing plant under threat of dismissal and the IRA terror campaign escalating as it hit the heart of London’s West End. People were living under a dark cloud, gripped by fear as the Yorkshire Ripper’s spate of attacks entered their second year, while youth discontentment erupted in the shape of punk – the Sex Pistols released their seminal album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols in October 1977 – and riots occurred in Birmingham following National Front marchers’ clashes with anti-Nazi protesters. It’s no real surprise that this was the last Labour government before a twenty-year gap that saw Thatcherism and Conservative rule last well into the 1990s.

Danny was raised on a council estate in the Custom House area in the heart of London’s East End, where he lived for his entire childhood. He told the documentary Nothing to Something, ‘It was all I knew, really. My whole family lived within streets of each other. My nan lived down the road, my uncles, my aunts, all within walking distance,’ adding, ‘It was a very small community.’ This was not the London portrayed in the wheeler-dealer antics of lovable rogues such as Only Fools and Horses’ Del Boy Trotter, or the frozen post-Second World War community spirit on display in EastEnders’ fictional borough of Walford. This was a much harsher environment, and a decidedly less attractive place to live. It was the sort of breeding ground responsible for creating East London’s most infamous gangsters, Reggie and Ronnie Kray, an area rife with petty crime, drowning in a festering culture of casual drug and alcohol abuse. Here, it wasn’t uncommon for children to begin smoking before they’d even started primary school or to see little old ladies congregate at the local shops, their casual conversation peppered with the sort of language that might make the most foul-mouthed criminals blush. Attitudes were informed by underlying racism and homophobia, seen by most as merely a way of life: inherited, unquestioned and deeply ingrained, woven into the basic fabric of the closed communities. This prejudice, although oppressive, rarely came to the surface in any form of politically charged outburst, more often appearing as part of a petty name-calling session or, more likely, as playful, everyday pub banter.

The area had seen its fair share of adversity, having been more or less completely rebuilt after devastating bombings during the 1940 Blitz, and it was well known to be one of the most deprived areas of London. In his own autobiography, Straight up, Danny acknowledges it was a tough neighbourhood to grow up in: ‘Where I grew up is quite a depressing place to look at, so it’s not like you could exactly lose yourself in [its] natural beauty.’

While he was born into a troubled marriage, he was never starved of attention or affection, and there was no shortage of love from his mother, two sets of surviving grandparents and an extended family. He would be the first of three children born to Antony and Christine Dyer, with a brother, Tony, and sister, Kayleigh, arriving over the course of the next few years.

His father moved out of the family home before he had turned ten years old, which shaped Danny’s early life. While he admitted to Askmen.com, ‘I was always out and about and had a good time as a kid … I didn’t have much discipline,’ he did feel he ‘wasn’t a bad kid’. Danny describes his father in his autobiography as a decent man who was merely a product of his circumstances, archetypal of the grafting, hard-drinking men of the time. Antony Dyer was a painter and decorator, trained by his father before him, and he worked long hours, with jobs taking him all over London and out into the suburbs. The money was acceptable, but like many men in his situation, Danny’s dad was prone to spend a good proportion of his wages in the pub or out with his friends, his pay packet virtually empty before he made it home.

Although Danny says that his dad was unusual, in that he became gentler and more affectionate once he’d had a drink, it was this that caused most of the arguments between his parents before their split. However, Christine Dyer longed for a quiet life and seemed to have made her peace with the situation. But the final straw came when, shortly after the birth of Danny’s sister, it was revealed Antony had been living a double life. He had started a relationship with another woman a few years earlier and had gone on to have two children with her. While the woman knew about Danny and the rest of his family, Danny’s mother had been completely oblivious to her husband’s infidelity. Christine was devastated and threw Antony out. Even though he was no longer living at the family home, Danny did have regular contact with his father, eventually meeting his half-siblings, but he admits this early estrangement meant he would never feel as close to his dad as he did to his mum.

While there was a predominately female influence nurturing Danny’s character at home, he was also being exposed to some of the more typically masculine pursuits. Early trips to the football with his dad to see West Ham play would inspire a lifelong passion for the game and his local team.

Growing up in a tough environment, Danny was well aware that becoming a man in the East End of London was not easy. You were expected to be able to look after yourself, and with that came a certain attitude. He was also exposed to West Ham’s infamous football hooligans, the ICF, and although he never became part of that culture of violence, he was aware how easy it was to be seduced by it. He recognized he was different from the more thuggish fans, admitting in his autobiography, ‘I didn’t have that bubbling aggression a lot of young blokes seemed to have. I was a happy-go-lucky kid – a bit scatty, a bit nutty, was always having a laugh.’

There wasn’t much for children his age to do outside of school hours, aside from hanging around in a gang or watching videos at a friend’s house. With money so tight (or earmarked for buying cannabis), Danny and his clique never had enough to go to the cinema, so his first experiences of seeing films would be home video copies of titles such as Scum, A Clockwork Orange and horror movies like Salem’s Lot and Fright Night. While none of this feels particularly suitable for the average ten- or eleven-year-old, it was nothing compared to the library of violent videos and snuff films the boys were soon watching.

Danny was simply the result of the setting he was growing up in. Now, he likes to paint a picture of his younger self as a roguish Artful Dodger type, never getting into too much trouble, but always up for a laugh and a bit of mischief with his gang. He gave an example of one such situation to Empire Online: ‘On fireworks night we used to get screamers and put ’em in scaffold poles and fire ’em at each other’ – an incident that gave him a severe burn and a badly scarred leg. In an interview with the Independent, Danny related how he had been admitted to hospital at the age of twelve, where he had his stomach pumped after, as he puts it, ‘a terrible mix’ of Southern Comfort and Dr Pepper. In his autobiography he says, as a response, ‘If you build a concrete jungle you can’t be too surprised if you get a few monkeys swinging about in it . . . me and my mates were them monkeys.’

But the truth of the matter was a little more serious, as things had started to unravel as soon as his father left. Upset and unable to vent the frustrations he felt about his dad’s betrayal and absence, he had started to bottle up his feelings. Soon, angry outbursts led to a dramatic deterioration in his behaviour. Danny admits his mother was worried enough to take him to see a counsellor, but after just a few sessions, his refusal to cooperate had led to Christine being told that there was nothing he could do for her son. Danny was also struggling at school, he told Hunger TV in a 2010 interview: ‘It was rubbish – the only reason you went was to see a fight after [classes] . . . In science and maths, the boffin kids would be cracking on, when for me it was like Arabic.’

He started to smoke cannabis, and the ‘mucking about’ soon led to petty theft. He and his gang would steal from the back of parked Parcelforce vans or take bikes while their owners were looking the other way. They would sell their loot for small change in order to get enough money for drugs. Although it looked like Danny was getting sucked into a pattern of escalating crime and drug use, he reasoned in his book,