Danny Dyer: East End Boy

by Joe Allan

  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, ‘Anything you do in life you need to get a buzz out of, and it just didn’t happen for me when we were on the rob . . . I never got a thrill from it.’ Reassuringly, he finished, ‘I don’t really think crime was for me . . . I got more of a buzz out of the fact that I’d be getting some puff later on.’

  With Danny’s behaviour becoming more difficult to manage, he moved to his local secondary school, Woodside Comprehensive. With little or no interest in the standard academic subjects, he recalled in Straight up, ‘Maths, English, science, I just couldn’t understand any of them . . . It was just a case of f*****g around in lessons and being silly until I got kicked out at sixteen.’ He was resigned to his fate, contemplating entering the painting and decorating trade alongside his father. ‘I couldn’t see any future for myself other than doing what my dad did – going to work, hating it, coming home, getting p****d, going to sleep, repeat until retirement or death.’ But something extraordinary was about to happen. On what Danny assumed would be a typically boring Tuesday afternoon of lessons, on only his second day at high school, he attended his first drama class. Without exaggeration, it changed his life forever.

  The experience was a revelation for Danny. He told Hunger TV: ‘When I walked in the drama lesson, it just felt so natural. I looked around the class and couldn’t understand why no one else could do it.’ In his autobiography, Straight up, he recalled that, ‘I’d never done any nativity plays at junior school, never done any acting before … [but] I knew I was good at it, much better than anyone else in the class.’ He took to it like a duck to water, thriving while others floundered self-consciously. He never felt nervous or awkward about getting up and performing in front of the rest of the class, although he had to keep the acting classes secret from most of his mates, as he told the Independent. ‘Drama was a girls’ thing. I lied to people when they asked where I was going. It was a secret pleasure.’

  Secret or not, Danny had finally found a subject that he enjoyed. He was a natural show-off who craved attention, but more than that, he was experiencing the elation of being really good at something and had found an outlet for all the pent-up frustration and aggression he had been carrying since his dad left home. He started to use his emotions and experiences in the class and it helped him effortlessly create different characters. The only downside was returning to normal lessons.

  He wanted more and vowed to keep feeding his newfound hunger. Despite having to mix with kids outside his normal group, he joined an after-school drama club, and here he excelled. Showing much more promise than the other students, Danny had the full support of the drama teacher, Miss Flynn, who encouraged him to take this new hobby seriously.

  Danny loved the classes but when it came to choosing his exam subjects, he was mindful of his future job prospects and worried that acting might be a dead end. Danny liked art and wondered if it might offer him a more secure future. But Miss Flynn was adamant Danny needed to stick with drama. He recalls how passionate she was, telling Hunger TV, ‘In moments when I was a bit of a pr*ck, she would pull me aside and tell me straight: “Look, you’re really talented, you should think about this as a career.”’

  Danny would eventually get a B in his drama course – an amazing achievement for a student not enamoured of academic pursuits, even if he does admit most of the written coursework was actually completed by his brother Tony!

  With Miss Flynn’s continued support, Danny started to attend another after-school drama club, at nearby Star Lane. Here he would have the chance to take part in bigger, more professional productions, and at last let his mum see him perform in a proper play. But it was an opportunity that came with its own price and a degree of risk to Danny’s personal safety. Star Lane school was situated in Canning Town, and the children who lived there were bitter rivals to Danny’s Custom House gang. His mischievous exploits meant he had become a well-known face in neighbouring territories and any rival gangs would relish the chance to catch him on their turf. In the end, Danny couldn’t resist this new challenge and crossed enemy lines. He reflected in his autobiography that ‘It was worth it. The love of drama made me take that risk of a beating and of ridicule. It was fantastic.’ His sense of pride and achievement fuelled his need to learn and accomplish even more.

  The drama group wasn’t Danny’s only new discovery upon moving to secondary school. He had started to take a lot more notice of the girls there, and one girl in particular caught Danny’s attention: Joanne Mas. Joanne was almost the complete opposite of Danny – she was well behaved, attentive in class and well liked by the teachers. She enjoyed most of her school subjects and showed great potential in many of them. She was a very pretty girl, her father’s Spanish heritage giving her an exotic quality, which made her stand out from the crowd. She was the girl everyone fancied. Danny couldn’t believe his luck when Joanne made it clear she was interested in him, too. Their first date – which Joanne paid for – was a respectable affair, a sit-down meal in a proper pizza restaurant, rather than the local fast-food establishment many might have expected. As things progressed, Danny realized this was something special; there was a connection present that he had never felt before.

  Joanne quickly became a constant in Danny’s life, and, although her parents were initially sceptical about him – he did, after all, come from a broken family and was a well-known troublemaker in the area – they accepted Danny was more than just a passing teenage crush and welcomed him into their home.

  At the same time as his relationship with Joanne was developing, Danny’s acting was also going from strength to strength. It was becoming very clear that this was much more than just a hobby for him, and the teachers at both drama groups he attended agreed he was showing the kind of potential worthy of more intensive nurturing. Well aware he wasn’t going to have the financial support available to typical stage school children, they managed to track down a drama programme specifically set up to help under-privileged youngsters, kids from single-parent families or anyone who might struggle to pay drama school fees. Danny was leaving his East London stomping ground and heading north, to Kentish Town, to a weekend drama group at the Interchange Studios.

  While appearing as a guest on the BBC’s The One Show in 2014, Danny was teased by the hosts, Chris Evans and Fearne Cotton, about a mystery guest from his past who had been drafted in to keep him under control and who he ‘wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of’. While Danny was visibly confused, perhaps imagining Vinnie Jones or some ‘kiss-and-tell’ figure from his past, they eventually surprised him, live on air, with a beaming and emotional Miss Flynn, his first drama teacher. A shocked Danny exclaimed, before embracing his old teacher, ‘No way . . . I can’t believe it.’ Having not seen Danny in person for over twenty years, Miss Flynn reaffirmed her early faith in him, bursting with pride as she revealed, ‘He was so talented, he was very special . . . so committed to his acting.’ She knowingly added, ‘He was mischievous, he was a real pain at school, but in his drama lessons he was fab, absolutely fab.’ Danny was clearly moved, and, choking on his words, asked, ‘Where’d you find her? She always believed in me, there wasn’t many that did . . . she was a real support.’

  Clearly, Danny would never forget the ‘beyond the call of duty’ approach employed by his early supporters, or the endless words of encouragement given to him by Miss Flynn. It would stay with him throughout his career and he gratefully acknowledged her outstanding contribution in Straight up, his 2010 autobiography, relating that before he met her he had never thought of acting as something he could do as a viable job. Danny confessed that shortly after she introduced him to the drama c
lass, he was hooked: ‘It was like a drug to me. I couldn’t get enough.’ Thankfully this addiction, rather than many others he was soon to encounter, would be the passion that shaped the rest of his life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  INTERCHANGE

  It was with some trepidation that Danny embarked upon the next stage of his acting dream. These would not be enforced school drama lessons; everyone entering the Interchange had been recommended to apply because they had already displayed promise and had been confirmed as having talent. More importantly, they wanted to be there. Danny was no longer the one bright spark among a bunch of kids ‘mucking around’ to keep themselves busy. Nevertheless, it came as no surprise to him or Miss Flynn that he excelled during the selection process and was accepted into the programme immediately. Danny was entering an exclusive world that had until now seemed far out of reach.

  Celia Greenwood was a founder and leading light in the Interchange. Initially based in Kentish Town, the organization had been forced to relocate to its present home in North London’s Hampstead Town Hall after its original premises were sold to developers and demolished. Now under the name WAC Arts, it continued to evolve and expand and still flourishes some thirty-five years after its conception. Greenwood told the AND (A New Direction for Arts) website: ‘A colleague and I were aware that we were working with a lot of young people who had enormous capacity to become employed within the creative industries but were never going to get there – because they did not have whatever it was to compete on an equal playing field with kids who had ballet lessons from the age of five.’ She recognized school drama classes and after-school clubs, like the ones Danny had attended, were a good starting point, but little more than a foundation.

  The Interchange Studios had been set up as a real alternative to established drama courses and stage schools. It was a charitable body, but its aim was to give disadvantaged children the same standard of training as their more privileged peers. It offered classes that were grounded in the basics, with a focus on the more practical aspects of the profession. It also gave its graduates a solid base in the technical and creative skills required to flourish in the performing arts.

  What started as a Sunday club, and then later expanded to offer full weekend classes, would eventually grow into a hugely successful education programme. For Danny, this new experience fanned the flames of his acting obsession, opening his eyes to a wealth of previously unimaginable opportunities and areas of his craft, such as singing, dance and even mime. Although it quickly became clear Danny was not going to be joining the cast of Les Misérables or Billy Elliot, he did enrol in the course that concentrated specifically on drama and acting technique. Even at this stage Danny understood that learning the basics would prove useful.

  Interchange’s survival relied on the generous donations of time and resources from full-time actors, which meant the students had the chance to mingle with people who were in professional productions, appearing on television and making a living from acting. Danny was seeing, first hand, what it would be like to choose acting as a serious career option.

  Interchange had gained a reputation as a genuine hotbed of talent and had quickly become a magnet for casting directors and agents looking to either fill a specific role or simply swell their rosters with fresh faces. The studio held special workshops for these agents, allowing them to come and see the kids in action, showcasing the ones they thought displayed the most promise. It was during one of these workshops that Danny was spotted by Charlotte Kelly. Kelly was an established agent and she had come to Interchange looking for a more rough-and-ready actor than the average stage school graduate, but it was clear she saw greater potential in Danny than in just filling one specific role.

  Danny relished every opportunity and, even at this early stage, had an easy charm and a relatable quality that set him apart. In Straight up, he suggests Kelly could sense he was serious about developing his talent: ‘People could see I wasn’t in it for money or fame or anything like that, they could see I just loved it, was good at it and wanted to absorb and learn more.’ Danny describes his first meeting with Kelly, saying, ‘I didn’t know it but, as she smiled at me and went to shake my hand, my life changed big style.’ He continued, ‘We were introduced and she said, “I think you‘re incredibly talented and I’d like to represent you. This is quite a rare thing for me as an agent because I haven’t got child actors on my books.”’

  She asked him if he had thought seriously about acting as a career, and if he was interested, she could set him up with an audition for a part the very next day. Danny couldn’t believe his luck, and was even more shocked when she told him it was for a part in the latest instalment of police drama series Prime Suspect. This was a dream come true, and much more than anyone could have hoped for from their first real audition. This wasn’t for just a day working as an extra or playing ‘boy outside shop’ in a walk-on part, this was for a speaking part in a high-profile TV show. As he says in true Danny fashion in Straight up, he was ‘well up for it’.

  Danny couldn’t wait to get home to tell his mum, brandishing the business card Kelly had given him. The audition was arranged for the next day, and in an act of typical independence, Danny travelled into central London to the Soho offices where the audition was taking place on his own. Central London was relatively unfamiliar territory for the fourteen-year-old Danny, but he was determined to do this solo. As he explained in his autobiography, ‘I went on my jack . . . this has always been a very personal thing for me, it’s something I’ve always done off my own back. I’ve never had a leg up.’ There were a couple of other kids in the waiting room, accompanied by their mums or dads, but Danny could already tell he was going to hit this one out of the park.

  The casting agent was Doreen Jones, and as soon as Danny walked into the room, she knew he was the real deal. The role was to play Martin Fletcher, a homeless, glue-sniffing rent boy and Danny, with his long greasy hair and scruffy clothes, looked like he understood some of the hardships a kid like Martin had gone through. He recalled, ‘I had the edge . . . it’s about the performance . . . The reason I’m there is to show them I’m better than anyone else for this part. It’s not about whether I’m articulate or dressed the right way.’ It worked: Danny was offered the role before the end of the day. He was about to do his first job as a professional actor opposite Helen Mirren – a boy, let us not forget, who had never even been in a school play. Danny was on his way.

  When the first run of Prime Suspect, starring Helen Mirren, was aired on ITV in 1991, it had been a critical and commercial hit, with a second series enjoying similar success. This would be the third installment, the action moving to the seedy underworld of London’s Soho with Mirren’s character, Jane Tennison, now working for the vice squad as she investigates a cover-up involving police corruption, underage rent boys, blackmail and murder. It would prove to be a real high point for Mirren and the series, launching the careers of not only Danny, but also Jonny Lee Miller, several years ahead of his breakout performance in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. Also featured were David Thewlis as a vindictive pimp, James Jackson and a turn from future Doctor Who star, Peter Capaldi, as a transvestite torch-singer.

  Although set in London, most of the filming would take place in Manchester. This meant Danny had to travel north for the five days allocated for filming his scenes and stay in a hotel near to the production’s sets and outdoor locations. Back then, this was the farthest Danny had ever travelled away from home and it was his first time he’d ever stayed in a hotel. Being a minor, Danny needed a chaperon and as this was a paid job (he received £50 a day), it seemed a good way for him to make sure his mother would get something out of it, too. She would accompany him to Manchester for the first couple of days but, as she couldn’t leave Danny’s brother and sister for too long, his father would take over for the rest of the shoot. Danny’s first experiences on set were some of the most valuable lessons he would ever learn.

  He got his first taste o
f method acting when David Thewlis would blank him on and off set. The unease he felt around the actor heightened the tension in front of the camera and their scenes together were especially powerful as you can see the genuine fear and distrust in Danny’s performance.

  The debutant felt completely at home on the production. He was fascinated by the chaos and mayhem. In the many hours all actors spend on set waiting between scenes, he would be eavesdropping on what the cameramen were saying, grabbing titbits of advice from the other actors and feeding off the buzz from the whole crew. He recalls how it felt in his book: ‘The whole process was magical to me . . . I’d found my calling.’ He had to pinch himself: ‘This is me just doing what I do and there’s people paying me to be here. Ridiculous.’

  Danny’s biggest challenge would be his scenes with Helen Mirren. Although she was already a well-respected stage and screen presence before Prime Suspect, the show really had turned Mirren into a household name and remains one of her best-known roles. She was a force to be reckoned with on set, but she was keen to put Danny at ease, well aware it was his first big job. She spent some time with his father and him before filming began on their scenes, prompting him to admit in an interview with The Lady magazine more than twenty years later, ‘My dad was more star struck than I was … I was a total hormonal teenage boy and I was just bang in love with her.’ Danny explained how Mirren made a concerted effort to gain his trust and to look out for him, saying, ‘She really helped me along and guided me through it.’ Danny left the Prime Suspect set with nothing but praise for his first leading lady, describing her as a ‘beautiful, beautiful, elegant woman’, and his respect and admiration for her has never faded.