by Joe Allan
Prime Suspect had been a magical experience for Danny on so many levels and, with little concession to the fact it was his first time in front of the camera, he delivered a confident and compelling performance he can still be proud of. His portrayal of Martin Fletcher is rooted in a gritty truth that would have been lost with a more polished, experienced child actor. Danny looks younger than his fourteen years, giving the character a heartbreaking vulnerability despite the streetwise, cocky bravado on display, and this ultimately injects some real emotional clout to the inevitability of Martin’s tragic fate.
Prime Suspect 3 would win numerous awards including two BAFTAs (for Best Drama Series and Best TV Actress for Mirren) and picked up the Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries when it was shown in the US in early 1994. It was an amazing first step into the acting industry for Danny and proved to be a solid launch pad for his fledgling career.
His only regret about his Prime Suspect experience was the fact the show took so long to air, not hitting UK television screens until the end of December 1993, when Danny was sixteen. Sadly, his granddad, who had been ill for a while, died before he could see his grandson in action.
It was at around the same time he’d got the Prime Suspect audition that Danny’s mother announced her dad had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. She suggested the best thing would be if Danny moved into his granddad’s house to help look after him and his nan. He agreed, and although he found it hard, he was there for both his grandparents, watching his grandfather grow weaker and more helpless as the illness took its toll. Almost a year later, Danny’s granddad was moved to hospital where he eventually passed away.
Danny took his death very hard. He admits that it was around this time he started to dabble in harder drugs alongside his long-time cannabis habit. In his autobiography, he relates how it was the easiest way to escape and numb the grief he was feeling. ‘It wasn’t a happy time and I wanted to forget about it so I’d just take a load of drugs and f**k off out of the house, lose myself hanging around with my mates.’ Danny has always been fairly candid about his use of drugs, admitting that in later life he found himself wrestling with demons he recognized as having roots in the more traumatic periods of his late teens.
It’s easy to speculate that the pressure and grief he was experiencing could have been the start of a catastrophic downward spiral for Danny – so many children his age and in his situation end up trapped in a vicious cycle of drugs and crime. Thankfully, Danny had his fledgling career to concentrate on and, although on the surface they may have seemed dysfunctional, he had the full support of his extended family.
As he entered his late teens, Danny was travelling up and down the country to auditions and landed countless acting jobs in a variety of interesting roles, several taking him to some pretty far-flung locations, including trips to Budapest and Ireland. Over the next few years he would appear in some of British television’s most popular and high-profile shows, including A Touch of Frost, Cadfael, The Bill and Soldier Soldier. Of course, Danny had another stabilizing constant in his life – Joanne – and their relationship would soon take off in a completely new, unexpected direction.
Danny never forgot how important the Interchange had been in giving him a solid starting point and the focus he needed to succeed. It was because of the encouragement and selfless nurturing he received there that he was able to realize his dream and consider acting as a full-time profession. Danny maintained links with the organization throughout his career and when funding was reduced or cutbacks threatened to close the initiative for good, he would always be there to offer his time and support at various events.
CHAPTER THREE
BABY LOVE
After completing his work on Prime Suspect, Danny’s world seemed a much bigger and more exciting place. He was now a real actor, with a proper agent, and he was determined not to look back. From the minute he signed with Charlotte Kelly, Danny was regularly attending auditions and enjoyed a commendably high success rate for an untrained newcomer, being offered virtually everything he went up for. It wasn’t long before he had a relatively good, steady income for someone his age. He began to be recognized around the estate where he grew up and still lived, and received letters from fans in the US after Prime Suspect aired there in early 1994. There was no time to rest on his laurels and bask in past glories, however, and Danny was only too aware of the old adage, ‘You’re only as good as your last job’ – he was resolute in his desire not to let the grass grow under his feet.
On Cadfael, his next proper job, he worked alongside Derek Jacobi and, although Danny had a natural flair for acting, he was mindful he still had a lot to learn. The rehearsal rooms and film sets became his classroom and he spent most of his downtime on location talking to the crew and other actors, quizzing them about their experiences and the industry, taking every opportunity to soak up the knowledge and wealth of experience available to him. Danny was also meeting actors of a similar age, and although he knew he could match them on set, he struggled to find much in common with them off set. He would discover that there were only a few people who shared his background on the average production, and most of them stood behind the cameras. Danny was finding out the hard way just how unusual he was: virtually every other actor he worked with had come from traditional stage schools or drama colleges and he felt compelled to prove he was just as good as they were.
In 1995, Danny met another young actor called Craig Kelly. He had come to Danny’s attention when Kelly starred alongside Harvey Keitel in The Young Americans, the high-profile British gangster film directed by Danny Cannon (British co-creator of the hugely successful CSI franchise). The film had been a commercial and critical success and many assumed it would be the springboard that would launch Kelly’s career in America. Danny was more than a little surprised to find himself acting in an episode of A Touch of Frost alongside someone he’d seen as a real rising star only a couple of years earlier.
Whether he realized it or not, Danny was getting some harsh but valuable lessons about the fickle nature of fame and the acting profession. In Straight up, Danny recalls the instruction Kelly gave him – ‘Whatever happens, don’t get too big for your f*****g boots, boy.’ Kelly explained, ‘People kept telling me to turn everything down. I went through a period of six months saying, “Won’t do that, won’t do that” and I missed the boat over there.’ It would be a story Danny would never forget and a philosophy, in terms of his career, that he has steadfastly stuck to – indeed, some would suggest he took this advice too much to heart in recent years and should have said ‘no’ a few more times than he did.
Danny’s career took a few unexpected turns as he was encouraged to audition for stage plays as well as television and film work. He auditioned for a play that was to be directed by Alan Rickman, and although he didn’t get the part, he received a personal note from Rickman explaining his rejection and encouraging him to keep working. On receiving the letter, Danny immediately wrote back and invited Rickman to see him perform in a play he was appearing in at the time, Not Gods But Giants. To his astonishment, Rickman accepted his invitation. He attended a showing, laughed heartily throughout and spent time with Danny and the rest of cast after the show. Danny was struck by how good this simple act of kindness had made him feel and vowed never to forget it.
Not Gods But Giants transferred to the Edinburgh International Festival that year, but Danny was unable to follow as he’d secured a decent part in a BBC drama, due to start filming in Dublin before the end of the play’s run. Loving was set during the Second World War and focused on the lives and loves of the servants working in a remote stately home. Having recently turned eighteen, this would be Danny’s first time working away from home without needing a chaperon and it would prove to be another steep learning curve.
Danny relished the opportunity to study older and more experienced actors, his competitive nature continually asserting itself in his will to be as good as them. What he found difficult was the time
they would have to spend together outside of work. It could be a fairly intense situation – spending twenty-four hours a day, sometimes for weeks on end, living on top of each other with people you barely knew and had little, or nothing, in common with. Instead of letting the situation affect him, Danny used his isolation and awkwardness in his performance. He started to collect these strong feelings – such as the grief he’d felt when his beloved childhood dog, Sam, died – quelling every emotion until he needed them during the scene. He would then reach deep inside of himself and drag everything to the surface for the take. In Loving, his character, Bert, is involved in a doomed romantic triangle, and at one point is left devastated and sobs uncontrollably. Danny gave an outstanding performance, showing a much softer, less cocksure side of himself, stretching his limits as an actor and demonstrating he had more than one string to his bow.
Among the other cast members was Mark Rylance, and Danny savoured the chance to work alongside a man who would become a lifelong inspiration and acting hero. Danny insists in his book that his experience working with Rylance was worth its weight in gold, saying, ‘I didn’t need to go to drama school because I worked with someone on Loving who has been my drama school.’ Rylance was the polar opposite in terms of the method extremes of the likes of David Thewlis, whom Danny had watched alienate his fellow cast members on Prime Suspect. Danny marvelled at Rylance’s ability to appear fully immersed in a scene, break to share a joke or laugh with his young co-star, only to then switch instantly back into character when required. Danny’s eyes were being opened to the unlimited possibilities of his newly chosen profession, just as a cruel inevitability was about to throw a huge spanner in the works.
Danny was undeniably young-looking for his age (as used to great effect in Prime Suspect), not hitting puberty until well into his mid-teens, but, as he turned eighteen in 1995, his appearance began to change more dramatically and he could no longer pitch for the boyish roles he had once so successfully portrayed. As a child actor, Danny had been a big fish in a small pond, his raw intensity being a unique selling point, rewarding him with a virtually unbroken success rate at auditions. As a young man, Danny was now competing in a much more crowded, much more ruthless arena. The phone rang less frequently and when it did, there was no longer any guarantee Danny would walk away with a job after every audition. As if that wasn’t enough, Danny was about to receive some more life-changing news: he was about to become a father for the first time.
Danny and Joanne had been inseparable since they met a few years earlier. Although Joanne’s parents were quite protective and either did not know, or quietly accepted, the full extent of their daughter’s relationship with Danny, the couple had been sleeping together at his house. Danny had had other girlfriends before Joanne, but this was different. The couple shared a decidedly more intense and mature connection.
While they were more or less the same age, Joanne had a much more sensible approach to sex than Danny and had started taking the pill as soon as their relationship turned more physical. It came as a bit of a shock, then, when Joanne took Danny aside one evening and told him that she was pregnant. As far as Joanne was concerned, she was determined she was going to keep the baby. She told Danny she would accept the fact he might not want to stand by her and help raise the child, and didn’t want to put any pressure on him. Joanne understood that they were both very young, Danny’s career was already in flux, and with the added complication of bringing up a baby, it might all be too much of a distraction during this period of transition.
Danny told Askmen.com, ‘There is never a right or wrong time to have kids . . . you can have this paranoia, “Will I be able to do this? I’m not sure if I’m ready to have kids.”’ He added, ‘As long as you’re loved up and soul mates with the person you have them with, then you’ll be fine.’ Knowing Joanne was definitely the person he wanted to be with for the rest of his life, he decided he needed to do everything in his power to help provide for their baby and he made one of the toughest decisions of his life: he wasn’t going to sit around waiting for the phone to ring anymore, he was going to have to take on a ‘proper’ job and start bringing in regular money.
So began a period where Danny had to put his acting ambitions on hold. He couldn’t bear to think his dream was actually over, he just knew in the short term it had to come second to Joanne, the new baby and earning enough money to survive. He joined his father on some painting and decorating jobs. He was grateful, even if Antony never let him actually touch a paint brush, resigning him to the sweeping up and fetching and carrying. But when that dried up, Danny had to turn to temporary labouring jobs. He hated it. He had been given a taste of something he loved, something he was good at and it was a crushing blow to feel it slip away.
Danny and Joanne moved into a small flat around the time the baby was born in August 1996. They named their little girl Dani, and she was instantly the apple of her dad’s eye. Money was tight and the couple struggled to make ends meet, but Danny was adamant that acting was his best chance to offer his new family a better life. He was still trying to attend as many auditions as possible, but his success rate had dropped dramatically and he was finding it increasingly hard to be seen even for the parts he knew he would be good for. He grew bitter, watching other people playing the roles he had been rejected for and it triggered a relapse of the anger problems he’d experienced in his early teens, straining his relationship with Joanne. It fed his hunger, though, and Danny started to channel that aggression in his auditions. In his autobiography he explains how he would look at the other candidates in the room, all going up for the same part, and think, ‘You’re going to take the food out of my baby’s mouth’, and it would start the adrenaline pumping. While it didn’t work for every part, there was no mistaking Danny’s passion and the fire that burned inside him.
As luck would have it, a similarly driven young writer and director, Justin Kerrigan, was working on a script he hoped would speak to Danny’s discontented generation. His aim was to tap into a growing underground club culture that was spreading fast in 1990s Britain. He believed his film, Human Traffic, could create an unstoppable chemical reaction among like-minded groups of partygoers fuelled in equal measure by their rage and passion, their rejection of the mundane nine-to-five, their unbreakable friendships and their almost instinctive need to ‘blow their minds’ in clubs and bars the length and breadth of the country. And there was a perfect part in it for Danny.
CHAPTER FOUR
HIGHER THAN THE SUN
When asked by the Guardian in 2013 how much research Danny had had to do in order to convincingly play Moff, the pilled-up, motor-mouthed cockney he’d brought so vividly to life in Human Traffic, he said, ‘That role was me – I was still living it then.’ He reiterated this in an interview with Jonathan Sothcott and James Mullinger for their book, The Films of Danny Dyer: ‘The partying, the joy and the ecstasy [the world of Human Traffic] was basically the world that I was living in at the time.’ Evidently, Danny had a few more responsibilities than the young, free and single Moff back in 1997, but he was certainly enjoying more of a party lifestyle than the average new dad – his first daughter, Dani, having arrived only a year or so earlier.
He admits he wasn’t in a great place when he received the Human Traffic script, with offers of acting work having more or less dried up. While Danny had never really considered giving up forever, there was a massive gulf between what he wanted to do and what he had to do to keep money coming in. There was a crushing irony in the fact that he was finding it so hard to find work just when his need to be earning had never been more vital. He found it virtually impossible to juggle auditions with holding down any sort of normal job and their gruelling nature was taking its toll on him. So when he received the Human Traffic script – depicting the lives of a gang of twentysomethings who bond over their shared hatred of nine-to-five drudgery and all-consuming passions for music, drugs and clubbing – Danny knew the film could be his lifeline. He was b
lown away by how much he related to these characters, stating in his book, ‘It excited me so much because it was basically a description of my life.’ He continued, ‘That life was all around me. I could see my mates living it, I was living it, everyone I knew was living it.’ He acknowledges how close he’d come to throwing in the towel and admitting it was ‘game over’, confessing, ‘I read the script virtually drooling. I thought, “This is the final straw for me. If I don’t get this job then I’m not bothering no more. I can’t stand the rejection.”’
It’s clear that Danny was focused and passionate about this project, convinced a role in the film could kick-start phase two of his acting career. The best part of a year of not working in the industry had made Danny realize that, in order to bring in the necessary funds, he needed to progress his career to the next level. Even if the phone had been ringing off the hook, he was aware that poorly paid stage roles and one-off parts in television dramas were not going to be enough. Human Traffic could well be his last chance to break out of the minor leagues and finally get into feature films.
In the 1990s, Britain had undergone a mini-revolution. Club culture had gripped the night-time scene, breaking free of its underground shackles to become a genuine youth phenomenon. Powered by an influx of cheap ‘party drugs’, chiefly ecstasy, an era of dance music and clubbing was born. The rock-dance hybrid, block-rockin’ beats of The Chemical Brothers, superstar DJs such as Fatboy Slim and an explosion of euphoric electronic dance music soundtracked the scene, which was bigger and more inclusive than ever before. Taking ecstasy tablets on a night out had become the norm for a number of Britain’s partygoers – not only was it readily available and a much cheaper alternative to a night spent drinking alcohol, it fitted seamlessly with the music and the lifestyle of this ‘living for the weekend’ generation. The high was controlled – it could be timed to lift you as soon as you hit the dance floor – and the side effects, it seemed at the time, were minimal. You could leave work on Friday, party through Saturday, relax on Sunday and return to work on Monday morning with little threat of the crushing hangover associated with a similarly debauched, alcohol-fuelled weekend. People were living this way week in, week out. It had become a sustainable way of life for many; recreational rather than something they depended upon, unlikely to send them on a downward spiral into harder drugs and self-destructive addiction.