The former EastEnders actor said he was ‘lost’ and ‘angry at the world’ after the Nobel Prize-winning playwright died in 2008. He expressed his guilt and how he was a ‘bit of a lost soul’ and ‘angry at the world’
Actor Danny Dyer has opened up about the profound impact the death of his mentor, acclaimed playwright Harold Pinter, had on him, describing it as a “spiral of madness”.
The Nobel Prize-winner cast the ex-EastEnders star, 47, in his production of ‘Celebration’ at the Almeida Theatre in London back in 2000. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Dyer reminisced about staying over at Pinter’s home and absorbing literature from notable scribes like WH Auden and CS Lewis.
In 2001, ‘Celebration’ made its way to New York’s Lincoln Centre, but Dyer faced an onstage debacle when he blanked on his lines and succumbed to an “anxiety attack” following a night of drugs and revelry. Dyer expressed remorse for disappointing Pinter but shared how the playwright offered comfort, wrapping his arm around him to ease his distress.
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Looking back on losing touch with Pinter and learning of his passing in 2008, Dyer recounted his reaction, saying: “I hadn’t spoke to him in a while. I did go off the rails for many years, and I found out by looking on the front of a newspaper. Again, I’d been on a bender and I was coming home and I was going, I think I was going to buy cigarettes at the petrol garage, and I see it in the paper. ‘Pinter dead’. This really sent me on a spiral of madness, really.”
He spoke of his guilt, saying: “The guilt of not being around him anymore and just being lost, I was a bit of a lost soul, and again, angry at the world.”
In April, US publication Deadline reported that Dyer was developing an idea for a play about his relationship with Pinter, whom he referred to as his “mentor”. Dyer, who had his breakthrough in the 1999 film Human Traffic, also reflected on some of the documentaries he had made earlier in his career.
In the noughties the actor presented TV series Danny Dyer’s Real Football Factories and Danny Dyer’s Deadliest Men, the latter of which saw him interview gangsters and former terrorists
He said: “I’d made a few films and I just wasn’t getting paid any money, and I was desperate to get onto the property ladder. I was still living in a council estate at Custom House, living with my daughter (Dani) and (wife) Jo, and it’s like, well, I’m famous, but I’m still living on a council estate. And so then my house became a bit like Stonehenge, my little flat, and people would just stand outside waiting for me.”
He revealed there was a tipping point when an attempted burglary forced a move: “There was a moment where someone tried to burgle our house and I was like ‘we can’t live here no more’.”
The opportunity to do a documentary with a veteran footballer came as a financial windfall, as Dyer recalled, “So I got offered to do a documentary with a real football veteran and I couldn’t believe the money they was offering me, I thought, ‘Oh, wow'”.
Yet, despite the payday, he shared that the experience left much to be desired, saying, “Now I hated it, because I didn’t have a script, it was me on my own interviewing people, and interviewing dangerous people, by the way, but it got me on the property ladder.”
When quizzed on potential typecasting fears, he admitted he had no such luxury to worry: “I didn’t have the luxury. You know, it’s a bit uncouth, I can’t watch them back now, I cringe at them.”
Dyer concluded with pragmatic frankness, acknowledging the financial necessity behind his choices: “But, you know, I needed to earn money, and I needed to get a house, and I needed to do the right thing.”
Danny Dyer’s instalment of Desert Island Discs is set to broadcast at 10am on BBC Radio 4 and will also be accessible on BBC Sounds.
