Danny Dyer has revealed how he went into “a spiral of madness” following the death of his friend and mentor, the playwright Harold Pinter.
The actor, who starred in EastEnders for nine years as pub landlord Mick Carter and won critical acclaim last year for his role in Disney+’s adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, considered Pinter a “father figure”.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Dyer, 47, talked about his guilt at losing touch with Pinter in the years leading up to the dramatist’s death at the age of 78 in 2008.
Dyer in Pinter’s play No Man’s Land at the National Theatre in London in 2001
ALASTAIR MUIR/SHUTTERTOCK
Dyer with, clockwise from right, Harold Pinter, Kenneth Cranham and Anthony O’Donnell, after appearing in The Homecoming at the Almeida theatre in north London in 2008 in London
DAVE M. BENETT/GETTY IMAGES
“I found out [about his death] by looking on the front of a newspaper — I’d been on a bender. This really sent me on a
