DANNY Dyer has revealed how a touching letter from eldest daughter Dani was the catalyst for him to stay in rehab and kick drugs for good.
Danny Dyer has revealed a touching letter from daughter Dani helped him beat his drug demons at the height of his addictionCredit: Getty
The 47-year-old – who played Queen Vic landlord Mick Carter for nine years – said: “I was off my nut a lot of that job . . . a lot of Valium and diazepam.”
Now he has told how his Love Island alum daughter played a key role in ditching his demons after he admitted he’d “sit up all night smoking crack” at the height of his addiction.
Now he has candidly opened up on his rehab stint in South Africa – and how the reality TV star’s words sobered him up.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs he said he was ready to quit the facility around eight years ago.
He told the BBC Radio 4 show: “Then they read a letter out from home, from my daughter Dani, and it made me sit back down in that seat.”
Talking of the height of his drug battles he said: “I remember I had this moment where I was sitting in my ensuite trying to work out how to put a pair of jeans on – I was that off my head.
“I looked up, I looked at my wife and I could just see how tired she looked and I could hear kids running around downstairs, and I thought ‘I need to sort my life out’.”
Back in 2022, Danny previously told The Sun he feared he would die if he didn’t get help when his life was on the brink five years ago.
Danny went to show bosses and told them he desperately needed to take time out after his relationship with his wife Joanne Mas hit the rocks in 2017.
He admitted he had spent years being “a c*** to her” and was taking so many drugs he had to make a desperate cry for help to producers of the BBC soap.
Danny and Jo met as kids, growing up on the same council estate in East London, and had a daughter Dani, 28, when he was 18.
The couple went on to have a daughter Sunnie, 18, and son Arty, 11.
REAL DEAL
Danny also opened up on his darkest times at a boozy event this weekend.
Fans and celebs including Patsy Kensit, 57, were at Wimbledon Football Club in South West London on Friday for the charity night with Danny.
Speaking of EastEnders, he told the audience: “I was off my nut for a lot of that job. I was squinting a lot for a couple of years, a lot of Valium and Diazepam.
“You have 30 pages a day you’ve got to learn. There’s no f***ing about. You organically make the scene work, you rehearse nothing. It f***s your nut up. I ended up in rehab twice.”
In an apparent reference to the show’s storylines, he added: “Not so much in Corrie, but in EastEnders it’s so dark.”
Danny joined the soap as Queen Vic landlord Mick Carter in 2013 but quit in 2022, with his character seemingly drowning at sea.
He added: “On EastEnders there is no messing about and you’ve got to do it. It’s the hardest part of our job.
“I’d love to see A-list actors come in and do it, they’d crumble. You’ve got to be on it.
“In films you make yourself properly cry, you go to a dark place and you have time to recover. It messes a lot of people’s heads up. Most people are off their nut.”
During the boozy bash Danny also confessed bosses banned him from drinking alcohol in the Queen Vic and even put antiseptic in the beer barrels.
He said: “When I first arrived on set I was slipping around the side and having a few lagers and they found out so they started to put TCP into the beer.
“I wasn’t off my nut. I had a drink every now and again.”
An EastEnders spokeswoman said yesterday: “We would never discuss an individual’s private matters, however, we do not recognise these claims.
“EastEnders has extremely robust and well-established procedures in place to safeguard the welfare of everyone who works on the show.”
