How Danny Dyer went from 'broke and desperate' to national treasure: 10 years ago his movie career was 'straight-to-DVD' - now he's TV gold, earning millions and women love him...despite his cheating past | Retrui News | Retrui
How Danny Dyer went from 'broke and desperate' to national treasure: 10 years ago his movie career was 'straight-to-DVD' - now he's TV gold, earning millions and women love him...despite his cheating past
SOURCE:Daily Mail
Just 12 years ago Danny Dyer admitted he was 'broke and desperate', paying the bills with nightclub appearances when his movie career went 'straight-to-DVD'.
Just 12 years ago Danny Dyer admitted he was 'broke and desperate', paying the bills with nightclub appearances when his movie career went 'straight-to-DVD'.
The loveable Cockney's film company Old Mother Media had just gone bust with £30,000 of debts, most of it owed to the taxman, and his new film Run For Your Wife made just £602 in its opening weekend.
Things were looking very bleak so he was forced to take the part of Mick Carter in EastEnders, having previously turned it down, repeatedly, because he wasn't 'fat, bald and 50'.
Danny was 36, had a young family and badly needed the money - but initially didn't even have the cash for petrol to drive himself to Elstree Studios - or to buy himself a pint to celebrate.
The West Ham fanatic had already thrown away the chance of a stellar stage career as the protégé of playwright Harold Pinter after a collapse on stage on Broadway after smoking crack.
And the relationship with his childhood sweetheart, now-wife, Jo also went to pot due to cheating and drug use. At one point she fled, changed her phone number and emptied their joint account because he couldn't be trusted with their money.
The EastEnders gig he resisted for so long was undoubtedly the turning point in his life and now he is one of the most-loved person on British TV, a 'rough diamond' loved by men and women alike.
And companies such as Sky, Paddy Power and Walkers are queuing up for him to represent their companies in their crucial Christmas and Black Friday campaigns - and have made him a millionaire.
PR guru Mark Borkowski says he is now a 'national guilty pleasure' and loved because he is too 'authentic to be airbrushed'. Danny's role as Jilly Cooper's moral romantic Freddie Jones has also acted as an 'aphrodisiac', sex experts have said.
Danny Dyer has been hailed for his performance as Freddie Jones in Jilly Cooper's Rivals - and it his moved him towards national treasure status. It has also made him even more attractive to the public and big businesses
One of Dyer's most famous early roles was as a football hooligan in gangster film The Football Factory. But his movie career would flop and leave him in a financially perilous position
Danny repeatedly turned down the role of Queen Vic pub landlord Mick Carter but took it on, partly because of money problems. EastEnders completely turned around his career
Danny has admitted that Jo has stood by him 'through a lot of s**t' including drug use and allegations of cheating as well as wild behaviour (pictured together in 2018)
Danny Dyer and his wife Jo have been together since they were 13 years old and share three children Love Island's Dani, 28, daughter Sunnie, 18, and son Arty, 11 (pictured together)
Rivals has won him another bumper payday and a legion of new fans including Queen Camilla, who with the King has enjoyed his company several times.
While away from Rivals, more and more women are finding the straight-talking star attractive because he is as an antidote to a 'very woke world'.
His bad boy image is gone.
He is the latest star to pick a bedtime book for children on CBeebies Bedtime Stories, joining Tom Hardy, the Princess of Wales, Ryan Reynolds, Tom Hiddleston, Harry Styles, Orlando Bloom and Dolly Parton on the A-list, reading list.
Relationship expert Tracey Cox has declared so many women fancy him because: 'Danny is attainable. He feels real – flawed but familiar -and relatability is its own aphrodisiac.
'Even though he might not be the most handsome man in the room... he’s a reminder that sexual attraction isn’t all about symmetrical features, cheekbones and a ripped torso'.
Today the star has a Bentley on the drive of his Essex mansion, paid for by his lucrative TV work with businesses such as Sky, Paddy Power, Deliveroo, Walkers and others all falling over themselves to pay him huge sums to advertise their products.
One senior marketing executive, with knowledge of Dyer's advertising deals in 2025, said: 'Danny is relatable and up for absolutely anything. Companies are more than willing to pay high six-figures for him to advertise for them.
'Just look how many big ad campaigns he's starred in for the past year. The Paddy Power one won awards. It's no wonder people are falling over themselves to hire him'.
Paddy Power had made Danny Dyer the star of several major advertising campaigns, including the last Euros and Christmas campaigns
Sky had him star of their Black Friday campaign, which also starred comedy royalty Joseph Marcell, who played butler Geoffrey in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air with Will Smith
Dyer's unlikely mentor in his early career was theatre giant, Harold Pinter; who discovered the young actor at the age of 22. Pictured in 2008, the year Pinter (far right) died with stage actors Anthony O'Donnell and Kenneth Cranham. Danny later admitted that he threw away opportunities including a Broadway run hit by a collapse on stage due to drug use
Thanks to his successes, accounts filed at Companies House this summer revealed that his firm, Arty Bucco, made £1.4million in the last financial year.
The figures show Danny has made a huge £712,221 more than the previous year.
His net worth is estimated to be comfortably over £5million before assets such as his home.
Mark Borkowski, who has advised stars for decades, said: 'Paddy Power et al aren’t hiring him for subtlety. Danny represents a Britain that’s messy, funny, self-mocking, and utterly allergic to corporate gloss. He’s a nostalgia machine for a country that doesn’t recognise itself anymore. Brands have rediscovered the joy of the imperfect spokesman.
'In an age drowning in manufactured sincerity and beige celebrity, Danny Dyer suddenly felt like an antidote. A bit dangerous, a bit daft, but unmistakably real', he said.
'He became the national guilty pleasure', Mr Borkowski claims.
He went on: 'Danny Dyer’s “rebirth” isn’t some mystical act of cultural alchemy it’s a just an example of a fame asset finally realising it’s better to lean into the caricature than run away from it.
'Yes ten years ago he was a punchline: the patron saint of the Geezer taking on straight -to-DVD East End sub mob hard man stuff. The industry didn’t know what to do with him. He was too authentic to be airbrushed, and too self-aware to stay in the bin. Then the penny dropped — not for him, for everyone else.
'EastEnders gave him mythic scale: domestic familiarity with a tint of Shakespearean tragedy. The public love a rogue made good and Danny played the role like a man who knew this might be his last dance. He made himself meme-friendly. He embraced his own absurdity.
'Very few celebrities survive by becoming their own punchline. Dyer brings cultural shorthand: working-class swagger, heavily lacquered authenticity, and the charm of a bloke who could sell you a pint and a quiet revolution'.
Relationship expert Tracey Cox added: 'He’s the classic "rough diamond" with a working-class London background, directness and "protector" energy that seems more genuine and masculine than more polished actors.
'He’s charismatic and has presence: even if you aren’t attracted to him, you notice him because he doesn’t fit the mould.
'Also, never underestimate how much one great character role can influence how we perceive the actor who plays it.
'Playing Freddie in Rivals - a ‘teddy bear with a bite’ who has a surprisingly tender romance – did just that. Ironically, given Danny’s real-life cheating past and struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, Freddie is one of the few moral characters in the show. This helped massively to sway public perception.
'He's now the loveable everyman. We might lust after A-listers like Brad Pitt and George Clooney, but we know we wouldn’t have a chance in hell of pulling them in real life.
'It helps that he [Danny] projects an unapologetic ‘what you see is what you get’ persona. He’s not trying to be anyone but himself. He speaks his mind and challenges authority , which is also attractive in a very woke world.
'The clincher: he’s funny and self-deprecating. A sense of humour is always up there in the top three things women find attractive about men'.
Dyer was raised on a council estate in Custom House, East London; largely by a single mother when his father left them for his other family when Dyer was just nine years old.
When he was 13, he met his now-wife, Jo, with whom he shares two daughters and a son.
He began to study acting when he was at school - albeit largely in secret because he was so relentlessly bullied by his peers - and landed small roles in more TV dramas before making his foray into theatre.
When his grandfather, who had been his main male role model, died, he leaned on an unlikely crutch as a father figure - Nobel laureate playwright Harold Pinter.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2013, five years after Pinter died, he said of the late playwright: 'He was the only person who I feared but loved. He had faith in me, he suffered all my shit because he knew I was a talented actor.
'He was a f***ing tyrant, too, you know, but he could get away with it because he was so enchanting. He was a poet.'
Pinter discovered Dyer in the year 2000 when the young actor, then 22, was cast in his production of Celebration at the Almeida Theatre in Islington. At the time, Dyer admits he barely knew who Pinter was and 'didn't care much' about getting the part because he didn't think the part would pay well.
Nonetheless, Dyer's casting sparked a meaningful relationship between the pair where Pinter acted as a mentor and took the young actor under his wing. Soon Dyer was invited to Pinter's 'gaff', as he described it to The Spectator, where they would discuss poetry.
Dyer has long spoken fondly of the playwright, who died in 2008, as a father figure in his early career; but the relationship came at a time when Dyer was struggling with drug addiction.
In 2001, while performing in Celebration on Broadway, Dyer went blank on his line after taking to the stage after a 24 hour bender smoking crack cocaine.
He eventually checked into rehab in the early 2000s and began going to therapy as part of his recovery.
The actor revealed: 'You’ve got stuff missing within your soul and you don’t know why and you try and fill it with drugs or drink and it doesn’t work. And so I learned from going to therapy that I had abandonment issues from men.'
Dyer added that, while therapy helped him get back on track, his now infamous episode of Who Do You Think You Are in 2016, where he learnt he was a descendent of Thomas Cromwell and King Edward III, also marked a turning point in his long-term recovery.
Comparing his own life trajectory to that of Cromwell, who rose from humble beginnings to the top of society as an aide to King Henry VIII before being unceremoniously usurped and executed in 1540, Dyer said: ‘My life makes sense to me now.'
Danny is clearly at a happier point in his life now, both personally and professionally.
He has taken work more seriously and says meditation and therapy has helped him become a better person.
His relationship with his wife Jo, now rock solid, epitomises that because when his work went south, so did their relationship.
Danny Dyer admitted recently that she 'deserved better' as he opened up about their split and his drug-fuelled three-day benders in what he called 'most open and honest' interview of his life.
Speaking on an ITV show in April, one woman asked Danny about his split from Joanne.
She said: 'When Jo kicked you out she emptied your shared joint bank account, do you still have a shared bank account now?'
Danny Dyer has admitted his wife Joanna Mas 'deserved better' as he opened up about their split and his drug-fuelled three-day benders in the 'most open and honest' interview of his life (pictured in 2023)
Back in 2000, Danny's wild behaviour culminated in Jo catching him cheating on her, causing her to kick him out and clear their bank account (pictured 2006)
He then openly admitted to being kicked out, as he confessed: 'I was a p***k and she deserved better.
'Sometimes I'd go out, get off my head, take drugs; I wouldn't come home for three days.
'She had every right to throw me out. She controls everything now.'
Danny and Joanne got together in 1992, and have three children - Love Island's Dani, 27, daughter Sunnie, 17, and son Arty, six.
Their on-off relationship was marred with cheating allegations in the past, although they eventually got back together for good and married in 2016 after Joanne proposed a year before.
Back in 2000, Danny's wild behaviour culminated in Jo catching him cheating on her, causing her to kick him out and clear their bank account.
In an interview with The Times in 2023, Danny recalled the moment he got caught cheating on Jo, and insisted he 'doesn't blame her' for changing her phone number, clearing their account, and stopping him from seeing his eldest daughter Dani.
He confessed: 'I didn't blame her. It was a mad period. I do now realise what's important to me are my family. They are everything.
'I tried to fill it with the drink and drugs and doing stupid things. I was a lost soul. I had a ‘f*** it’ button and I would destroy relationships before I could be left'.
Last year, he admitted that Jo has stood by him 'through a lot of s**t', adding that she didn't sign up to a life of fame.
Speaking on Elizabeth Day's podcast How To Fail, he said: 'Well, I've been with the same woman since I was 13. It's a journey. It's so rare, that.
'Because if you think about who you was at 13 and who you are now, to grow with somebody at the same time, at the same rate, and then you throw fame in the mix, and what happened with me, which she never wanted, and she came along for this ride with me, both from the same council estate.
'She didn't really sign up for that, and then, on her course, it f****d my head up when I became really famous, and I didn't quite know what to do with it and I suppose she stood by me for a lot of s**t and had to be very patient with me.
'And of course I do believe in the marriage vows and sickness and health and for better for worse.
'So it's hard to stay in a relationship for that long with the press attention and with me being a pr**k for many years, because I was, I hold my hands up, I lost the plot for many years.'
Danny Dyer, 48, pictured reading a Cbeebies story last month, is now one of the UK's biggest stars
He continued: 'I didn't quite know who I was and I suppose she had to suffer all that on a national level.
'I love her with all my heart. You know, she challenges me every day. She's kept me very grounded. I'll tell you that now.
'She came to watch me in a play once and I came off stage and she went, yeah, just don't get carried away with yourself. I thought that's what I need to hear.'
In his Assembly questioning, Danny also got candid about how he copes with his anxiety, explaining that meditation and therapy is what has helped him become a better person.
He said: 'I needed to learn what was wrong with me because I was acting, I was earning money - I had everything going for me, but I still wasn’t happy. I learned that it was every strong male role model I had either left me or died.'
He admitted that the coping strategies he developed when he was younger did more harm than good, saying: 'Whenever I got close to somebody who I loved and I looked up to I’d press the ‘f*** it’ button before they could die.
'I thought ‘I’ll beat you to it’ which is a weird way of thinking. I needed to learn some tools, so [therapy] was good for me.'