Actor Danny Dyer is on a deeply personal journey, trying to discover why, at 22, he was taken under the wing of the late, great playwright Harold Pinter, the making of him as a man – and a stage actor.
He relives the audition where they met, Dyer relaxed because he had no idea who the great man was. He’d grown up on the big screen in splashy, trashy films, but had never set foot on a stage or had an acting lesson.
Harold Pinter saw a talent that the boy himself was unaware of. Twenty years on, the need to know more about his friend has Danny stepping back into Cold War Britain to discover the source of the darkness in Pinter’s plays.
Danny Dyer (Image: BBC/Sky)
With the help of fellow actors including Auriol Smith and Kenneth Cranham, Danny learns about repertory theatre, the meaning of the famous Pinter Pause – and of forgiveness, apologising to fellow cast-member Keith Allen for the time when, after bingeing on drugs, he forgot his lines on Broadway in a Pinter play. Starkly frank and deeply emotional, this film shows Dyer in a new light and uncovers the background to the complex plays of a literary genius.
Danny Dyer & Kenneth Cranham (Picture: BBC/SKY)
Tuesday 22 September | 21.00 | Sky Arts
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