Danny Dyer has shared how a letter from his eldest daughter Dani made him stay in rehab when he was there to tackle his drug addiction.

The actor, 47, said that he’d ‘had enough’ of the rehabilitation programme and was ready to walk out before receiving the correspondence from Dani, now 28.

Dani, who would have been around 20 at the time, reached out to her dad to convince him to continue his treatment at the facility in South Africa.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Danny admitted that the letter made him realise the pain he had put his family through.

Danny is married to Joanne Mas after getting together in 1992 and the couple share three children, their daughter Dani, daughter Sunnie, 18, and son Arty, 11.

He told presenter Lauren Laverne: ‘Then they read a letter out from home, from my daughter Dani, and it made me sit back down in that seat.’

Danny did not divulge what his daughter had written but it had such an impact he changed his decision to leave rehab.

Danny Dyer has shared how a letter from his eldest daughter Dani made him stay in rehab when he was there to tackle his drug addiction

The actor, 47, said that he’d ‘had enough’ of the rehabilitation programme and was ready to walk out before receiving the correspondence from Dani, now 28

Elsewhere in the interview, Danny discussed how fame has affected his private life and lead to him making some bad decisions, namely ‘taking a lot of drugs’.

He said: ‘I’d go to nightclubs and DJ sometimes but in general just wave off of balconies and I’d get paid quite a lot of money to do it.’

Looking back on his past choices, Danny said that his days of ‘hedonism and mad behaviour’ are over and that those times were ‘awful’.

One of Danny’s turning points was reached in 2013 when he was offered the role of Mick Carter, landlord of the Queen Vic, in EastEnders.

Admitting he originally took the job because he had no money, Danny said: ‘I had bailiffs [coming round], no-one would hire me and the more I’m doing these club appearances, the more drugs I’m taking, and drink, so I’m in this weird spiral.’ 

Revealing what made him finally kick the habit and go to rehab in Cape Town, Danny described his moment of realisation at an after-party at his house following an awards show. 

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’.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs , Danny admitted that the letter made him realise the pain he had put his family through (pictured recently)

Danny is married to Joanne Mas after getting together in 1992 and the couple share three children, their daughter Dani, daughter Sunnie, 18, and son Arty, 11 (pictured L-R Sunnie, Danny, Dani’s fiance Jared Bowen and Dani)

Danny and his wife Joanne pictured together in 2023

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Dani rose to public prominence on her series of Love Island in 2018 where she went on to win the show with her then-boyfriend, Jack Fincham.

Since then, Danny and Dani have become quite the celebrity double act, appearing on Celebrity Gogglebox, a travel series in Italy and their successful podcast, Sorted With The Dyers.

Danny’s own rise to fame came after he was cast in Human Traffic (1999) and has since go on to become a household name in TV and film.

He most recently appeared in Disney hit Rivals and comedy series Mr Bigstuff, for which he is nominated at Sundays BAFTA TV awards.

Danny said a lot of the work he took at the beginning of his career was for money after becoming a dad to Dani aged 19. 

He said: ‘I’d made a few films but I just wasn’t getting paid any money and I was desperate to get on the property ladder. I was still living on a council estate with my daughter and Jo.’

Dyer says he then got offered a documentary series in 2006 called The Real Football Factories and ‘couldn’t believe the money that was offered to me’.

‘I can’t watch them back now [the documentaries], I cringe at them, but I needed to earn money, I needed to get a house and I needed to do the right thing,’ he added. 

Elsewhere in the interview, Danny discussed the impact the death of his ‘mentor’ Harold Pinter (pictured) had on him

Elsewhere in the interview, Danny discussed the impact the death of his ‘mentor’ Harold Pinter had on him.

He admitted the death of the playwright sent him into a ‘spiral of madness’ after he spent many years ‘off the rails’ before he died.

Danny was cast in a Pinter play, Celebration, in 2000 and the stage star revealed he would stay at Pinter’s house and learn about famous writers and poets such as WH Auden and CS Lewis. 

Reflecting on his death in 2008, he said: ‘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 ᴅᴇᴀᴅ’.

‘This really sent me on a spiral of madness, really. 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.’

Danny Dyer’s episode of Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 at 10am on Sunday. An edited version of the show will be available on BBC Sounds after it has been broadcast.