Danny
Dyer gives a career defining performance when ASSASSIN
is released on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital platforms on March 9th,
courtesy of Signature Entertainment.
Since bursting onto our screen in British classics such as The
Football Factory, he’s made a name for himself as equal parts hard
man and lovable rogue. To celebrate the release of his latest film,
we look back on other soap stars that have made the leap to the big
screen...
Danny
Dyer- from Eastenders to Assassin
Dyer
is an exception in as much as he actually arrived on our TV screens
after his Hollywood debut. Before winning over virtually every
Eastenders fan with his brilliant turn as Old Vic landlord XXX, Dyer
was already a hugely recognisable face, thanks to his star-making
turns in The Football Factory and The Business, amongst several
others.
Assassin
follows the story of the most corrupt crime bosses in the London
underworld, and one man’s crusade to bring them to justice. Dyer
plays Jamie, a killer for hire who breaks the rules of his profession
when he falls for a beautiful young woman. When the most notorious
gangland brothers in London (Martin & Gary Kemp) hire him to kill
his girlfriend’s father, his world breaks down and he is forced to
turn against his notoriously fearsome employers and their gang to
save the woman he loves.
Matt
Di Angelo and Anna Passey – from EastEnders
and
Hollyoaks
to The
Smoke
After
entering their careers as soap stars on EastEnders
and
Hollyoaks
respectfully, Matt Di Angelo and Anna Passey made their film debuts
in the gangster crime thriller, The
Smoke.
In Hollyoaks,
Passey played the beautiful, clever and calculating Sienna Blake. Di
Angelo began on EastEnders
as
Dean Wicks in 2006, a dark, brooding man with a chip on his shoulder,
leaving in a whirlwind of violence and drama in 2008, but returning
to Walford in 2014. After his further successes on TV in Hustle
and Brogia,
Di
Angelo landed the starring role in The
Smoke as
city lawyer Brad Walker. In the worst day of his life, Brad’s
high-maintenance girlfriend Sasha (Passey) has unceremoniously
ditched him for his so-called friend Tom (Christian Brassington) and
to add insult to injury he's just been fired. On a night out drowning
his sorrows with old friend Dean (Jeff Leach), he happens to overhear
a conversation between Phil (Darren Ripley) and Ben (Stephen Marcus)
- two drug dealers working for small-time gangster Jack (Alan Ford).
In no time at all, Brad manages to make off with a sports car, a call
girl and £400,000 in cash... But that’s just the start.
Martine
McCutcheon - from EastEnders
to
Love,
Actually
Martine
McCutcheon first starred in the role of Tiffany Raymond, the
abandoned child of Louise, on the popular BBC Soap Opera EastEnders.
As the role of Tiffany grew, so did McCutcheon's popularity, and 22
million viewers tuned in to see her final scenes in Albert Square on
New Year’s Eve in 1998. In this episode McCutcheon’s character
was run over and killed by one of Frank Butcher's dodgy used cars,
thereby killing her EastEnders
career. In 2003, after a brief and failed attempt at a pop music
career, McCutcheon featured in her first major film role. She
appeared as tea-lady Natalie in the Richard Curtis romantic comedy
Love
Actually,
now a Christmas-classic, where the British Prime Minister (played by
Hugh Grant) falls in love with McCutcheon's character. McCutcheon and
Grant’s budding relationship is exposed when a curtain is raised on
them kissing at big finale of a school play.
Jude
Law - from Families
to The
Talented Mr. Ripley
Arguably
Britain's biggest soap-star-to-movie-star success is Jude Law, now
one of Hollywood's finest actors. Unbeknownst to most, Law began his
acting career rather unglamorously with a two-year stint as Nathan
Thompson in Granada TV's ill-fated and little-watched Soap Opera,
Families.
This weekly Soap Opera told the relationship of two families, the
Thompsons (in England) and the Stevens (in Australia). The main
storyline concentrated on Mike Thompson leaving his family to move in
with Diane Stevens and the complications that ensued. Law was one of
the few cast-members of Families to go on to bigger and better
things, since starring in Hollywood blockbusters The
Talented Mr Ripley,
Alfie,
Enemy at the Gates and
most recently Wes Anderson’s The
Grand Budapest Hotel.
Sir
Ben Kingsley - from Coronation
Street
to Gandhi
Like
Jude Law, many forget that acting legend Sir Ben Kingsley CBE began
his career rather unglamorously on a soap opera. In Kingsley’s
case, he played Coronation
Street’s
Ron Jenkins from 1966-7, a character who courted the attention of
Irma Barlow. Irma encouraged his attention, but when Ron stole her
compact and refused to give it back until she agreed to a date, the
only way she could get rid of him was to introduce him to her husband
and face the consequences. Since Coronation
Street,
Kingsley has won an Oscar, Grammy, BAFTA, two Golden Globes and
Screen Actors Guild awards. He is most famously known for his
starring role as Mohandas Gandhi in the Richard Attenborough 1982
film Gandhi,
however he also went on to feature in award-winning blockbuster films
Schindler's
List
, Sexy
Beast,
Lucky
Number Slevin,
Shutter
Island,
and Iron
Man 3.
Louisa
Lytton — from EastEnders
and The
Bill
to American
Pie: Book of Love
Louisa
Lytton starred in two soap operas before her efforts to make it in
film. Lytton went from playing much-troubled teenager Ruby Allen in
EastEnders
to being Sun Hill's young and cautious PC Beth Green in The
Bill.
In between EastEnders
and
The
Bill,
Lytton starred successfully in the 2006 TV dance competition Strictly
Come Dancing.
Off the back of The
Bill,
Lytton played a British exchange student in the painfully contrived
and unwatchable seventh straight-to-DVD American
Pie instalment,
Book
of Love.
Louisa Lytton’s case is certainly an example of how not to make it
onto the big-screen.
Alan
Cumming – from Take
the High Road
to GoldenEye,
Spy Kids
and The
X Men
Part-time
Scot, naturalised American and respected film, TV and theatre actor
Alan Cumming OBE is known for his political activism as well as being
an established Hollywood actor. Cumming can often be seen campaigning
and promoting rights for LGBT, but he established his career
appearing in the likes of The
X Men
(and its sequels), bond film GoldenEye
and the Spy
Kids
vies. However Cumming’s roots also lie in Soap Opera – remembered
by those north of the border as evil woodcutter Jim Hunter in
Scottish soap Take
the High Road
in the early eighties. Take
the High Road started
in February 1980 as an ITV daytime soap opera, but was dropped by
most stations in the 1990s, although Scottish Television, Grampian
Television, Border Television and Ulster Television continued to
screen the programme until the last episode.
Jimi
Mistry - from EastEnders
to East
is East,
Blood
Diamond,
2012,
Coronation
Street
Jimi
Mistry is most readily recognised for playing Dr. Fred Fonseca in
EastEnders
during the late 1990s, a role that began his career on TV and enabled
him to make the big jump to Hollywood. In 2006 Mistry starred
opposite none other than Leonardo Di Caprio in Blood
Diamond,
and then alongside John Cusack in apocalyptic film 2012.
After experiencing a taste of Hollywood, appearing in these
impressive film roles, Mistry has uniquely made the return jump back
to soaps and can now be seen as former army soldier and personal
trainer Kal Nazir in Coronation
Street.
Mistry’s career path goes to show that some actors cannot help but
return to their Soap Opera roots.
ASSASSIN
is released on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital platforms on March 9th,
courtesy of Signature Entertainment.
