He's been in everything from EastEnders to Star Wars, yet this Essex-born actor barely gets recognised – do YOU know who he is?

Daily Mail​

10-05-2025

You know Daniel Mays. He's that extraordinarily convincing character actor who's popped up in everything from EastEnders to Star Wars. He's famous, but not crazy famous – although the 46-year-old Londoner witnessed true celebrity once, in 2013, when he and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley in all the Harry Potter films) popped out to Pret A Manger for a sandwich during a break from rehearsing a play.
'These girls spotted Rupert and it was pandemonium. Any body part they could have yanked off him as a souvenir they would have. Actors want to have an impact but I draw the line at dismemberment.'
We meet in a central London cocktail bar where, despite being 6ft 2in tall and looking dapper in an overcoat and cap, he goes largely unnoticed. Mays may not be instantly recognisable, but few could match the extraordinary range on his CV. Born in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, to an electrician dad and a bank clerk mum, he went to the Italia Conti stage school aged 14 and four years later won a place at Rada. One of his first roles after graduating was as Kat Slater's boyfriend in EastEnders. He has since shone in everything from TV cop thriller Line Of Duty to his Olivier-nominated stage turn as Nathan Detroit in the musical Guys & Dolls.
Right now he's in Suspect: The Shooting Of Jean Charles De Menezes, a four- and five-star rated Disney+ drama about the 7/7 London tube bombings of July 2005, and the subsequent police killing of the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician who was misidentified as a terrorist at Stockwell tube station. Mays hopes it will have a similar impact as ITV's Mr Bates Vs The Post Office.
'The important thing about this story is that [de Menezes's] family are still fighting for his name,' says Mays. 'Loads of people, mates of mine and colleagues, were under the impression that [de Menezes] vaulted the barrier and ran down the escalator. And it didn't happen. You think to yourself, 'How has that cemented itself in people's heads?' Dramas like this and Mr Bates can hold people to account, set the record straight.'
He loved playing principal forensic investigator Cliff Todd, the first on the scene at Aldgate station after one of the four 7/7 bombings. Todd visited the set during filming. 'It's easy to forget, as we get on with our lives, that there are ordinary people out there who get the calls no one else wants and they have to respond,' says Mays.
Next up is the much-awaited Netflix movie adaptation of Richard Osman's 'cosy crime' bestseller The Thursday Murder Club, due to screen on 28 August. 'Surprise, surprise, I play a police officer,' says Mays. 'I should just join the force at this rate.' Produced by Steven Spielberg, it has Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, David Tennant, Ben Kingsley and Jonathan Pryce among a stellar cast.
'Even though I've been in this industry a decent amount of time, I still got butterflies on set with that level of acting royalty,' he says. 'But David Tennant is the one guy who gives me nightmares.' He's only half-joking.
In 2020 May and Tennant both appeared in ITV's Emmy-winning drama Des, about serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Tennant played Nilsen, Mays was his nemesis, DCI Peter Jay.
'David was so convincing I had a nightmare I was trapped in an attic with him,' he recalls. 'I actually woke up screaming. For me there's acting, then there's David Tennant acting.'
Mays has spent 25 years on our screens, but despite attending Rada alongside Ben Whishaw and Maxine Peake he had early doubts. Were there enough roles for a working-class Essex boy? He felt guilty just thinking about it – his mum had taken a second job in a cardboard-box factory to help him pay for drama school.
'It broke my heart a bit to think I'd let my parents down,' he says, 'But my Rada tutor said, 'You'll get loads of work playing angry young men on the edge' and he was right.'
First came EastEnders – and despite the soap's producers offering to expand his part so he could join the cast permanently, Mays declined, leaving after four episodes.
'No disrespect but I wanted to try new things,' he says. Luckily, the very next job was in the 2001 Hollywood film Pearl Harbor, directed by Michael Bay. 'The scale of that thing! I watched with my jaw on the floor while Bay was on a crane directing a scene involving a whole bloody air force! I had to go and see Ben Affleck about a scene and his trailer was the size of a small village – a real eye-opener for someone starting out.'
Now, if he's not sure whether to accept a role, he talks to his friend Stephen Graham (who he starred with in the Disney+ smash hit A Thousand Blows earlier this year) and fellow London actor Eddie Marsan.
'Who wants to be a professional cockney?' asks Mays. 'No one. So if you can, you pick and choose parts carefully. I've played so many angry young men on the edge but I've taken risks, too.' He was Samuel Pepys in The Great Fire (ITV, 2014); gay rights campaigner Peter Wildeblood in the drama Against The Law (BBC, 2017); and Edward Bancroft, British spy and confidant of US founding father Benjamin Franklin (played by Michael Douglas) in Franklin (Apple TV+, 2024).
Acting opposite the Hollywood legend was, Mays says, an unforgettable experience: 'Michael Douglas has earned every right to swan around giving off a 'been there, done that' aura, but he doesn't. If anything, it was me in my trailer going, 'Oh my god, I'm about to do a scene wearing stockings opposite Michael Douglas!'.'
Franklin was a multimillion-dollar production. Its most iconic scenes were filmed on location at the Palace of Versailles, and Mays had the use of an apartment in the beautiful Montmartre district of Paris.
His wife Louise and children Mylo, 19, and Dixie, 12, came out to stay. It was, he says, a magical time. A far cry from the situation in which he and Louise met 20 years ago, when Mays was starring in Top Buzzer, a short-lived MTV comedy about a drug dealer.
'Stephen Graham was in it and day one he starts this rumour that I am the love child of actor Jim Broadbent,' says Mays. 'All the cast and crew came up to me to ask if it was true.' One of them was the show's make-up artist Louise Burton.
'She told me, 'I didn't think you looked like Jim Broadbent's love child', but she also declined to do my make-up and got an assistant to do it instead.'
Why? Because Louise fancied Mays and thought it would be unprofessional to work so closely with him. Eventually they began dating and, five months later, Louise became pregnant with Mylo.
Mays admits that becoming a dad at 25 was a shock. 'It wasn't the plan at the time,' he says. 'I was a young actor starting out and it was all supposed to be about me! But becoming a father means you are not the most important person in the room. The only thing I could do was grow up quickly – and 20 years down the line I can honestly say it was the best thing ever. It forced me to get a work ethic and that's how I see my role now: to provide for my family.'
Married in 2018, he and Louise live in North London. He plays golf in his downtime and walks his miniature maltese, Missy.
If The Thursday Murder Club is a hit, and a second Richard Osman book is filmed, it would mean more time with acting royalty – perhaps a meeting with Spielberg himself.
'I missed his first visit to the set because I was off that day,' he says. 'But I'd love to sit down with the guy and say, 'Listen, I'm the love child of Jim Broadbent and I'm ready to be a leading man.''
Stefania Rosini/Disney+ 2023, contour by getty images