Profile of Leslie Grantham on Famous Like Me

Leslie Grantham (born April 30, 1947) is a British actor.

Grantham was born in London and enlisted for national service with the British Army in 1965, at the age of 18. A year later he shot dead a German taxi driver in his cab while attempting to rob him and was convicted of murder. In his statement to the police following his arrest, Grantham claimed that he did not know the gun was loaded and it had gone off during a struggle with the taxi driver. Although he had committed the murder in Osnabrück, Germany, he served his sentence in a British prison and was released after 10 years. During his imprisonment he joined the drama group of HM Prison Wandsworth. He was later transferred to Ley Hill prison, where he acted in several plays for inmates and members of the public, and edited the prison newspaper. He also wrote a play entitled A Reason To Live, which won the Gloucester Drama Festival award for best original play. He became good friends with the actress Louise Jameson, best known for her role as one the Doctor's assistants in Doctor Who. On release he trained at drama school, and before making an appearance in a 1984 episode of Doctor Who.

In 1984 he auditioned with the BBC for a part in its new soap opera EastEnders, which was due to go on air in February 1985. Grantham had auditioned for the role of market trader Peter Beale, but when the series went on air he was playing the role of Dennis Watts. The character, landlord of the Queen Victoria public house, quickly became a national favourite and gained the nickname Dirty Den mostly because of the way he treated his wife Angie, played by Anita Dobson, and for notoriously fathering the child of his daughter's best friend, a schoolgirl.

On Christmas Day 1986, Grantham's character served his on-screen wife with the divorce papers and the episode was watched by a record 30 million viewers - over half the British population. Soon afterwards, the character Den Watts sold his pub to Frank Butcher and gradually drifted out of key storylines until finally departing in February 1989. Viewers watched a mysterious gunman shoot at Den with a gun hidden in a bunch of daffodils, before hearing a splash. A shot depicting Den's death was cut from the final scene, as the show's producers hoped that Grantham might one day be persuaded to return to the role. The following year, a body believed to be Den's was found in the canal, although again, not shown on screen.

However, in September 2003, Leslie Grantham returned to EastEnders in a plotline that could be said to have stretched the soap's credibility as his 'Den Watts' character (initially bumped-off in 1989) arrived at the nightclub now owned by his adoptive daughter Sharon. Over 17 million people watched Den return with the words, "Hello, princess". Just over a year later, Dirty Den bought the Queen Vic off of Sam Mitchell - 17 years after he had sold it to Frank Butcher.

In 2004 a Sunday newspaper printed photographs of Grantham apparently exposing himself and masturbating via a webcam from his dressing room to a woman named "Amanda". He also allegedly insulted several cast members of EastEnders, and made comments regarding the poor quality of the scripts, a view shared by the majority of the show's critics at the time. Grantham released a statement which read, "I am wholeheartedly ashamed of my behaviour and feel that I have let down my colleagues, as well as my friends and family." He also added, "In some small recompense I intend to make a donation to charity as a mark of my apology." His co-star Shane Richie, whom Grantham had allegedly called "self-infatuated", subsequently stated that Grantham had been forgiven by the cast and they were happy to joke with him about it.

In February 2005, 16.2 million viewers tuned in to view his character's second (and final) demise, this time at the hands of new wife, Chrissie. Grantham's departure from the soap was reportedly the result of adverse newspaper publicity generated by the actor's Internet sex scandal months earlier for which he had initially received a suspension from the programme, although he has stated that he did not want to renew his contract. He has since appeared in Beyond Reasonable Doubt, a stage adaptation of a Jeffrey Archer play, alongside Simon Ward, and remains a popular Christmas pantomime villain. In January 2005 a newspaper report claimed that Grantham was in the process of writing his autobiography, although he has since denied this.

Grantham lives in West London with his wife, actress Jane Laurie, and their three sons - Michael (born 1987), Jake (born 1989) and Danny (born 1996).

Television series

• EastEnders
• The Stretch
• Cluedo
• Fort Boyard
• The Uninvited
• Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks (1984)
• The Paradise Club

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Leslie Grantham