I’ve gone from club singer to sharing stage with De Niro and starring in Emmerdale

BY AMANDA KILLELEA Niro was visiting Leeds to do an “evening with” show but the celebrity interviewer who would be quizzing him was yet to be announced.

So Dean fired off an email offering his services and got the shock of his life when De Niro’s people booked him.

He said: “He was lovely. I was scared stiff because he is renowned for not being the most talkative of people. But he said I did a great job.

“To be honest, it was a blur. I was running on adrenaline. I wish I could earned a fortune but they have literally got nothing because they went out and bought a Lamborghini.”

Raised in a pub, he worked in a car dealership by day and as a singer by night, following in his dad’s footsteps.

He said: “My first wage in a club was £42. At the time I was getting £40 a week for 39 hours in the parts department of a car dealership. I always knew I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be on the stage.”

Performing in clubs across the north of England was Dean’s life until he bagged a role in Ken Loach’s 2001 film The Navigators.

He got an agent and went on to land a part in Between The Sheets alongside Blethyn, and then the role that really made him famous – as DS Ray Carling in Life on Mars with Glenister.

Other big credits include TV shows Marchlands and Last Tango in Halifax.

Dean said: “It took me 10 years to say I was an actor. Even when I was filming Life on Mars, I still sang in the clubs at the weekend.

“By the time we started Ashes to Ashes seven years later, I finally gave up singing.”

Now he’s hoping his role as Will, an ex-drug baron hell-bent on revenge against Harriet, will allow him to make his mark in Emmerdale.

He said: “I’d love to stay as long as they’ll have me.”

ON HIS INSECURITIES AS AN ACTOR