Digging in

At 71, David Hayman is still doing his own stunts in a TV series based on the Hatton Garden robbery – though he’d prefer to be working with his humanitarian group, finds Janet Christie Portraits by John Devlin

David Hayman tells Janet Christie about his latest role, in a TV series about the Hatton Garden robbery, and about his aid work

David Hayman slips into the Tramway in Glasgow, unassuming, anonymous in a grey felted wool beanie, black jeans, trainers and a hoodie. He could pass you in the street and you might not notice – in fact, he probably has as he walks miles every day in his native Glasgow. The result is a wiry, lithe frame that at 71 sees him doing his own stunts, most recently playing one of the Hatton Garden gang in the TV miniseries that starts on Monday, and screens over four consecutive nights.

“Doing your own stunts brings a credibility,” he says, “If you don’t, the audience notice almost imperceptibly, and there’s a lack of truth.”

Which is why Hayman squeezed through an exact replica of the 18 inch high hole into the vault.

“I was struggling, it was really tight – can you imagine Ray Winstone doing it for the film? He’s a big boy. He does, I’ve seen it, but they had to fake it,” he says, referring to The Hatton Garden Job, one of two films currently being made about the crime, such is the interest in the story of the £ 14 million safety deposit heist in the heart of London’s diamond district over the 2015 Easter weekend by a gang of six men with a combined age of 448.

You might not notice Hayman in the street, but he’s a familiar presence on our screens and stages. He laughs at the news that he’s going to grace the magazine cover – “with this face!” and grimaces – but it’s an expressive face, with keen blue eyes and a spare bone structure, that can flip from menace to compassion in a moment. “It’s the face I was born in, so that’s the face I’ve got,” he says.

It’s a face that fits from an acclaimed King Lear at the Citizens in 2012, to hard- bitten DCS Walker in ITV’S long- running Trial and Retribution. Films include Jimmy Boyle biopic

A Sense of Freedom, Sid and Nancy, The Tailor of Panama with Pierce Brosnan, The Jackal with Bruce Willis, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and more recently the comedy Finding Your Feet with Timothy Spall and Imelda Staunton. He has also directed, notably James Mcavoy’s screen debut, The Near Room, as well as spending a decade in theatre direction in London.

Born in Bridgeton to a cleaner and electrician, Hayman was an apprentice in a steelyard when instead of catching his bus to work in Drumchapel, he walked into the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama ( now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and told them he wanted to study acting.

“However I phrase this it’s a bit wanky,” he says, but perseveres.

“I was crippled with shyness as a teenager, but found myself walking up the steps in my boilersuit, covered in engineering grease and iron filings. I burst through the registrar’s door, and a voice says, ‘ I want to be an actor!’ There were only two people in the room, so it had to be me saying it. I didn’t really know where the voice was coming from. It was weird, something pulling me. I don’t remember it being a conscious decision, I just found myself there.”

Graduating, he went straight to the Citizens Theatre and by 20 was playing Hamlet, and later Lady Macbeth too in a landmark all- male production, before his screen debut in A Sense of Freedom in 1979.

With a 50- year career behind him, he’s as busy as ever, and literally a perfect fit for Hatton Garden and the part of Daniel Jones, 61, the youngest gang member. “Yes, I aged down for this one,” he smiles.

Dramatised by Bafta- winning screenwriter Jeff Pope, it also stars Kenneth Cranham, Timothy Spall, Alex Norton, Brian F O’byrne and Geoff Bell. “It was a cracking part and I loved the idea of going on a journey with that bunch of actors.”

Like many, Hayman remembers letting out a bit of a cheer when the heist hit the headlines.

“I thought, God, that’s amazing, the audacity of it. These old geezers manage to break into one of the most heavily fortified safety deposit boxes in the world, f*** it up the first night, go back again with another driller, finish the job, and get away with it. But then the daft buggers…” his voice drifts off, wary of spoilers, into a wheezy laugh, courtesy of the baccy pouch sitting on the table between us, and he wipes his nose with a bright red paisley bandana.

“Most guys their age are stood at the corner of the bar, drifting away, but not these ones. And no- one was injured. But they’re a bunch of gangsters and when you go into it, they’re all psychopaths. My character, Danny, seemingly went to bed wearing his granny’s goonie, wore a fez at night, locked his door at six o’clock because he was so institutionalised by prison, peed into a bottle and communicated with the dead. So they’ve all got their wee quirks.”

This TV version of the story focuses on the relationships among the gang members as much as the execution