Phil Daniels
Phil Daniels is an actor, born 1958.
Two films in 1979 fixed Phil Daniels in the British imagination and he has been living off them, and arguing with them, ever since. In Scum he is Richards, inside a borstal. In Quadrophenia he is Jimmy Cooper, a mod with a scooter and nowhere to put his anger. He had been working for years by then, having turned up in Bugsy Malone (1976) as the waiter who spills the spaghetti, and Zulu Dawn came the same year as the other two.
The Islington accent is the instrument, and what he does with it is more precise than the cockney typecasting suggests: a fast, clipped, comic aggression that can turn plaintive inside a single line. Mike Leigh understood it in Meantime (1983), which is the best performance on this list and the least seen. Breaking Glass (1980), The Bride (1985) and Still Crazy (1998) are the other places to hear it.
Then the odd second act. He is Fetcher in Chicken Run (2000), one half of a pair of scheming rats, and he is the voice talking over Blur's 1994 single Parklife, a guest spot that turned into the most quoted thing he has ever done. Television has kept him busy since: Kevin Wicks in EastEnders and Grandad in the Only Fools and Horses prequel Rock & Chips, neither among the credits listed here, plus New Tricks, Endeavour, Adult Material, I Hate Suzie, Boat Story, Beyond Paradise and, most improbably of all, Maester Gerardys in House of the Dragon.
Movies (13)
TV (13)
Where to start with Phil Daniels
Quadrophenia first. It is the definitive Daniels performance and one of the few British youth films that still plays as dangerous rather than nostalgic, and Jimmy is a far sadder character than the parka-and-scooter iconography suggests.
Follow it with Scum, made the same year and much harder to sit through, then with Meantime, the one to seek out: Mike Leigh at his most patient, and Daniels doing the finest work of his career inside it.
For the lighter side, Chicken Run is where a generation of children met the voice without knowing whose it was, and Still Crazy is a very funny film about middle-aged rock musicians. Endeavour and House of the Dragon are the modern television, the second worth it purely for the incongruity.