Daniel Mays (born 31 March 1978)[1] is an English actor having had television roles in EastEnders (2000), Rehab (2005), Red Riding (2008), Ashes to Ashes (2010), Outcasts (2011), Mrs Biggs, Line of Duty, Des and White Lines (2020), and film roles in Pearl Harbor (2001), All or Nothing (2002), Vera Drake (2004), Shifty, Made in Dagenham, Byzantium (2012), and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016).
[3] In 2005, he was cast in the BBC drama Rehab,[4] then in 2008, played the role of Michael Myshkin in Channel 4's adaptation of David Peace's Red Riding trilogy.
He then played a criminal on a curfew after serving a 10-year sentence for the murder of his girlfriend when he was 19 in the programme Public Enemies, which aired on BBC One in early January 2012.
Performing in Nick Payne's Same Deep Water As Me at the Donmar Warehouse alongside Nigel Lindsay[11] and in the first major revival of Jez Butterworth's debut play Mojo at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
[15] In 2020, Mays starred as lead investigator Detective Chief Inspector Peter Jay in the ITV three-part television drama miniseries Des, about the 1983 arrest of the serial killer Dennis Nilsen, and as Marcus in the Ibiza based whodunnit series White Lines.
[16] In March 2023, Mays made his musical debut as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls directed by Nicholas Hytner at the Bridge Theatre.