For someone who had a knack for shooting himself in the foot that was by turns infuriating and strangely endearing, Paul Danan did not want for success.
The actor, who rose to fame after playing Sol Patrick on the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks and brought colour, controversy and column inches to the first season of the TV dating show Celebrity Love Island, was rarely predictable, but he was always unapologetically and unashamedly himself.
In 2007, he was memorably sacked from a production of Jack and the Beanstalk in Preston, where he had been invited to turn on the Christmas lights, after offering a sweary but characteristically enthusiastic greeting to the assembled crowd.
Yet those who knew Danan, who has died at the age of 46, spoke in much the same terms as the PR agency statement that announced the passing of a man known for ‘his television presence, exceptional talent and unwavering kindness’.
Born into a Moroccan Jewish family in Chigwell, Essex on July 2, 1978, Danan harboured acting ambitions from an early age.
Having attended an orthodox Jewish grammar school from the age of nine, he quickly moved on once he realised drama GCSE was not part of the offering, eventually finding his niche at the Italia Conti Academy of Performing Arts in Surrey.
Night classes followed at the Sylvia Young theatre school in London, and before long he landed a small part in Eastenders. It was an experience that confirmed his passion for the acting profession.
‘I fell in love with it and thought, “This is what I want to do,”‘ he would later tell the Jewish Telegraph.
Paul Danan shot to fame on Hollyoaks and Celebrity Love Island
Hollyoaks star Paul Danan pictured as a youngster
Paul Danan pictured aged 17, when he was in the boyband Escape
Paul Danan (right) pictured with his Hollyoaks cast mates at the British Television Soap Awards in 1999
Paul Danan pictured entering the Celebrity Big Brother house in August 2017
It says much about Danan that former stars of the BBC soap opera were among the first to pay tribute to him, with Dean Gafney describing a man whose ‘demons’ were accompanied by ‘a heart of gold’ and Michael Greco hailing him as ‘genuine and caring’.
Such sentiments were a recurring theme among many of those who worked with Danan, whose big break came when, now equipped with an agent, he landed a role as the young ne’er-do-well Sol Patrick on Hollyoaks.
It was a break that would thrust him into the nation’s living rooms, garnering fame and female admirers alike, but it also opened the door to a darker world of drug addiction – and a recurring cycle of rehabilitation and relapse.
‘The day I started there, someone – and I am not going to say who – handed me an eighth of cocaine,’ Dana told the YouTuber Liam Tuffs last year. ‘I didn’t really know much about coke and he was like, “Welcome.” It was the first day, the first read through, I hadn’t even filmed anything.’
Danan, who first experimented with drugs as a teenager, described it as a moment when he crossed an invisible line, with his ‘addictive personality’ making it difficult to pull back. At least 17 stints in rehab would follow.
In a 2019 appearance on the Jeremy Kyle show, Danan described how he suffered a near-fatal heroin overdose after returning from a stint in rehab in South Africa. It was only the prompt intervention of his mother, who found a nearby ambulance after discovering him ‘choking on his last breaths’, that saved his life.
Danan’s rise to fame was inevitably accompanied by a string of high-profile romances, although the course of true love rarely ran smoothly.
The TV presenter Melanie Sykes was less than impressed when Danan arrived late to pick her up for a date following a car crash. The nascent relationship floundered soon afterwards, and Danan felt their rocky start was partly to blame.
Danan died just hours before he was due to appear in a Warrington courtroom on Thursday after being charged with the possession of drugs
A potential romance with Katie Price, with whom Danan is seen here, failed to get off the ground when she brought along another male companion
Danan also tried to pursue Hollywood star Cameron Diaz, seen here in 1994, and even proposed marriage to her just moments after they met
‘The guy in front had to go off in an ambulance and all I’m thinking was, “I’ve got to go, I’ve got a date with Melanie Sykes.” It was a shame, because that date could have been much better. We were on and off for a couple of months. She ended up getting together with an actor guy and married him.’
A date with Katie Price proved similarly unsuccessful – as did repeated efforts to woo Hollywood star Cameron Diaz – while a potential romance with Emma Bunton took a downward turn after the Spice Girl’s bandmate Victoria Beckham snubbed him.
‘She introduced me to David and Victoria Beckham when we got there, but Victoria was so rude,’ Danan recalled. ‘I stuck out my hand and she wouldn’t even shake it, she just looked at me.’
The upside for the actor was a 20-minute chat with David Beckham and a string of lovers that, he claimed, ran into four figures.
‘I don’t know [the exact number],’ he would later recall. ‘I think we’re definitely in the higher range, more than a thousand.’
Danan rose to fame after playing the role of Sol Patrick on the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks. He is pictured here in a publicity shot for the show
In his last public appearance, Danan is seen leaving Bristol magistrates’ court with a jacket over his head. The actor battled drug addiction throughout his life
Paul Danan, seen here at a fashion show in London in 2017
The downside was the inevitable loss of privacy that accompanied fame.
‘I had people shouting things at me and there were lots of girls,’ said Danan. ‘I loved it. But people also used to grab me and thought they knew me. Journalists invaded my private life, which made me feel like I didn’t have a life of my own.’
Fearful of becoming pigeonholed, Danan left Hollyoaks in 2001, trading Liverpool for Los Angeles. But after an unsuccessful spell in Hollywood, he was lured back to England by an offer to appear in the ITV dating show Celebrity Love Island.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have left Hollyoaks,’ he told MailOnline last year. ‘But I made that decision because after four years, I didn’t want be typecast and, back then, everyone didn’t want to be the next Ken Barlow. You wanted to go off and play different roles, especially when you’re a real actor.
‘I wanted to go to LA and I did. And I got very close to some very big, big films and things like that. But the rejection… the one thing I hate in life is rejection.’
In the circumstances, Celebrity Love Island was, said Danan, a no-brainer – ‘two months on a beach, with five of the fittest girls, and get paid for it’. But despite further reality and sketch show appearances, and the odd TV drama role, it did little to enhance his standing as an actor.
In 2020, three years after competing in Celebrity Big Brother and with the cost of his addiction problems beginning to bite, Danan returned to the family home in Essex. He said he had spent ‘about £1million on rehab and recovery’ over the years.
Another battle lay ahead, however.
Last year, Danan revealed he had a vape addiction and had been warned following a collapse that any further form of smoking carried the risk of him being ‘linked to an oxygen tank later on in life’.
But Danan had, by his own admission, become ‘obsessed’ with vapes, admitting that he would even fall asleep with one in his hand, ‘like a comfort thing’.
He told the Sun last year: ‘I saw a YouTube video where someone blew cigarette smoke into cotton wool, then did the same with a vape.
‘The cotton wool turned black from the cigarette smoke, but the [cotton] wool remained the same colour after the vape vapour hit it, and that experiment was supposed to symbolise the lungs.
‘Off the back of that, in my head – because I have ADHD everything is very visual – I’ve always thought they’d be OK.
‘After years of smoking cigarettes and all sorts, it’s the vaping which has done me in.’
Danan died just hours before he was due to appear in a Warrington courtroom on Thursday after he was charged with the possession of drugs.