Tributes have poured in for the “kind” and “gifted” Jewish actor Paul Danan who died last week aged 46 after a fall at an apartment near Bristol.
“So terribly sad to hear of the premature death of the kind, gifted, lovely man Paul Danan,” said Vanessa Feltz. Calum Best, Katie Price and Dean Gaffney were also among the stars offering their condolences. His funeral took place this week.
Paul Danan was born in Chigwell, Essex, to a Sephardi family on July 2, 1978. His father was from Fez, Morocco, and Paul attended an Orthodox Jewish grammar school from the age of nine.
“We davened every morning and put tefillin on every day. It was pretty hardcore,” he told an interviewer.
In order to pursue drama classes, he moved to a different secondary school before attending the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and gaining a degree in performing arts. He later spent three years in Los Angeles where he studied method acting.
Taking drama night classes at the Sylvia Young theatre school in London landed him a role in EastEnders. “I fell in love with it and thought, ‘This is what I want to do,’” he said.
His big break followed in 1997 when he won the part of Sol Patrick in Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks – the role for which he became best known and held until 2001. He later appeared on children’s shows The Queen’s Nose and The Basil Brush Show before starring on reality series Celebrity Love Island and Celebrity Big Brother, after which he found it hard to regain his reputation as an actor. However, he did appear in an episode of ITV1 drama series Crime Stories, and in the Sky series Good Girls. Between 2019 to 2023, he hosted The Morning After with Paul Danan podcast.
On a celebrity special of Come Dine with Me in 2011, the actor held a hip-hop night in the competition against contestants Tina Malone from Shameless, and Eighties pop star David Van Day. He told the JC that he developed his love of rap music as a teenager, when his older brother would “blare out” the likes of Public Enemy and Beastie Boys.
This passion for rap was cemented on the summer camp Star that he attended on the Isle of Wight in 1991 with his Jewish friends Andrew and Richard. There, he met DJ Yoda (Duncan Beiny).
Paul was an advocate for mental health and was open about his own struggles with addiction over the years, including his use of drugs and vaping. In June 2024, he was hospitalised for respiratory failure and placed on life support due to pneumonia, and was warned afterwards by medical professionals to stop smoking and vaping.
Paul was proud of his Jewish roots. He had debated making aliyah like his brother, who married an Israeli woman. “I love it out there – I spent most of my summer in Israel,” he said. “I have always been into Judaism too. I love going to the synagogue and I fasted on Yom Kippur.” He was the father of a nine-year old son, DeNiro.
In an unpublished 2024 interview with The JC, he said his Jewishness had proven a source of help for his addiction struggles “because it’s a very family-orientated culture. Connection is the opposite to addiction and you’re connected to your family and your friends – in the Jewish culture and religion we’re all very close and even if you don’t know the person but they’re Jewish, you straight away have some sort of good vibe. You’re Jewish, boom! I remember it always happening. There is that thing in common and it is quite magical.”
Judaism, he said, “helps” him. “I’m a people’s person. It’s helped me be more loving. It’s helped my morals; I have a God conscience.”
Paul ran a drama club for children and co-founded drama workshops in Bristol for people tackling mental health and addiction issues. His therapy programme Morning After Drama (MAD) used drama and improvisation to help people who were suffering.
He became manager and mentor to the Bristol spoken word/hip hop artist Phil Mac after the pair met in a dry house while they navigated their recovery from addiction. In an interview with the pair for the JC last year, Paul said he developed his drama classes because it “helps so many people”.
He said: “It helps me just as much – I come away feeling good. And that’s because we’re passionate about what we do and we enjoy what we do. We’re so lucky to be doing jobs that we enjoy.
“I can act and I can talk about my mental health and addiction struggles, and I can pull it all in one and teach these drama therapy classes, and Phil can do his music and talk about the mental health and addiction side.
“I found my calling and I thought it was to be a Hollywood movie star but unfortunately it doesn’t seem that’s the case. Developing an idea to still be able to act and teach that to help people with mental issues has seemed to be the one, and then obviously now music.
“It makes me feel so fulfilled when I see them coming in broken and then within a few weeks of us working together, them starting to find their confidence and feeling better in themselves. There’s no other buzz like it, no drug can give you that high. It is amazing because you’re seeing their life change and that is very fulfilling.”
He was able to use his own experience to help Mac through a difficult patch weeks before the video shoot for their collaborative track Follow was due to take place, and urged him to regain his sobriety. The track came out in December 2023.
“We suffer with this self-doubt and then the self-sabotage really comes in,” Paul said. “I’d experienced so many relapses. It can be overwhelming and sometimes it can be like, ‘I’m just going to mess it all up.’ It only took a few weeks for Phil to get near death’s door. He didn’t look well at all and it scared me and really upset me, and then I realised what my parents got when they saw me. When you see someone you really care about and you think ‘sh*t, they might not make it’, it is scary.
“It made me go hard on him, and he did listen. And I believe it was God coming through, Baruch Hashem. I swear it was Hashem coming through me and speaking to Phil, and there was something that resonated with him and he hasn’t looked back.”
“This disease, unfortunately, is a daily reprise. It’s never going to go away, but it does get less the more we do good things. My mum always says if you do good things, good things happen. When I’m doing good, great things come and when I’m not, nothing comes my way. But it’s not always your fault. We live with a disease that wants to kill us: addiction.”
Paul Danan: Born: July 2, 1978. Died: January 15, 2024
