The candid reason Danny Dyer cast his 11-year-old son in new film Marching Powder

Arty appears as the son of Dyer’s character in the 18+ ‘Marching Powder’

Annabel Nugent
Saturday 08 March 2025 14:12 GMT
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Danny Dyer launches expletive Brit Awards rant at Keir Starmer

Danny Dyer has revealed the NSFW reason why he cast his young son Arty in his new film.

The Rivals actor, 47, stars as Jack, a cocaine-taking, football-obsessed middle-aged man in his new comedy Marching Powder.

The forthcoming movie reunites Dyer with The Football Factory writer-director Nick Love for the first time in 18 years.

Another notable name in the credits is Dyer’s real-life son: 11-year-old Arty, who appears in the movie as Jack’s child.

In a new interview with The Times, Love revealed why they had no option but to cast Arty in the role, which required him to watch porn in one scene while Jack is asleep.

“The casting agent said to us, ‘No agency is gonna allow a kid to say this, watch porn. You’re gonna have to find someone that you know,’” Love told the publication.

The part also called for Arty to memorise a couple of lines in preparation. The young boy was speedy in his work, explained Dyer, who said: “He learnt it in five minutes because he got to say c*** at the end.”

Dyer shares Arty with his wife Joanne Mas. The couple also have two daughters, Dani, 28, who appeared on Love Island in 2018, and Sunnie, 17. He and Mas got back together in 2015 after splitting up in 1996 – the same year that Dani was born.

Dyer and Mas with their daughter Dani Dyer in London
Dyer and Mas with their daughter Dani Dyer in London (Getty Images)

The couple, who are now grandparents to Dani’s three children, live in Epping in Essex.

Elsewhere in the interview, Dyer spoke fondly of his son-in-law whom he “adores”. Dani is married to Jarrod Bowen, the captain of Dyer’s team West Ham United.

Reflecting on raising his three children, Dyer said: “I’ve got very privileged kids. I had f***-all growing up, so I thought, I’m gonna give them everything I didn’t have, and it’s kind of backfired.”

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(Getty)

At the moment, he and Mas are deciding where to send Arty for secondary school.

“Do we go put him in Chigwell, which is an ultimate private school, or Roding Valley [a state school], where my daughters went, which is more rough-and-tumble and he’s not surrounded by surgeons’ kids?” questioned the actor.

Dyer recently made headlines after he launched into an expletive-filled rant aimed at Keir Starmer during the Brit Awards, forcing ITV to mute parts of his conversation with host Jack Whitehall.

Marching Powder is out in UK and Irish cinemas now.

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