As Queen Vic landlord Grant Mitchell in EastEnders, Ross Kemp was involved in gangster plots, love triangles, and murder whodunnits that kept him on the front pages throughout his years on the soap.
Looking back, the actor admits the fame and money went to his head.
He says: “I’ll be very honest, I think I was a bit of an arrogant twit when I was 25. I was being watched by 25 million people. I didn’t have a care in the world.
“I had no responsibilities, no children, no one to look after, no one to care for.
“That manifested itself in selfishness and arrogance.”
Now 58, he has become better known for documentary series such as Extreme World and Ross Kemp: On Gangs, which have taken him to the world’s toughest prisons, wars and disaster zones.
He is also married and he and his wife Renee O’Brien have three children – Leo, eight, and five-year-old twins Ava and Kitty. He also has a son Oliver from a previous relationship.
So he is older and wiser and will bring all that experience to bear as he returns to our screens as an actor, playing a detective in Channel 5’s series Blindspot.
When we meet on the set in Hungary’s capital Budapest, he talks about the only other time he’s played a policeman, in the 2000 thriller Without Motive, which also starred Kenneth Cranham.
He says: “I don’t think I did a good enough job on Without Motive. I was in a different stage of my life. I was on a rolling contract where you wander from one job to the next. I don’t think I took it as seriously as I should have done. I was too young.
“Now I know a lot more about the world. God, I’ve been to over 120 different countries since then and I’ve not been staying in four-star hotels.
“Hopefully there’s a maturity you have anyway of being my age, but also the experience of what I’ve seen. There’s not many people who have been body collecting after a cholera epidemic in Haiti. When you’ve seen these things and done these things and watched dogs get fat on human corpses, it does change you.
“Hopefully, I’m no longer a twit and I’m just bringing my life experiences to my performance.”
In four-part thriller Blindspot, he plays jaded detective Tony Warden, who locks heads with wheelchair user Hannah Quinn (Beth Alsbury), a sparky CCTV worker who believes she has witnessed a murder on an estate.
Ross hopes his documentary-making has helped. He says: “I’d hope these life experiences would have improved my acting because if they haven’t, I must be really silly and stupid.
“For a year I chased around with the armed police in the West Midlands.
“I was in the police car virtually every other night screaming down motorways at 150 miles an hour. I saw them get spat on. I’ve spent time in Belmarsh, which is the maximum security prison for the UK. I know what American prisons are like and I know what Congolese and Salvadorian prisons are like.
“I’ve seen people sadly lose their lives in front of me. I’ve had people pull guns on me. People have tried to stab me. That does change you.
“I’m not saying I’m putting that all into Tony, but I think it’s made me better as an actor.”
Even while making his documentary films, Ross always dreamed of going back to his first job, which he spent three years training for at the Douglas Webber Academy of Acting.
He says: “I’ve been fortunate to roll from one documentary to another. I was looking to act again, it was just a matter of having the opportunity to do so and it fitting in with all the stuff planned. If you know you’re going to another country for a few weeks, that takes precedence. Life just rolls on in other directions.
“If you’re a pig looking for truffles, you’re not looking for acorns, you know? Luckily the overlap of this year means I’ve had my truffles, my acorns, whatever else pigs eat.”
He left Enders, where his screen wife Tiffany was played by Martine McCutcheon, in 1999 after a decade.
Ross then went on to a golden handcuffs deal with ITV worth a reported £1.5million a year. He returned to the soap in 2016 for the death of his screen mum Peggy, played by the late Barbara Windsor.
He admits he worried about having to learn lines again for his Blindspot role.
He says: “It’s been strange. I write the words for my documentaries, whereas this is somebody else’s words for another character.
“It’s like going back to drama school. Every scene I film, I remember basic training stuff I did another century ago. I’ve absolutely loved it.”
Born in Barking, Essex, his mother Jean was a hairdresser and his father John was a detective in the Met Police. Ross says: “I take after both my parents – I can grill you then I can ask where you’re going on your holiday.”
Growing up, Ross remembers his father working long hours.
He says: “I didn’t see him very often, I guess. He regrets it now. Detectives in those days had hand guns and, when he’d been to the range, he would bring home the empty shells and put them by my brother’s bed and by my bed and he’d be gone again before we woke up. We loved them.
“He told me he used to lean over our cots after a bad day and just look at us, and I do that now. I look at my own kids. It helps you make sense of why you’re doing what you’re doing.”
As well as being brought up by a detective, Ross’s time embedded with police forces means he now notices drug deals on street corners, or undercover police staking out gangsters.
Would he make a good policeman?
Laughing, he says: “No. I don’t like being told what to do – ask my wife.”
There is no doubt he is tougher than most. But he rolls his eyes when I mention the “hardman” tag.
He says: “Look, everyone has a warrior inside them, but everyone also has a worrier inside them.
“I’m as likely to be a warrior as I am to sing a show tune.”
* Blind Spot starts on Channel 5 on Tuesday, July 4, at 9pm.
