How Emmerdale actor and director Reece Dinsdale's dad inspired him to be himself

It was the death of his father that gave Reece Dinsdale the confidence to be himself on stage for the first.

“Like a lot of people I became an actor because I could express my emotions through being other people in a way I couldn’t do as a young man,” says Normanton born Dinsdale who now lives in Harrogate.

“Throughout my adult life I hid my light under a bushel in terms of being myself. But then two years ago my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died.

“Dad’s final gift was to teach me to be myself and have the strength to stand tall and proud, be who I am and have no fear. He told me to show people what I could do.”

Dinsdale is now touring his own show ...... which came about as a result of the pandemic.

“During lockdown I started thinking that having been in the business quite a few years and having worked with some interesting people I might have a thing or two to say. Feeling my dad was behind me I started to post videos on Twitter. They started as ten minutes, then half an hour and then an hour and then gradually ended up as two hours. And it took off,” says the 62 year old father of two.

“People just seemed to identify with what I had to say. Some were anecdotes from my career others were more personal thoughts on things like worries about my state of mind - both in terms of lockdown and previously - and the death of my dad.

“I invited people to send in questions and I started trying to answer them and then I’d end up going off on a tangent and once I started I just couldn’t seem to stop.”

The numbers of people watching ran into the tens of thousands and he kept the video chats going for eight weeks. However, it was never a numbers game for Dinsdale. It was about authenticity. “It really has been unreal, the response was phenomenal,” he says.

And it proved so successful that, after restrictions eased, artistic director of the Leeds Playhouse, James Brining, asked Dinsdale if he wanted to turn it into a one man touring stage show.

His show Reece’s Pieces started in September 2020 but when restrictions were reimposed the tour was put on hold, although now he is back on the road appearing at Harrogate Theatre (of which he is now patron) tonight and at York Theatre Royal, on February 3.

“I wanted to it be more of a conversation so it’s unscripted and I have someone asking me questions and then after about an hour we open it to the audience and they can ask me anything they like. The only thing I won’t talk about is politics as you end up splitting your audience in half.”

Dinsdale says he actually felt fortunate during lockdown.

Before the pandemic he had been working as a director on Emmerdale, and then one day he was asked to go the producers’ office.

“I wondered what I’d done wrong but then they said they wanted me to actually in the show. They knew I wouldn’t be keen as I was already directing but they said it would just be for three nights and the character was going to be killed off.”

And so he agreed to take on the role of Paul Ashdale, a blast for Mandy Dingle’s past who entered the soap two weeks into the first lockdown. In the ended up playing Paul for a year eventually seeing him successfully killed off in April 2021.

“It was a strange time to be acting and directing and in a lot of ways it still is,” he says.

“But I was thanking my lucky stars that I had Emmerdale and we [pretty much kept filming throughout the pandemic. It was disastrous for so many of my fellow actors, particularly those in theatre. The theatres are the life blood of so many actors.”

As an actor filming during a pandemic was challenging as the cast and crew had to keep a strict two metre distance at all times,but as a director the challenges were even greater.

“It was up to the director to try to make the actors look like they were closer together and we had lots of techniques but it was very time consuming.” He said they decided not to use screens like some other programmes instead they used plate shots where they shoot a scene twice with the different actors and then put them together to look like they are sitting together.

Dinsdale says being both actors and directors makes him better at both jobs. “As an actor who is also a director I understand what the director wants and how to achieve it. And I also think it helps me communicate with the actor when I am directing.”

The son of a miner and then factory worker and a nurse then care worker, acting wasn’t the first career to spring the mind.

But when he was 12 he was asked to step in as the lead Tom Sawyer at Normanton Grammar School when was 12 when a school pal was unable to perform, gave him the acting bug.

“I was telling this story in my show and it turned out that the lad who should have played Tom Sawyer was in the audience and said he’d dropped out because he didn’t want to kiss a girl. I owe him a lot.”

After finishing school he moved to London aged 18 to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he loved every moment of his three years.

Although his parents were always supportive, they never missed a show and even went to every live filming of Home to Roost, it wasn’t until much later on that he discovered his father had been a keen amateur actor and so may thespian was in his blood.

After drama school he took to the stage in regional rep including but it was in 1985 as John Thaw’s teenage son in the sitcom Home To Roost the he rose to TV fame.

Since then he has done everything from stage to small and big screen working with everyone from Kenneth Branagh to Peter Ustinov, Jimmy McGovern to John Thaw.

Although proud of his successful forays into directing, Dinsdale is also one of the few actors who can boast major roles in both Coronation Street and Emmerdale. He joined the cast of Coronation Street in 2008 to play the ill-fated Joe McIntyre, leaving of his own volition in February 2010.

“My greatest strength has been my versatility and my greatest success has been my longevity,” he says.

“John Thaw once said to me ‘always keep them guessing, always come out of a different corner’. I’m very proud that at the age of 62, that I know what I will be doing for the next 12 months and it will be something I love doing and really care about. I’ve been lucky enough to play some wonderful parts. I got off to a really good start and it snowballed from there.”

He lived in London for 24 years and loved it but when he married Belfast actress Zara Turner and they had children they decided they wanted to head north and Dinsdale could not have been happier returning to his roots.