The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe star Eddie Marsan, who believes John Darwin is a ‘narcissistic fantasist’, is now a Hollywood star but he previously had a nasty role on EastEnders in 1996

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The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe series trailer from ITV

Decades before playing conman John Darwin, actor Eddie Marsan had another controversial role.

The Hollywood star, who has recently rubbed shoulders with the likes of Ryan Reynolds and Jason Statham, is starring in new ITV drama The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe as the titular character.

Darwin faked his own death in 2002 by paddling out to sea near his home in Seaton Carew in County Durham, then wife Anne Darwin played the grieving widow and collected his £250,000 life insurance policy.

The former couple hid their secret for five years, until John came back to the UK claiming he had amnesia and a photo from an estate agents in Panama exposed them.

Two decades later, the Darwins’ twisted scheme is still shocking the nation – with Eddie’s performance as “fantasist” John being highly praised.

“I don’t know why they keep asking me to play these roles,” joked Eddie. “Producers are obviously saying, ‘we want a middle-aged bloke having a midlife crisis with a healthy close of narcissism. Let’s get Eddie Marsan.’ Thanks very much!”

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Brought up in Bethnal Green, London by his lorry driver dad and school dinner lady mum, Eddie first started working at a printers before beginning his career in the theatre,

“We’re all fantasists to a degree. I must have been a fantasist to think I could leave school at 15, become an apprentice printer and then be an actor. I must have been out of my min,” he confessed.

One of his first roles was in The Bill before he got roles in Casualty, Grange Hill and a short but notable one-off appearance in an episode of EastEnders.

In 1996 he played racist gang leader Roddy, a thug who controversially attacked fan favourite Sanjay Kapoor in sickening scenes.

Eddie was still talking about his role in 2013 as he jokingly lashed out at bosses for casting him as a nasty bully.

“Not Fair. When I did Eastenders, I was the head of BNP and beat up Sanjay,” he tweeted. “Danny Dyer gets storylines with Timothy West as his Dad. WTF”

Since then, Eddie has gone on to appear in American TV series Ray Donovan as the main character’s brother Terry and most recently in BBC drama Ridley Road.

But it’s his incredible film roles that are really worth talking about – and usually he does play the villain.

He’s appeared in big budget movies such as Gangs of New York, V for Vendetta, Hancock, Sherlock Holmes, Snow White and the Huntsman, Mission Impossible III, Deadpool 2 and The Gentlemen.

But now he is back on the small screen as a real-life character whose story seems so baffling it could not have been written.

John was sentenced to six years and three months in prison for admitting deception by faking his own death, while Anne received six-and-a-half years behind bars for fraud.

He was released in 2011 after serving half his sentence and wanted to rekindle his marriage, but when Anne refused he divorced her on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour.

“Yes. John’s a fantasist, but his story captures the zeitgeist,” explained Eddie, who put on a north eastern accent for the role.

“I always play characters who are psychologically deluded, narcissistic or abusive. It used to be that they were on the periphery of stories.

“Society was the norm, and they were outside it. But recently I’ve been playing these characters and they are among us now. The idea of a middle-aged man suffering from self-delusion and narcissism is quite prominent.”

When asked to describe John, Eddie said he had “delusions of grandeur” and exhibited a form of toxic masculinity that is sadly quite common in today’s society.

“In a narcissistic way, he thought he was smarter than everyone else,” says Eddie. “That’s why he had the cohones to try this. He thought he could outsmart everyone else.

“He saw other people as merely two-dimensional and thought he was the only three-dimensional person in the world. But he underestimated people’s ability to see through him.”

But the actor did admit he can see a bit of himself in John as he can identify with the canoe man’s “hubris”.

“As an actor, I go from thinking I’m going to win an Oscar one week to thinking I’m going to be driving a cab the next,” he said. “My self-esteem goes up and down all the time.

“So I can completely understand that in John. He refuses to face reality and thinks he’s going to win. We all do that, especially when it comes to money.”

John and Anne were both contacted about the ITV drama but did not want to contribute.

Asked what he would say to John if they met, Eddie replies: “I’d say, ‘What were you thinking? That was crazy!’ But I don’t know if I’d like to meet him.

“He’s probably hacked off that it’s not Brad Pitt playing him. When he heard it was me, he probably thought, ‘great. Thanks a lot!’.”

*The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe is on ITV at 9pm from Easter Sunday to Wednesday 20th April

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