Dominic West: 'I have nightmares about Fred West'

Dominic West: 'I have nightmares about Fred West'
Dominic West: 'I have nightmares about Fred West' (Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Dominic West has revealed he has been plagued by nightmares since he took on the controversial TV role of serial killer Fred West. The star, 41, best known as hard-drinking cop Jimmy McNulty in US series The Wire, plays the murderer in an ITV drama to be broadcast later this year. Appropriate Adult centres on the time between the notorious killer's arrest and his prison cell suicide in 1995. The actor told the Radio Times: "I have this recurring dream where I'm perched on a wall and Fred West is trying to grab me and pull me down." He added: "But I didn't let him get to me. I was determined not to." The star defended the drama, which has been criticised by the daughter of the Gloucestershire murderer. In March, Anne Marie Davis broke a 10-year silence to say the broadcast would cause "unimaginable distress to the families of the young girls who were murdered". But Dominic told the magazine: "The production team have found a way of telling this story through the eyes of a social worker who was sent to interview West in prison. "I think it's effective without being sensational in any way." Dominic, who went to Eton, is also starring as a 1950s TV news presenter in BBC drama The Hour.

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.