From ticket tout at Chelsea FC to Cillian Murphy's Peaky Blinders co-star... but does this sad image of drug-abusing Paul Anderson prove his luck's run out?

Growing up in one of the less salubrious parts of South London in the early Eighties, a young man called Paul Anderson used to dream of becoming a rock star. ‘I always wanted to be a frontman in a band,’ he recalled. ‘Not a footballer. Not an actor. Certainly not a policeman or a fireman.’

But an actor he became, and one who, ten years ago – by then in his mid-30s – sprang to fame courtesy of his commanding turn as gangster Arthur Shelby in the BBC drama Peaky Blinders.

The series, about a fictional Birmingham crime family between the wars, became cult viewing, not just in Britain but all over the world – and Anderson’s performance as the tormented, drug-taking hellraiser Arthur was seen as key to its success.

Roles in Hollywood blockbusters followed, including alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in 2015’s bleak western The Revenant. For years, few could imagine that Anderson’s future career looked anything other than starry.

Until now.

For, in a poignant case of life mirroring – or possibly outdoing – art, his world seems to have slid off the rails in a way that might have come as a shock even to the troubled and depressed Arthur Shelby.

Peaky Blinders star Paul Anderson leaves a bakery near his North London home looking gaunt 

At the end of January, it emerged that Anderson had been fined for possession of drugs, including crack cocaine, following an incident at his local pub on Boxing Day in which he had been found ‘inebriated’ and carrying a crack pipe. And barely had his fans digested this unedifying fall from grace than he was photographed last week coming out of a bakery near his North London home looking almost unrecognisable.

Gaunt and with his features heavily lined, the shambling Anderson appeared perhaps two decades older than his 46 years.

The transformation, together with the drugs conviction, has led to speculation that Anderson will not be invited to reprise his role as Arthur in the eagerly anticipated – and recently confirmed – climactic film version of Peaky Blinders, rumoured to begin shooting in early summer.

If so, this would be a bitter blow for Anderson, coming as it does against a backdrop of the continuing, glittering success of his co-stars on the show.

Only last week, Cillian Murphy, who played Arthur’s ambitious younger brother Tommy, won the Best Actor Bafta for his mesmerising performance as the eponymous scientist in Oppenheimer. Meanwhile, Joe Cole, who played another brother, John, had been Bafta-nominated for an episode of Charlie Brooker’s dark thriller series Black Mirror.

Then there’s Tom Hardy, who appeared as London crime boss Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders and to whom Anderson became so close during filming that he referred to him as ‘my brother’.

Hardy has spoken candidly about his own addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine as a young man, saying that he was ‘out of control’ before seeking help when he was 20. Since then his career has gone from strength to strength, including an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in The Revenant.

All of which makes Anderson’s fall even more poignant.

Raised in Kennington, South London, where his mum was a barmaid, Anderson dropped out of school at 14.

While dreaming of rock stardom he made money by working as an illegal ticket tout, earning himself the nickname ‘Boycie’ after the wheeler-dealer friend of Del Boy Trotter from Only Fools and Horses.

But operating outside the law proved the making of him. In 2008, aged 29, Anderson approached a Chelsea fan who wanted a seat for the Champions League game against Manchester United. The fan’s name was Nick Love, and he turned out to be a respected film director.

In a scene straight from a movie, Love heard Anderson’s gruff South London accent and decided that, despite his lack of experience, he would be perfect for the part of football hooligan Bex in the 2009 film The Firm.

‘I happened to be outside, and I was handling the odd ticket or two and sort of exchanging them for money,’ Anderson later recalled. ‘He was with a bunch of friends, and I sold them tickets.’

Paul Anderson plays Arthur Shelby in the BBC's hit Brummie gangster show Peaky Blinders

Love enjoyed working with him so much that he cast him in his film version of The Sweeney starring Ray Winstone. Anderson also appeared in Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows alongside Robert Downey Jr – and became so determined to perfect his new craft that he enrolled at drama school, describing it as the ‘university experience I never had’.

In 2013 he was cast as Arthur Shelby, a character that fans quickly clasped to their hearts. ‘Lots of people say, “We love Arthur,” and I guess I do understand,’ Anderson once told an interviewer. It was also a part he came to understand deeply – perhaps because of his own demons.

‘The thing I love about him and why I like playing him is he’s not just one-dimensional,’ Anderson has said. ‘He’s tough and he can be violent and brutal, but he’s not just that. He’s got this inner turmoil, this dichotomy: “I don’t want to do this but I’m doing it because it’s my life and it’s the way things are.” He’s not turning over a new leaf and being a God-fearing, pious, nice man. He’s still suffering.’

With fame came fortune. After parts in the 2015 crime thriller Legend and the 2017 western Hostiles alongside Christian Bale, Anderson bought a £1.2 million mews house in leafy Hampstead, North London. He was rumoured to be dating jewellery designer Stephy Clark, founder of cult brand Steph Metal, although their relationship status was never made public.

But in 2019 he said that ‘I feel like an imposter a lot of the time in my life’ – and during the pandemic, it seems his behaviour started to unravel.

In January 2023, it emerged that producers were investigating his conduct on the Peaky Blinders set after a complaint from a colleague, the details of which have not been revealed. Then came that incident on Boxing Day.

Police were called to the pub when a drinker told the manager there was a smell of drugs coming from the disabled toilet after the actor had left it. Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court later heard that police had found an ‘intoxicated’ Anderson with a young man and a 17-month-old baby.

He was taken to a police station where he was discovered to be carrying crack cocaine, a wrap of brown powder identified as amphetamines, diazepam and pregabalin. He tested positive for opiates and cocaine.

Paul Anderson alongside his Peaky Blinders co-stars Joe Cole and Bafta-winner Cillian Murphy

Anderson subsequently admitted possession of crack cocaine, as well as class B amphetamines and two class C prescription substances. In mitigation, defence barrister Moira MacFarlane claimed he sometimes struggled to shed the expectations attached to his screen alter ego when confronted by fans.

‘He is often recognised and does his best to please fans of the show by slipping into character,’ Ms MacFarlane explained. ‘He was recognised that Boxing Day and tried to play up for these people. And because of the lifestyle he leads, people often give him inducements.’ True or not, this appeared to make little difference to the magistrate, who fined Anderson £1,345.

Where this conviction, and Anderson’s troubling physical appearance, leaves his professional commitments, nobody knows. While Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight is understood to still be working on the film script, it is unclear whether Anderson would – or can – now feature in what has always been a pivotal role in the story.

However, it seems that the actor himself has not given up hope of reprising the character that made his name. Last week, in response to a comment on an Instagram post where a fan had written, ‘By order of The Peaky Blinders’, Anderson replied: ‘Forever.’

And let us not forget either, that if life does mirror art, Arthur Shelby is nothing if not a man who dreams of better times. ‘My heart is a battered vessel,’ he proclaims in one of his more memorable lines. ‘But within, there still beats a fluttering pulse of a dream.’

One wonders if, despite his recent setbacks, this troubled fallen star would say the same thing.