Actor Dominic West has revealed that he has been plagued by nightmares since he took on the controversial TV role of Gloucestershire serial killer Fred West.
The star, 41, best known as hard-drinking cop Jimmy McNulty in the 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 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 the actor 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.”
He added: “Fred West preyed on runaways without being caught for 25 years. We should not forget this case, because there could be others like him.”