Tamer Hassan, the actor best known for his stints in British cinema classics such as The Business and The Football Factory, has shared his desire to reunite with the casts of those classic films almost two decades on.
The 58-year-old was a familiar face in some of the noughties’ best-loved British action thrillers, many of which continue to garner fans to this day.
Mr Hassan worked opposite the likes of Daniel Craig and Tom Hardy in Layer Cake, went toe-to-toe with 50 Cent and Ashley Walters in Dead Man Running, and shared the screen with Hollywood star Nonso Anozie in Cass.
But in the 2000s and 2010s, it was his collaborations with long-time pal Danny Dyer that had film fans flocking to the cinema. The aforementioned Football Factory and The Business were just two of their joint projects, along with City Rats, The Last Seven, Freerunner, and The Hooligan Factory.
Reflecting on his career in some of British cinema’s best-loved cult classics, Mr Hassan admitted he hoped he’d have a chance to reunite with Mr Dyer and co once again after taking a few years away from the spotlight.
“There are generations of British film fans – I don’t like saying my fans because I’m not that vain – but generations of fans of great British films have grown up with these films,” he told The People’s Channel when asked about the legacy of his work.
“When it started, the guys that first watched it were my age, 50s to late 50s, then their sons and their brothers watched it. And it’s quite bizarre (because) 22 years on, I’m having 16-year-olds come up to me… and kids are going, ‘I love The Business, love The Football Factory.’
“And when we did those movies, I’m going to be honest with you, we got absolutely slammed. The language, the dialogue, the subject matter, what Nick Love did – and even Guy Ritchie did at the time with Lock, Stock (and Two Smoking Barrels), and Snatch and all that – we got slammed down for using the C-word and using this and that.
“(But) I read an article somewhere; I think it was on the 20th anniversary of The Football Factory, and they said, ‘We owe an apology. We stand corrected because these films have become iconic movies and they’re here to stay.’
“But for me, because before me it was Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, (and) Michael Caine creating movies like Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa, The Italian Job, that was an era of great British filmmaking.
“And then we kind of came along, and I feel very grateful and very blessed because none of us knew what these films were going to be, and to get one iconic movie in a career is a real achievement, but to be a part of Layer Cake, Dead Man Running, Cass, Bonded by Blood, The Business, The Football Factory… there are five or six films that people really adore and really relate to, and they have stayed. It’s really overwhelming.
“I’m really, really proud of those films. I always have been. I’m very grateful for their success, and hopefully one day we can create those movies again. We just gotta get the Brit pack back together! Me, Dexter (Fletcher), (Jason) Flemyng, (Jason) Statham, (Danny) Dyer, like an Escape to Victory thing!”
It’s not the first time Mr Hassan has expressed a desire to revisit the chemistry that endeared him and Mr Dyer to audiences in the 2000s.
In 2025, he told The Sun: “Danny and I dominated the British film industry, and we had a glorious 15 years together. I miss him. But I went to Hollywood; he landed a role in EastEnders. We went our separate ways. I hope we can grace the screen together again.”
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In recent years, Mr Hassan has been spending much of his time focussing on humanitarian projects. But in 2026, he made his comeback to the world of acting.
Mr Hassan returned to the big screen with a bang this year. He sparred against Craig Fairbrass in the latest instalment of the Rise of the Footsoldier franchise, Retribution, and now, he’s facing off against Bafta-nominee John Hannah in the mind-bending action thriller, Bad Day at the Office.
The pulse-raising blockbuster is a one-of-a-kind, action-packed film that follows Mr Hannah’s Karl through a first-person perspective. After Karl, who suffers from memory loss, wakes up in a wrecked hotel room next to a corpse, a series of dangerous and unexpected twists result in him and hotel maid Molly (Radha Mitchell) crossing paths with Mr Hassan’s no-nonsense Solomon.
The movie, which hits cinemas on October 30, is helmed by trailblazing director Chee Keong Cheung, who, according to Mr Hassan, knew just the way to approach the former Football Factory star to get him on board with such a unique and eccentric project.
“I think Chee (Keong Cheung), our director, was very cautious about how he sold the film to the three lead actors,” Mr Hassan told GB News. “He approached all of us differently. I mean, John Hannah being John Hannah, and Radha (Mitchell), I think, would have been the easiest once again because she likes all of this crazy stuff.
“For me at the time, I wasn’t really acting; I took some time out to do some humanitarian work. I was over in Turkey helping with the earthquake disaster and stuff, and then I saw Chee at Cannes, and I was kind of like, ‘I’m not really doing it at the moment,’ but he found my office, and I don’t know how he found it. He said, ‘I’m just outside. Do you want to go for pasta or coffee?’ And I’m like, ‘Chee, how did you know where it was?’
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“I love Chee. I’ve worked with him before, and I went, ‘Come on, mate, let’s go have a coffee.’ And in my head, I was just gonna say no. But I thought he’s called me a few times and out of respect, I like him as a friend, and then when he pitched it to me, the poker face was on, and I went, ‘Okay, email it to me.’ He said, ‘It’s already in your phone.’
“I literally came out, and my agents and managers were itching for me to get back to work anyway, and I rang them up, and I said, ‘Listen, I’ve just had a meeting with Chee, the director… he’s pitched this film to me. It’s absolutely epic. I haven’t read it yet. But don’t f*** it up… Whatever it is, I want to do this film.’
“So fast-forward from that. We read it. It was great. The character Solomon, I played, was just brilliant… And we accepted, we made it happen, we made it work. And then, on the first day, he didn’t tell me anything about this POV stuff, and the script just reads like a brilliant script!
“It’s action and then a dead man in the bath and this, that, and memory loss and killings and shootings. I think he did say something to me about it loosely being based around some kind of a game, and it’s a VR sort of movie, and I know how movies are moving on with technology and AI and all this stuff. So it was kind of exciting for me.
“But I went to the rehearsal thinking it’s a normal movie. I hadn’t been told anything. I think I’m turning up for a table read and a bit of back and forth, just a bit of reading like I normally do. But I turned up and I’ve seen John Hannah and Radha just climbing over each other with these mental rigs on. And then the fear set in.
“Then we had the rigs on, and we were moving around, and I was just terrified. I’m like, what is this? Terrified and excited at the same time because the minute Chee said, ‘You’ve got to be looking down the lens of the camera.’ Everything we’ve been taught not to do, we’re doing. It was literally like starting again.
“We discussed it later, me, John, and Radha, and I said, ‘What was the fear element for you?’ They said exactly the same as yours, but we just got on with it.”
Mr Hassan added: “This isn’t something that’s been done before. This isn’t something an actor can tell you they’ve had that experience because they haven’t.”
Despite the “risk” of the first-person, all-out action flick, Mr Hassan is convinced the creativity behind Mr Chung’s Bad Day at the Office has paid off.
“He took such a big risk, and a bold, brave one with what he does with action sequences… He’s the best of the best. He really is. But to be brave enough to step into this genre of movie (with one) that’s never been done before, he’s hit the back of the net. He struck gold with this.”
Bad Day at the Office hits UK and Irish cinemas on October 30 and is also available in 4DX and 3D in select theatres.
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