Adrian Dunbar cheated death when his car was BLOWN UP on a family holiday in Jerusalem

Line Of Duty star Adrian Dunbar reveals he cheated death when his car was BLOWN UP on a family holiday in Jerusalem


Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar has revealed he had a narrow escape when his car got blown up on holiday with his wife and children in Jerusalem.

Dunbar, who plays Ted Hastings in the hit BBC show, says they had not long parked their rental car and headed into the city to explore during the intifada uprising when they heard an explosion.

The 62 year old said he growing up in Northern Ireland during the troubles had raised his awareness and he immediately knew it would be his family’s ‘budget American’ car that had been detonated.

Shocking: Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar has revealed he had a narrow escape when his car got blown up on holiday with his wife and children in Jerusalem

Speaking on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, the actor described how his upbringing gave him a ‘wariness’, saying: ‘I was in Jerusalem with the family.

‘We parked at the Nablus Gate and we went into the old city and we were talking. I heard a bomb go off and I looked up into the sky and I just knew it was our car.’

Dunbar, who was on holiday with his wife of 35 years Anna and their children, then went to go and find out what happened.

He added: ‘I said to Anna who was with the kids ‘wait here I’m just going to go and look at something’ and she said ‘why? What was that?’ and I said ‘don’t worry about it’.

‘I knew just from where the direction was and the fact that we were driving a budget American car and the intifada was still on that they had identified that the car was an American car.

‘When I went down, the car was a mangled heap. Thankfully, we didn’t have anything serious in it at the time like our passports or anything – that was to happen later.’

The Northern Irish actor, from Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, said: ‘But I just dealt with it like ‘oh, God somebody’s blown up our car’.’

Dunbar, who has lived in London for the past 40 years said he was ‘thrilled’ to be living in the capital but his experience of growing up in Northern Ireland shaped the things he would pay attention to.

He said: ‘When I first arrived, I did notice things that other people would not be aware of.

‘If someone came in and threw their bag down in the corner and went to the toilet, things like that you would think ‘oh right, he just threw down his bag, I will have to wait until he comes back’.

‘I would be aware and would be waiting for him to come back out of the toilet and sit back down beside his bag rather than just walk back out the door.

‘Sometimes you would be wary of silly things like seeing a car parked on its own, looking abandoned outside a public building.

‘You’d just think ‘what is that car doing there? Its 2 o’clock in the morning its on a double yellow line’.

‘You wouldn’t be thinking about it but fleetingly these things would register with you.’

The eldest of seven children, Dunbar said he would feel unsafe travelling round with a rock band he played in as a teen: ‘When I played with bands and you were travelling late at night it was very dangerous.

‘I was in three or four accidents mainly because people were tired at the wheel but scary things did happen and you did see things that really unnerved you.

‘Sometimes you were very close and just missed things.

‘When you’re young and a teenager, there’s an air of excitement about it. There is an excitement about living with a time when you have to grasp life as much as you can because it may be taken from you.

‘There was that freedom in those early 1970s in Northern Ireland. Living life at such a heightened level, you felt very much alive in that scenario.

‘So I was living with all these things. But I don’t think I have anything like PTSD or anything like that for example – that would come after being directly involved with a horrific incident or a death.’

Dunbar has played Superintendent Ted Hastings since 2012 in all six of the BBC series.