Craig Fairbrass returned as Pat Tate in Rise of the Footsoldier: Retribution, the seventh film in the British crime series, at its London premiere in Leicester Square.
Craig Fairbrass, once Dan Sullivan in EastEnders, led the London premiere of Rise of the Footsoldier: Retribution at Cineworld Leicester Square in the West End on Tuesday 25 August 2026.
Fairbrass was born at Mile End Hospital in 1964 and grew up in Stepney, the son of a seamstress and a dock worker. Expelled from school at 15, he won a place at the National Youth Theatre and worked as a roofer and a doorman.
The series began in 2007 with Julian Gilbey’s film of the autobiography of Carlton Leach, the football hooligan who became a doorman in the Essex underworld. Later films turned to Pat Tate and Tony Tucker, the dealers shot dead in the Rettendon murders of 1995. Fairbrass has played Tate in five of them.
Nick Nevern directed the seventh film and wrote it with Andrew Loveday. It sends Tate to 1990s Ibiza to avenge a friend’s murder, with Tamer Hassan and Leo Gregory as the mercenaries in his way.
After a first screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Signature Entertainment released it in British cinemas on 28 August.
Vanessa Bauer joined the cast in her first feature.