Actor Jamie Foreman is to turn director to tell the story of his infamous father Freddie, one of London's most feared gangsters and an enforcer for the Kray twins.

The star of films including Nil By Mouth, Layer Cake and Ironclad, a new medieval action adventure out today, said he knew he would have to tackle the subject of his criminal roots one day.

Foreman, 52, hopes to go into production with a script he has written this year. Freddie, now 79 and retired, was regarded as the godfather of the Sixties' criminal scene for his time as a robber, sometime gangland killer and enforcer for the Krays. He was known as "Brown Bread Fred". The young Foreman grew up receiving "lovely letters" and birthday telephone calls from Ronnie and Reggie Kray.

But away from his family home in Borough, at Christ's College boarding school in Blackheath, he knew nothing of his father's criminal life until a police swoop in 1968. "The image and what is written about these people is not what they were really like. They were ordinary guys who did extraordinary things," he said.

Foreman, who now lives in Beckenham, added: "It affected my life so deeply. My film will be a different take. It's not flat noses leaping out of the back of a Jag. These men were very methodical, very businesslike."

He said that when he showed his script, backers quickly came on board including one of The King's Speech producers, Peter Heslop.

:Text may be subject to copyright.This blog does not claim copyright to any such text. Copyright remains with the original copyright holder.