 A fellow student recalled that Daniels, whom he knew as Dave, "was very serious about his work, and struck me as incredibly intelligent... you got the sense his mind was working; the cogs were ticking over".Daniels subsequently trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) for three years.One of Daniels' earliest roles was as Justin Hayward, the lead singer of the Moody Blues, as a teenager in two of the band's music videos, "Your Wildest Dreams" (1986) and "I Know You're Out There Somewhere" (1988).