‘I don’t give anyone a problem. You smell trouble, so you know how to avoid it': A larger-than-life confrontation with Ray Winstone
Fighting talk from Ray Winstone? Not this time. Event’s Cole Moreton challenges the movie hardman to justify his reputation at the end of a VERY revealing and dangerously feisty encounter. Seconds out!
‘We’re all waiting for someone to write something clever. When was the last thing we saw that came out of the East End that wasn’t about villainy? If I was offered a part like that, then I would take it,’ said Ray Winstone
Never pick a fight with Ray Winstone. I’m about to find this out the hard way, but the clues are there right from the start.
The actor looks like a Mafia don when I first see him, having a smoke outside a Soho hotel. Winstone is in a black polo shirt and shades, long grey hair slicked back.
He’s sucking a fag from his great paw as a gaggle of beautiful young things, male and female, encircles him.
This is the star of Sexy Beast, Nil By Mouth and The Sweeney, the hard man of the movies, walking inside with a swagger and drawing looks of lust and envy from those he passes, including the doorman.
It’s like a scene from one of his many films, establishing Winstone as the top dog, the boss, The Man. But a scene like that always leads to a challenge, and it makes me wonder, is this tough persona for real?
‘I don’t give anyone a problem,’ says Winstone when we are seated alone in the hotel lounge.
‘You smell trouble, so you know how to avoid it.’ You know how he sounds: drop an octave, growl like a lazy bear, slur your words like an East Ender. Yeah. That’s it.
‘All right, kid?’ Winstone boxed for England as a boy, before he came to fame in 1979 as the young lead in brutal drama Scum, battering a borstal bully and yelling, ‘I’m the daddy now!’
‘I stop boozing for two months, sometimes four. I get sick to death of the drink, it drives me mad. If I have a good drink, it takes me three days to get over it. I’m a binger,' said Ray
He’s been playing hard nuts ever since, including the ‘virile turbo-Cockney’ hero of Beowulf and Russell Crowe’s terrifying nemesis in Noah. But he does vulnerable too: his characters are flawed and sympathetic as well as handy, like the wheezy geezer he plays in a hilariously dark new film, The Legend Of Barney Thomson.
Winstone plays an old Cockney copper stuck in Glasgow, chasing a serial killer. It’s almost a parody of his image, so at 58 has he lost his edge? Can he, for example, still throw a punch?
‘You never forget how to do that. The timing might be different, but I can do it. I’m all right. I look after myself. I’m still lively.’
We’ll see about that, in a wildly frank and sweary encounter that will take us to the brink of actual fisticuffs; but his opinions are certainly lively.
Over the next hour he’ll wade in to Tony Blair (‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him through that window’), and the state of the NHS, which he blames for the death of his father. He’ll also be highly entertaining about his family life, ageing, and his tough-guy image.
All of this with nothing more to fuel him than a cappuccino, though Winstone freely admits he still likes a drink.
As a young man he was ‘a raving lunatic’ who shot his mouth off and backed it up with his fists, seeing and doing things that gave him an ‘access to menace’ that still serves him well. But he’s more careful now.
‘I’ve got to remember I’m not a young man. Do I really want to be rolling about in the mud and the blood and the beer? No, thank you. It doesn’t mean I won’t ever... but I don’t particularly look forward to it.’
Would he rather have a nice cup of tea these days?
‘Yeah,’ he says, a drawn-out sound like sandpaper on a bar top. ‘And a cake.’
He laughs, but even that sounds like a threat. Winstone was born in Hackney in 1957 and grew up at a time when the old East End was still intact, with its peculiar mixture of Blitz spirit, family values and violent villainy.
Ray has been with Elaine since 1979. They have three daughters, including actors Lois (pictured left) and Jaime (pictured right)
His father Raymond was a greengrocer who had a visit from one of the Krays when baby Ray was six months old.
‘Ronnie Kray picked me up and I weed all over his raincoat,’ he remembered recently on Desert Island Discs.
‘Everyone kinda went quiet, then Ronnie laughed and everyone laughed and I guess he went off to have his raincoat cleaned.’
His dad survived, unlike others who got on the wrong side of the Krays. So Winstone has proper gangster credentials. But doesn’t it bother him that anyone who comes from the East End is cast as hard? Wouldn’t he like to play someone more peaceful? The look in his eyes says yes, please.
‘We’re all waiting for someone to write something clever. When was the last thing we saw that came out of the East End that wasn’t about villainy? If I was offered a part like that, then I would take it. Absolutely.’
Instead he is back to type with two new roles. Winstone is the armed robber of the title in The Trials Of Jimmy Rose on ITV later this year, which reunites him with Sexy Beast co-star Amanda Redman. And he is almost a parody of a hard-man detective in the superb film The Legend Of Barney Thomson.
‘It’s that old thing, you know? There’s a bit of George Gently in there. I can’t put a date on when it’s set. Is it now, or back then? Glasgow’s a bit like that, parts of London are too, lost in the Seventies.
‘He ain’t a bad cop, he susses things, but there’s something wrong with the geezer. He ain’t quite right.’ DI Holdall has the sharp suit and the big gun, but Winstone sends himself up a bit.
‘The film is so surreal, it’s mental really. It’s very different from anything I’ve seen. I’m not really one for doing ad libs but I thought, “I’m gonna take the p*** a little bit here, push the boat out, see if it works.”’
His old mate, the Trainspotting and Hamish Macbeth star Robert Carlyle, directs and stars as the eponymous Thomson, a barber who accidentally starts killing people in a very gory Scottish black comedy critics are calling Tartan-tino.
As a teenage boxer in the early Seventies. Can he, for example, still throw a punch? ‘You never forget how to do that. The timing might be different, but I can do it. I’m all right. I look after myself. I’m still lively,' he said
‘I was sitting in the hotel in Glasgow with him and he was knackered. I said: “I bet this was a good idea when you first had it, weren’t it Bob?” He said: “Yeah, I’ll never do it again.”’
But the most extraordinary thing about the movie is Emma Thompson – almost unrecognisable under body suit, latex and wig, as a hard-drinking, hard-swearing Glaswegian pensioner, the barber’s mother Cemolina. Even Winstone did not recognise her on set at first.
‘Physically, she just completely changes. It’s not just make-up, it’s everything, you know? Good girl, she is. Fantastic. I only done one scene with her, to be fair, but she’s an amazing actress. All in. She just goes, “Well, I’m gonna do this!”’
They filmed the movie quickly, over 28 days in various parts of Glasgow. Did he get any trouble there? After all, Winstone upset a lot of Scots when he hosted Have I Got News For You and said the country was only good for ‘oil, whisky, tartan and tramps’.
‘Oh, I probably said that, yeah. It was probably scripted for me,’ he says, grinning.
‘I don’t remember half the things I say. But listen, I’ve walked around Glasgow most of my adult life and never had a problem. I’ve had some of my best times ever there. It’s fabulous...
'I don’t want to say it’s a mini-London, because that sounds bad. I always p*** them off. I p*** everybody off. But I get on well with them, actually.’
Does he fancy having a go at directing, like Carlyle?
‘No. I’ve been asked a few times. I don’t know whether I’d have the patience for actors banging on my door at half past midnight, saying [he puts on a whiney voice]: “I don’t know what to do about this scene.” I’d probably end up killing all my actors.’
I’ve got to say, taking my life in my hands, that Winstone looks overweight and unfit in this movie, as befits the character. Did he pile it all on for the part, like Robert de Niro in Raging Bull?
‘No! I didn’t put on all that weight on purpose. The film came along at the last minute and I wasn’t ready, physically. I suppose I’d been partying. It was just after Christmas.’
Winstone looks trimmer and fitter now, so how did he get in better shape?
‘I don’t go mad, I don’t go running and all that, but I do me walking, on a machine. I’ve hurt me back at the moment and I can’t do that, so I feel the weight going on, boom, boom. It is a gluttony thing as much as anything else.’ What does that mean?
‘If I’m doing my exercises, I can have a drink and I can eat the food I wanna eat, and I keep at a steady pace.’
He gives up drinking at the start of every year.
‘I stop boozing for two months, sometimes four. I get sick to death of the drink, it drives me mad. If I have a good drink, it takes me three days to get over it. I’m a binger.’
Ray with his mum in 1979. ‘You don’t really grow up properly until you lose your mum or you lose your dad. All of a sudden life changes,' he said
Quite an admission. What’s his drink of choice? Real ale, maybe, a posh lager? No.
‘I like a vodka and Coke – love a vodka. I’m not a beer drinker. I get full up: two pints of beer and I don’t feel good. Whereas a spirit, I can guzzle it like there’s no tomorrow.
'Then I wake up next day, and go [in an even croakier voice that sounds like death] “I ain’t doing that for at least a week.”’ The resolve doesn’t always last.
‘I’m not gonna stop something I enjoy. The minute someone tells me, “This is really killing ya,” I’ll stop. I know I can do that.’
He’s looking for orders, as if the doctor was a film director – but has nobody ever told him smoking kills?
‘I just done a puffy thing, a lung test, and the doctor said, “You don’t smoke. Your heart and lungs are great.” I said, “I do!”’ I started smoking for a film called All Washed Up, with the Sex Pistols and The Clash. They was the band, I was the singer. Mad film. I ought to have been arrested for impersonating an actor.
‘Anyway, the doctor said, “When you smoke, keep the smoke in your mouth don’t take it down.” I went, “Why are you telling me this?” I wanted him to tell me I couldn’t smoke no more. What is the point of spending £10.50 a day on fags you don’t take down?.’
Could he give up then? There’s no bravado, just a sigh. ‘Well, that’s the hardest thing.’ E-cigarettes?
‘Listen, I was in Louisiana and I thought, “Right, I’m gonna get one of those vapour things.” So I got the geezer in the store to give me one, blackberry flavour, took it home and put the thing in the wrong hole. I fused it! I went, “I’m not destined to have this, am I?” I paid 80 bucks and I never used it.’
So there it is: one of the great on-screen smokers doesn’t even do it properly and can’t work an e-fag. He’s old-fashioned in other ways too: Winstone has been with Elaine since 1979.
They have three daughters, including actors Lois and Jaime Winstone. Given he spends his life on set with beautiful women, how has he managed to keep it together?
‘Wherever you work you’re gonna have beautiful women around ya.’
Ray with Hayley Atwell in The Sweeney. Despite the belly, the yellow Y-fronts and the 25-year age gap, she called him an ‘attractive, charismatic Alpha male
Er, not quite Ray. I don’t remember getting to snog a naked, golden Angelina Jolie last time I was in the office. Only their avatars made bodily contact in Beowulf, but he got up close and personal with Hayley Attwell in The Sweeney.
Despite the belly, the yellow Y-fronts and the 25-year age gap, she called him an ‘attractive, charismatic Alpha male’. But he insists he has no interest in playing any love scene for real.
‘It’s a mentality, innit? You stay together. People don’t get married now, they live together for a while. That makes it that little bit easier, if you have a row, to walk away.
'If things don’t go right, financially or whatever, you walk. I’m from a generation that is a bit more Edwardian or Victorian in a way, that says, “When you’re married you make it work. This is family, this is what we do.” I like that.’
Family is on his mind, because it is not long since he lost his father. Raymond was a greengrocer turned cab driver, who died last year at the age of 82.
‘You don’t really grow up properly until you lose your mum or you lose your dad. All of a sudden life changes. My sister said to me, ‘You know we’re orphans, now don’t you?” It kinda dawns on you that you’re on your own and you will have to make decisions on behalf of a family.”’
He’s the daddy of his whole family now, a promotion that can be heartbreaking for a man. There is nobody to ask for advice any more.
‘I’d already know the answer he was gonna give me, but yeah, you’re an orphan now. It’s quite hard hitting.’
Winstone does not hide his anger: he blames the state of the NHS for the death of his father.
‘My dad fell over and was in bad form, but by the time he came out of hospital the first time, he was dead. I mean, he didn’t actually die for another four years, but he got septicaemia in hospital [that eventually killed him].
'There weren’t enough staff, because they were run off their feet, so they couldn’t move him or turn him over. That’s where they screwed him, there.’
One visit to the hospital in Epping was particularly traumatic.
‘The doors of the ward were locked. We were ringing the bell, but we couldn’t see a nurse or anyone. When we did get in he was dehydrated and he needed to be moved.
'There was three people on the same ward who had the same problem, septicaemia, and two of them lost legs over it.’
He doesn’t blame the staff.
Ray plays an old Cockney copper stuck in Glasgow, chasing a serial killer in The Legend Of Barney Thomson, which also stars Robert Carlyle (pictured left) and Emma Thompson
‘You can’t take it out on nurses or doctors, because that’s their vocation, their love – but there’s something very seriously wrong with the NHS. It’s been abused and misused for the past 30 years.
'It’s like anything that seems to be there for us – the fire service, the police force, education, hospitals – gets put on the back burner. They should be the priority, surely?’
I’m struggling to square this with the Ray Winstone who said he would leave the country if his taxes went up. He has been declared bankrupt twice in his life because of the taxman, the last time in 1993.
But that was before Sexy Beast, the breakthrough role that had serious Hollywood directors knocking on his door.
Scorcese chose him for The Departed, Sean Penn gave him a starring role in The Gunman earlier this year. Then there are the ads he does for Bet365, which seem to be on every time there’s a football match.
‘Bet in play... now!’ They’re a bit of a joke but must earn him a fortune, so presumably he’s not skint?
‘I’m doing alright. I’m getting a good living, you know? But you have things to pay for, you have family to look after.
'It would be lovely to be able to sit on your porch until something turns up that makes you go, “Oh, I want to do that.” But you can’t be that choosy as an actor, you have to pay the rent.’
I read he was a Labour supporter – is that true?
‘I’ve never been a Labour man in my life. No. You think I’d vote for Tony Blair? I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can pick him up and throw him through that window, I promise you. I can’t have him.’
I wouldn’t fancy Blair’s chances if he were in the room, but it’s not just a personal antipathy to the former leader; he thinks the party is in crisis.
‘You tell me that they’re for the people. They ain’t the Labour Party there was back in the Fifties and Sixties. I’d like to see a party preach what they practise. I don’t see that.’
So I take him for an old-fashioned socialist, but again that turns out to be wrong too.
‘I have to say the Coalition, with that man Clegg looking over our Prime Minister’s shoulder, it seemed to work alright. Don’t you think so?’
Did he vote Tory at the last election then?
‘No, I wasn’t in the country.’
Right. So he didn’t even vote by post or proxy, but that doesn’t stop him having strong views on the way Britain should be run.
‘We should look at where the people who’ve got money are sending the money, because they’re raping our economy.’
He’s talking about the Russians, Chinese and others who are buying up London properties and sending prices sky high.
‘Physically, she (Emma Thompson) just completely changes. It’s not just make-up, it’s everything, you know? Good girl, she is. Fantastic. I only done one scene with her, to be fair, but she’s an amazing actress,' said Ray
‘The Germans dropped forged notes on this country during the Second World War to try to destroy the economy. Now every bit of land we have is being bought by foreign investors. But the buildings are empty.
'They sit on a place until the price goes up, sell it and take the money. Everything they’ve earned goes out of the country.’
Winstone moved out to Essex when he made his money, as many East End families have done, including mine. Does it bother him that the culture we both knew as kids has gone?
‘It bothers me my culture’s gone, yeah, but what was the culture before then that my culture overtook? That’s the way a city is.’
Even if he did vote, it wouldn’t be for Ukip.
‘There’s people who wanna come here and work. If they wanna give something to this country all well and good. As long as they don’t take liberties and start being scallywags.’
W oe betide anyone who behaves like a scallywag around Winstone – they’ll get a slap. But I’m still not convinced that this genial geezer with a gob on him is really as hard as he looks. Has he ever been challenged to a fight?
‘No,’ he says quickly, then thinks again. ‘Back in the day. In 40 years of being in this game, maybe twice.’ What happened?
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant. If you treat people how you wish to be treated, you don’t have a problem.’
What if I challenged him? You and me Ray, outside now.
‘You what?’
Neither of us can believe I’ve just said that. I want him to say nah, it’s all an act and give me a nice bear hug. Instead he’s taking it seriously, staring like Regan in The Sweeney, only it doesn’t feel like acting. Eyeball to eyeball, he’s bloody scary.
Take it from me, he can still turn on the old menace and be every bit as frightening in real life as he is on screen. Gulp.
So it’s a huge relief when he winks, cackles and lets me go unharmed, growling words that are both a blessing and a warning to me and anyone else who ever feels like picking a fight with Ray Winstone: ‘Don’t. Be. Daft.’
STILL THE DADDY... RAY WINSTONE'S BEST FILMS
SCUM (1979)
So familiar is Winstone as the middle-aged hardman that it’s easy to forget that he was ever young. Or how good he was when he was. Scum, Alan Clarke’s 1979 Borstal drama, will remind you, with Winstone chillingly convincing as Carlin, the young thug determined to become the violent ‘daddy’
NIL BY MOUTH (1997)
Written and directed by Gary Oldman, this is the film that re-launched Winstone’s film career. After 20 years as a jobbing TV actor, Oldman cast him as Raymond, the alcoholic and abusive patriarch of a south London family. Suddenly he was at the Cannes Film Festival showing the world what he could do. Scary and believable: Winstone the film star had arrived
SEXY BEAST (2000)
It was Sir Ben Kingsley who got the accolades and the Oscar nomination for his show-boating supporting turn as sociopath Don Logan. But it’s Winstone, as Gal, the retired safecracker reluctant to leave his Spanish retreat and the wife he adores for one last job, who keeps us watching right through to the end. Sunshine and swimming pools have never felt so sinister
THE DEPARTED (2006)
When Martin Scorsese asks you to work for him, most actors say: ‘Where do I sign?’ Not Winstone. Scorsese invited him to the Dorchester to offer him the role of a Boston cop in a film with Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg on board. But Winstone wanted to play Nicholson’s right-hand man, Mr French. Some 45 minutes later he got his way
THE PROPOSITION (2005)
Set in 19th-century Australia but, at heart, it’s a classic Western with Winstone superb as frontier lawman Stanley. As part of his zealous mission to clean up the badlands, he offers an outlaw a fiendish proposition: capture and kill his psychopathic older brother or he executes the younger brother already in custody
LAST ORDERS (2001)
Not the classic it ought to have been but it demonstrates Winstone’s ability to hold his own in the most distinguished company. He joins some of the greats of British cinema – Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Helen Mirren and Tom Courtenay – as three friends and son Vince (Winstone) say a final goodbye to Jack (Caine) and begin the nostalgia-fuelled journey to scatter his ashes in the sea at Margate
