- The Observer, Sunday September 24 2000
Ray Winstone has no problems playing a cop. 'I'm an actor. It's like how comfortable did I feel playing a wife-beater, or a child molester, or a junkie? It's what you do.' Sure, it's stereotyping, but Winstone has been more often seen on the other side of the law. In the impressively complex ITV drama Tough Love Winstone is excellent as a detective trying to work out if his best friend and boss (Adrian Dunbar) is bent. The show dabbles in all sorts of topical issues, from child abduction to zero tolerance.
More than just playing a cop, Winstone is playing a cop with a Northern accent. At the age of 43, this is only the second time Winstone has strayed from his native London tones. 'I was never asked to do accents before, but by the time I got to an age when I was asked to do one, I was a bit bottley, because I thought "can't do it". Don't think they even really wanted me to do Mancunian, but it should be, it's gotta be.'
Winstone has become a bit of an icon in recent years.In a film and TV world packed with mockneys, he is the real thing: Hackney-born, Enfield-raised, a lifelong West Ham fan whose parents sold fruit and veg. He was an amateur boxer as a teenager. 'I had 88 fights and I had a doctor say to me: there's no way you can do 88 fights and not be damaged.' After boxing he tried drama school; he was about to be kicked out when the visionary TV director Alan Clarke cast him in the borstal drama Scum (1977).
The Clarke connection came good 20 years later when fellow Clarke-alumnus Gary Oldman wrote the role of a wife-beater in Nil By Mouth (1997) for Winstone, even though the two had never met. It changed Winstone's life. 'I was seeing people who wouldn't employ me three years earlier. I haven't got any hang-ups about that. But I was piddling about before.' Despite the subject matter, he loved doing the film. 'It was a doddle. I don't take it home. How can you take home beating up Kathy Burke? Go home to the wife: "Cup of tea, dear?" "No, you can't have one." Smash! Fucking leave off: I'd be divorced... 'Course, I could be lying to you.'
Another Clarke disciple, Tim Roth, chose him to play the abusive father in The War Zone . Winstone found that tougher, but not troubling. 'Good therapy. I know I've got no worries with myself.' Of course, there has been less celebrated stuff, most recently the much-ridiculed films Final Cut and Love, Honour And Obey. But given the chance, he's a fearless and brilliant actor. Right now, he's appearing on stage for the first time in four years at the Donmar Warehouse in To The Green Fields And Beyond, directed by Sam Mendes. 'It's fucking killing me. It's great. I just needed to go back and learn something. In one way you're going, "Am I completely insane?" But at the end of the day, it's only a fucking play. People in China won't know it's going on.'
No, if they know him in China at all, it will be, like the rest of the world, for playing Will Scarlet in the Eighties TV series Robin Of Sherwood. 'Think it was Germany, they put a right mincer's voice on my voice. My wife showed me it - fucking destroyed me, a psychotic mincer! I'm quite proud of Robin Of Sherwood, had three great years of it. Will Scarlet: the first football hooligan. Brilliant.'
Five things you should know about Ray Winstone
1 His early acting heroes were James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and John Wayne.
2 His approach to acting: 'I don't want to be seen giving a performance. People say, "He's just talking, being himself." Excuse me, there is a script. But it should sound like you're just talking.'
3 He has been married to his wife Elaine since 1979
4 'What am I afraid of? The dark, but I've beaten that. Spiders: don't kill 'em, but don't like them big hairy things.'
5 He's '100 per cent behind' the recent fuel protests.
