The director Ray Winstone feuded with for years over a scheduling conflict: “I didn’t particularly like him”
Scheduling conflicts can be the bane of an actor or filmmaker’s existence, especially when it rules them out of a project they desperately want to be involved with. For Ray Winstone, his calendar not lining up with a role that had been marked out for him served as the catalyst for a feud that would simmer away for decades.
Every bit the no-nonsense geezer off-screen that he is in front of the cameras, Winstone has always been happy to tell it like it is. He got the chance to work with one of the greatest actors in cinema history when he shared almost every one of his scenes in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed with Jack Nicholson, but that doesn’t mean he was obligated to like the guy.
He also added himself to the ever-increasing list of actors and auteurs who don’t have many kind words to say about the Marvel Cinematic Universe after discovering that his role in Black Widow had been reduced to a one-dimensional villain instead of the more nuanced character he was under the impression he’d created based on the performance he put in on set.
The downside of scheduling conflicts is that the production the talent has signed onto first always takes precedence, which robbed Winstone of the chance to get in on the ground floor with an unknown who was about to define a generation of British independent films for better or worse. The rift was eventually repaired, even if it took more than 20 years for Guy Ritchie to finally welcome him into an ensemble.
Winstone’s signature persona would have fitted seamlessly into the world of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and all of Ritchie’s early-era crime flicks, to be fair. The filmmaker developed a habit of working with several names multiple times during that period, and it’s not difficult to imagine a timeline where the barrel-chested behemoth could have been one of them.
Instead, thanks to a calendar snafu, they ended up at loggerheads instead. “The film got put back and I went and done something else,” Winstone recalled of the Lock, Stock near-miss. “And then me and him fell out. I wasn’t talking to him, and he wasn’t talking to me. I didn’t particularly like him, to be honest with you.”
Winstone has never specified exactly what went on between them, but in an interview with Variety, he hinted that there were several factors in play that intentionally kept them at a distance from each other. “We had a falling out,” he said. “There were one or two things that I didn’t like that went on, so we fell out.” Fortunately, time has a habit of healing all wounds.
In a typically straightforward style, Winstone eventually got over his Ritchie-related issues, even if he contemplated declining his offer to star in Netflix’s The Gentlemen out of sheer spite and residual resentment. “I just thought, ‘Fuck it, stop being little children and go to work,'” he remarked, getting over his hump. “And I’m glad I did because I enjoyed it.”
