‘The War Zone’: Ray Winstone explains the most conflicting role of his career
While Ray Winstone has often been cast in tough guy roles – typically portraying terrifying gangsters or abusive family members – he has always been incredibly versatile. Imbuing certain performances with well-needed emotional vulnerability, others with extreme coldness, and some laden with humour, Winstone has proved himself a necessary talent in Hollywood, although his beginnings were firmly rooted in his native England.
One of his earliest and most significant roles was in Scum, the infamous television play directed by Alan Clarke that the BBC refused to air due to its controversial depiction of extreme violence. The play, a story about the need for borstal reform, saw Winstone play the main character, and Clarke loved his performance so much that he employed the actor to reprise his role in a feature film version that would be screened in cinemas.
Winstone subsequently starred in movies like Quadrophenia and Ladies and Gentlemen… The Fabulous Stains before spending most of the 1980s appearing in television roles. However, the 1990s were more fruitful for Winstone, who starred in multiple movies that would help pave the way for his subsequent break into Hollywood, where he has since appeared in films like Cold Mountain, The Departed, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Noah.
After starring in the British social realist dramas Ladybird, Ladybird by Ken Loach, Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth, and Antonia Bird’s Face, Winstone was cast in a very challenging movie that left him questioning his decision to accept the part. The War Zone, directed by actor Tim Roth, was inspired by Roth’s own experience of sexual abuse as a child, making it a truly moving and difficult movie to sit through.
It has always seemed as though Winstone likes a challenge, as exemplified by his role in Scum or his performance as an abusive husband in Nil By Mouth, but The War Zone felt like a step too far for the actor. Playing the father of the family, Winstone’s character engages in incestual abuse by taking his teenage daughter to a war bunker and raping her. It’s extremely hard to watch, with the audience’s horror exemplified in Tom’s shocked gaze – the son of the family who witnesses the abuse through a small gap in the bunker.
The movie tells an important story that is sadly a reality for many people, but there was a moment during shooting that caused Winstone to consider leaving the project. Talking to IF Magazine, the actor explained, “I made a mistake, I think. I kind of put certain scenes in the back of my head like they were never going to happen. And when the day came, I wasn’t fully mentally prepared to do it. It was a day I nearly just packed up and went.”
He continued, “I got a bit angry with Tim; I got angry with myself. I thought, ‘I’m an actor. There’s a million films to go and make out there, if you’re lucky enough to get them. Why on earth would you want to put yourself through this?’”
However, Winstone realised that feeling so strongly about the movie was in no way a bad thing. “But thinking back on it, it’s quite healthy, in a way. There’d be something wrong with me if I didn’t feel that way.”
“You go through so much pain when you’re doing a scene like that. I mean, the girl who was doing it, Lara, she’s the age of my oldest daughter, which kind of freaked me out. I was beginning to worry about her,” he added.
Winstone did go through with the movie, which was widely acclaimed, although it remains one of the most harrowing films he has ever starred in.
