The movie Ray Winstone doesn’t remember making: “I’d forgotten I was in it”
Ray Winstone instantly caused controversy when he appeared in Scum, the banned TV play that had Conservatives up in arms over its portrayal of violent young boys and the need for borstal reform.
The London-born man had never grown up wanting to be a star, but once he gave acting a crack, he never looked back, yet he didn’t find instant success, only starring in two feature films during the 1980s.
By the ‘90s, however, things started to look up, and roles in some unforgettable social realist dramas like Nil By Mouth and The War Zone helped to elevate his standing as a truly essential British actor, and soon he graduated to Hollywood.
A slew of successes in the form of Cold Mountain, The Departed, Beowulf, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull led Winstone to become an in-demand star, and he even got to the point of making movies he subsequently forgot he’d starred in, which he surely never thought would be the case when seemingly all opportunities dried up following the release of Scum, but to be fair to him, it was a voice role that he forgot he’d performed.
It was the mid-2000s, and with a young daughter, he took on a role in several kids’ movies, such as The Magic Roundabout and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Despite his role as a loveable beaver in the latter, it’s this classic adaptation that he completely erased from his memory as soon as he’d done his bit.
Starring alongside Dawn French as his beaver wife, Winstone’s role was small but vital, and it’s unmistakably him. The movie was the first in a trilogy that gave CS Lewis’ stories the Hollywood treatment for the first time, and while there had previously been adaptations for TV, Narnia had never been imagined on such a large budget before. It launched The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a hit, even winning an Oscar for ‘Best Makeup’.
When Winstone attended the premiere with his daughter, Ellie Rae, she had to remind him that he actually lent his voice to the movie, about which the actor recalled to The Independent, “I took her to the premiere of Narnia, I’d forgotten I was in it, and we were walking down the blue carpet with all the flashbulbs going off. I looked down, and she’s talking into the microphone, giving interviews, going, ‘My dad’s Mr Beaver’. And I thought, ‘What have I created?’ She’s very, very funny.”
How times have changed for Winstone, whose career was suddenly so full of movie roles in big shiny blockbusters that he couldn’t keep track of them all.
He should’ve at least remembered his role as Mr Beaver, though, because, as far as children’s films go, Narnia is one of the most magical, doing Lewis’ world justice with an array of brilliant performances from the likes of James McAvoy as Mr Tumnus, Tilda Swinton as the icy White Witch, and Liam Neeson voicing the noble Aslan.
