Ray Winstone’s bizarre enjoyment of his most traumatising roles: “We had to have fun”
Being an actor often requires a performer to visit some seriously dark places in order to get the best insight into their character, which Ray Winstone has done on more than one occasion. However, he’s always managed to find the positives, even in the grimmest of pictures.
It’s something he’s probably been used to since the beginning of his career when Scum became a controversy magnet. The original televised version was shot before being scrapped and banned, leading Winstone and director Alan Clarke to reunite for a feature-length version that was every bit as incendiary.
Over the last three decades, Winstone has settled into his groove as one of cinema’s pre-eminent geezers. Not many filmmakers would consider casting him as a romantic lead or as the face of a frivolous comedy, but if their production is in desperate need of a formidable and barrel-chested talent who can project menace with the greatest of ease, then he’s ready to answer the call.
Two of Winstone’s finest performances came in a pair of movies that weren’t easy to watch. He was a terrifying force of nature in Gary Oldman’s unflinching Nil by Mouth and plumbed the depths of psychological and emotional depravity as the incestuous patriarch of the central family in Tim Roth’s The War Zone.
For some reason, the darkest turns in Winstone’s filmography both came when fellow actors were directing him, and it brought out the best in all parties. That said, he was ready to quit The War Zone altogether when it started becoming a little too much, only for the star to grit his teeth and persevere with the hauntingly twisted family drama. Undeniably intense, but at least he managed to have fun.
In an interview with Port, Winstone explained the bizarre sense of enjoyment he derived from his most grisly work, which makes sense in a strange way when failing to find any positives whatsoever would have only conspired to pile misery on top of misery.
“Nil by Mouth was enjoyable for the simple reason that you had such a quality script. And a great director, Gary Oldman, who respected the opinions of the actors,” he said. “We had to have fun on The War Zone because it was such a difficult story. I was fine until one scene: the bunker scene. I thought I was ready for it, and I wasn’t. It broke my heart. Thank god for the crew. I was ready to kill Tim Roth, the director, at that point.”
Embodying a reprehensible character who performs abhorrent acts wasn’t easy, even if Winstone admitted that “you have to party when you do a film like that.” It definitely wasn’t a party for the audience, but the actor remained adamant that even with such dark and traumatising material, “You have to enjoy it because if you don’t, you’d lose your mind.”
