“I just wanted him to be a great guy”: Ray Winstone’s issues with Jack Nicholson
There are plenty of instances of on-set tension between co-stars. The feud between Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy during the production of Mad Max: Fury Road was so explosive that Theron allegedly referred to him as a “fucking c*nt” and suggested the producers fine him $100,000 for every minute he was late to set. During day one of Meryl Streep’s first movie, Kramer vs. Kramer, her immediate tension with co-star Dustin Hoffman inspired him to give her an unscripted slap to the face in the first take.
Most of these stories can be put down to clashing professional styles, whether it’s Theron’s adherence to discipline that didn’t align with Hardy’s more relaxed approach or Streep’s last-minute alteration to a scene that Method actor Hoffman had already prepared himself for. However, for Ray Winstone’s negative experience with Jack Nicholson on the set of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, the reason was less clear-cut.
“Me and Jack did not seem to get on too well,” the Sexy Beast actor said in 2014. “Maybe he was going through a funny time.”
He added, “Everyone else loves him to death – I just wanted him to be a great guy.”
Winstone had good reason to give the Chinatown actor the benefit of the doubt. Many of Nicholson’s co-stars have had nothing but glowing reviews of their on-set collaborations, with Morgan Freeman even going as far as to say that “every day was a holiday” when they starred in The Bucket List together because he’s been “praying at the temple of Jack” ever since he saw him in 1970’s Five Easy Pieces.
In The Departed, Winstone plays Frenchie, the former right-hand man of Nicholson’s character, mob boss Frank Costello. It’s a twisty crime thriller featuring a knockout cast, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Mark Wahlberg, and was a hit with critics and audiences when it was released in 2006.
Although the role of Frenchie is small, Winstone has gone out of his way to secure it, visiting Scorsese at the hotel he is staying in. “I told Marty I wanted to play Mr. French,” the actor recalled “And he said, ‘But he doesn’t say anything.’ And I said, ‘But he will.’ And he says, ‘Yeah!’ So he wrote out this character and just let me make it up, and that’s how French came about. And I didn’t want to play a cop anyway, I wanted to play the bad guy.”
In a cast of heavy hitters, Winstone barely gets any screen time, but it’s probably for the best that he didn’t have to do more scenes with Nicholson, given the tension between them.
The Shining actor hasn’t publicly offered his own version of events, and Winstone says he doesn’t take the disappointing experience personally. “It doesn’t worry me,” he added. “It doesn’t shock me. You clash a little bit. He’s not the first person I’ve clashed with. He won’t be the last.” When asked if he’d work with The Departed star again, he responded, “Of course I want to work with him again! He’s a fantastic actor!”
