Like any doting dad, Ray Winstone is fiercely protective of his kids. So when daughter Jaimie announced she was signing up for Strictly, the actor famous for playing hard men and gangsters, was blunt about his concerns.
The father of three girls recalls: “When she told me I was like ‘what are you doing that for? You don’t want to be a celebrity. You want to be an actress don’t you?’ But she said ‘Dad it is different today. That is the way in.’ And it is. It’s how many things you have on your Instagram – even I have got to do it now.”
The star – who has a miniature Stonehenge at the bottom of his garden – admits he “has to be careful” when posting on social media, adding: “When I was drinking, I used to talk about Egyptian burial grounds and the Pyramids. I had to stop that.”
Ray, 69, most recently on our screens as career criminal Bobby Glass in Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series The Gentlemen, admits he’s proud as punch watching his girl dance each week.
Propelled to stardom after playing a borstal inmate in the 1979 movie Scum, he reveals: “I think Jaime is so brave in what she’s doing, because you are vulnerable – you put yourself out there. It’s hard work, graft but I am very proud of her for doing it.”
His support for Jaime, 41 – who played Peggy Mitchell in flashback episodes of EastEnders – is unlike the tough love he received from his own father, Ray senior.
He says: “I am a little bit different from my old man. He had a 1,000 yard stare. You could feel his eyes in the back of your neck, but he was a big influence on me. I started working as a green grocer and worked in Spitalfields Market or Covent Garden when I was 14. On a Saturday, you would normally get up at 2am.
“One morning I did not get up. I just got a bucket of water thrown over me. Even though my dad did that, I loved him. He was a grafter, a worker and it was all about family and that’s followed through with me.”
After attending drama school, Ray landed his first professional stage role in 1975 in a musical – his dad advising “give it up while he was ahead” due to his lack of dance experience.
Over the following five decades the actor, a former successful amateur boxer, has seldom been away from our screens. Nominated for a BAFTA for the 1997 movie Nil by Mouth, he also starred in films as diverse as Quadrophenia, Sexy Beast and the 2021 superhero blockbuster Black Widow.
On TV, he played Henry VIII in the 2003 ITV series of the same name and has ventured into comedy with roles in Birds of a Feather and Auf Wiedersehen Pet.
As well as The Gentlemen, which was co-written by Guy Ritchie, the actor is due back on the big screen next year in a UK crime thriller, Going Under.
Admitting he is a “better man” now than at the age of 20, he recalls: “I was a little kid who came out of Plaistow, but you don’t start your education until you leave school – I think travelling and seeing people in the country where they come from educates you.
“I travel with the job and I am not an intellectual – I couldn’t read when I was 11 – but meeting people and having to work with them is the best form of education I could have wished for. In the end you run out of people to hate – you realise we are all the same and have the same problems.”
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been on-set clashes with writers and directors down the years, most famously resulting in a long running feud with Guy Ritchie over production delays on the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Remembers Ray: “I did not like the way the film was put on hold and I took umbrage in the way no-one was told. There were actors and crew who had rents to pay. I just thought it was a liberty and we had words. I could never see myself working with him again. But when they offered me The Gentleman, we had a cuddle and we moved on.”
Then there was the fall-out with Hollywood director Martin Scorsese when the pair worked together on the Academy Award winning 2006 movie, The Departed.
Admitting that with hindsight he would “take back” what he said, Ray discloses: “We had finished filming – Marty would like to shoot forever. As I was leaving, he said ‘hey kid, you are leaving just as I am starting to understand what you are talking about.’ I replied ‘that’s alright Marty. I will see you at the reshoots.’
“The whole crew was standing there. He has never spoken to me since. That’s the difference between British and American humour.”
Diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, Ray quit alcohol to be more present for his family and now feels like a “new man.”
He says: “I got fed up with drinking. It affects the work that you are doing and I got fed up telling the same stories – you’re with your mates and you tell the same story 50 times.
“When you are on the booze you think you are clever, you think you are so smart and you ‘aint. I just woke up one day and thought I’d stop. I wanted to see my kids and my grandchildren grow up. I wanted to spend a bit more time with them instead of the time in the pub. What is the most important thing in your life? It ain’t what you pour in a glass.
Ray, whose favourite film is the 1964 war epic Zulu, compares playing dark on screen characters to having therapy: “Instead of getting it out at home you get it out on a film set – all the emotions you may have inside you, you can get out within a scene.
“Although playing a gangster is different to playing a thief. A thief wants to feed his family, but a gangster wants to feed himself.”
Married for 47 years to Elaine, hie doesn’t take work home, adding: “My wife doesn’t even ask me what I have done in a day’s work. She has got no interest – I could be the milkman. She got the hump a bit when I kissed Angelina Jolie, but she did say ‘well, someone’s got to.’”
As a working class actor, he is unsure whether he would make it in the industry today.
He says: “Bob Hoskins and Michael Caine paved the way, they were all working class boys. Without those people we would not be working today.
“In the 1970s there were not many like me. I don’t think I would be here if I had not done the film Scum – I only got the job because of the way I walked!
“I was lucky enough to be around at that time and learn on the job; you don’t learn that at drama college. I had a kind of inverted snobbery and never felt I belonged. But you have to be at peace with yourself.”
A fan of West Ham, he is adamant he has no plans to go into directing or to retire.
He laughs: “I do what I do because I like doing it. What makes me think I can direct anything better than someone who loves that? And you can’t retire, can you? You’ve got to pay your tax.”
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