TEN QUESTIONS WITH
On playing Cockney villains, selling his soul to Marvel and why he never wanted his daughters to act
In Guy Ritchie’s new drama series, The Gentlemen, Ray Winstone is on familiar territory playing a Cockney villain doing a spell of porridge. But the 67-year-old, after five decades in the acting game, is also moving into the realms of fantasy — in the new film Damsel he plays an impoverished regent whose princess daughter (Millie Bobby Brown) has to battle pesky dragons.
I assumed you’d worked with Guy Ritchie before but The Gentlemen is actually the first time?
Yes, but we nearly did Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels together. I can’t remember what my role would’ve been, but it all fell apart – the money went somewhere else and he couldn’t make it. When they came back to the film, I was working on something else.
What kind of director is he? We guess you agree on what makes a crime caper?
Yeah, in a way. He’s pretty clear what he wants. Then he changes his mind! He does that all the time, by all accounts. But as long as you’re up to speed and you know what you’re doing, then it’s easy to change. If you ain’t done your homework, then you’re f ***ed. Because he’s a very clever boy.
What was it about your new film Damsel that appealed to you?
Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Anyone can talk a good film, but you get a little smell sometimes if someone’s a bit more serious than others. I met him in a cafe in Hoddesdon [in Hertfordshire], because the studios were in the Lea Valley – 20 minutes from where I live! So that was appealing, a job close to home.
Do you ever look back over your 50-year career and wonder why you took on a role? After all, you once starred in a fantasy film as Beowolf…
Not really, I’ve again not been offered those roles. But it’s nice to do this thing with dragons and all that. And I like little Millie Bobby Brown. Then you find out your wife’s gonna be Angela Bassett, and there’s Robin Wright, who I’ve worked with before [on Anthony
Minghella’s Breaking and Entering]. Also I’ve got grandsons, so it’s nice for them to see Grandad in a film.
You’ve been acting since you were 17, but Millie has been carrying a franchise, Stranger Things, since she was 13. Is being a young actor today very different?
I guess so. There wasn’t as much competition when I was a kid. I was pretty lucky. I got the chance to do work and learn my trade on the job. But with actors like Millie, there’s much more competition. And you’re under that microscope. The worst thing that could happen with us would be a critic in The Sunday Times has a pop. Today
