Early life

Winstone was born in Homerton, Hackney, London. Winstone moved to Enfield when he was seven, and grew up on a council estate just off the A10 road. His father, Raymond J. Winstone (1933-2015), ran a fruit and vegetable business, while his mother, Margaret (née Richardson; 1932-1985), had a job emptying fruit machines. Winstone recalls playing with his friends on bomb sites until "Moors Murderers" Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were arrested for killing three children. Ray joined Brimsdown Primary School and then he was educated at Edmonton County School, which had changed from a grammar school to a comprehensive upon his arrival. He also attended Corona Theatre School. He did not take to school, eventually leaving with a single CSE (Grade 2) in Drama.

Winstone had an early affinity for acting; his father would take him to the cinema every Wednesday afternoon. Later, he viewed Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and said: "I thought, 'I could be that geezer'." Other major influences included John Wayne, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson. After borrowing extra tuition money from a friend's mother, a drama teacher, Winstone took to the stage, appearing as a Cockney newspaper seller in a production of Emil and the Detectives.

Winstone was also a fan of boxing. Known to his friends as Winnie, he was called Little Sugs at home (his father already being known as Sugar, after Sugar Ray Robinson). At the age of 12, Winstone joined the famous Repton Amateur Boxing Club. Over the next 10 years, won 80 out of 88 bouts. At welterweight, he was London schoolboy champion on three occasions, fighting twice for England. The experience gave him a perspective on his later career: "If you can get in a ring with 2,000 people watching and be smacked around by another guy, then walking onstage isn't hard."

School

Deciding to pursue drama, Winstone enrolled at the Corona Stage Academy in Hammersmith. At £900 a term, it was expensive, considering the average wage was then about £36 a week.

He landed his first major role in What a Crazy World at the Theatre Royal, Stratford, London, but he danced and sang badly, leading his usually-supportive father to say "Give it up, while you're ahead." One of his first TV appearances came in the 1976 "Loving Arms" episode of the popular police series The Sweeney where he was credited as "Raymond Winstone" and played a minor part as an unnamed young thug.

Winstone was not popular with the establishment at his secondary school, who considered him a bad influence. After some 12 months, he found that he was the only pupil not invited to the Christmas party and decided to take revenge for this slight. Hammering some pins through a piece of wood, he placed it under the wheel of his headmistress's car and blew out the tyre. For this, he was expelled. As a joke, he went up to the BBC, where his schoolmates were involved in an audition, and got one of his own by flirting with the secretary. The audition was for one of the most notorious plays in history - Alan Clarke's Scum - and, because Clarke liked Winstone's cocky, aggressive boxer's walk, he got the part, even though it had been written for a Glaswegian. The play, written by Roy Minton and directed by Clarke, was a brutal depiction of a young offender's institution. Winstone was cast in the leading role of Carlin, a young offender who struggles against both his captors and his fellow cons to become the "Daddy" of the institution. Hard hitting and often violent (particularly during the infamous "billiards" scene in which Carlin uses two billiard balls stuffed in a sock to beat one of his fellow inmates over the head) the play was judged unsuitable for broadcast by the BBC, and was not shown until 1991. The banned television play was entirely re-filmed in 1979 for cinematic release with many of the original actors playing the same roles. In a recent director's commentary for the Scum DVD, Winstone cites Clarke as a major influence on his career, and laments the director's death in 1990 from cancer.

Winstone's role in Scum seems to have set a mould for many of his other parts; he is frequently cast as a tough or violent man. He has also been cast against type, however, in films in which he reveals a softer side. He had a comedy part in Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence, and played the romantic lead in Fanny and Elvis. His favourite role was in the television biographical film on the life of England's most notorious monarch, King Henry VIII, in which he played the title role.

Television and film

After a short run in the TV series Fox, and a role in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (alongside Diane Lane, Laura Dern and a host of real life punks like Fee Waybill, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Paul Simonon), Winstone got another big break, being cast as Will Scarlet in Robin of Sherwood. He proved immensely popular and enjoyed the role, considering Scarlet to be "the first football hooligan" - though he was not fond of the dubbed German version, in which he said he sounded like a "psychotic mincer." But once the show was over, the parts dried up. He got involved in co-producing Tank Malling, starring Jason Connery, Amanda Donohoe and Maria Whittaker, and scored a few TV parts. Over the years, he's appeared in TV shows including The Sweeney, The Bill, Boon, Fairly Secret Army (as Stubby Collins), Ever Decreasing Circles, One Foot in the Grave, Murder Most Horrid, Birds of a Feather, Minder, Kavanagh QC, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Get-back (with the fledgling Kate Winslet). During this period, he was increasingly drawn to the theatre, playing in Hinkemann in 1988, Some Voices in 1994 and Dealer's Choice and Pale Horse the following year.

Winstone was asked to appear in Mr Thomas, a play written by his friend and fellow Londoner Kathy Burke. The reviews were good, and led to Winstone being cast, alongside Burke, in Gary Oldman's drama Nil By Mouth. He was widely lauded for his performance as an alcoholic wife-batterer, receiving a BAFTA nomination (17 years after his Best Newcomer award for That Summer). He continued to play "tough guy" roles in the likes of Face and The War Zone - the latter especially controversial, as he played a man who rapes his own daughter - but that obvious toughness would also allow him to play loved up nice-guys in romantic comedies like Fanny and Elvis and There's Only One Jimmy Grimble. In Last Christmas, he played a dead man, now a trainee angel, who returns from Heaven to help his young son cope with his bereavement, written by Tony Grounds, with whom Winstone worked again on Births, Marriages & Deaths and Our Boy, the latter winning him the Royal Television Society Best Actor Award. They worked together again in 2006 on All in the Game where Winstone portrayed a football manager. He did a series of Holsten Pils advertisements where he played upon the phrase "Who's the Daddy", coined in the film Scum.

In 2000 Winstone starred alongside Jude Law in the hit cult film Love, Honour and Obey, then won the lead role in Sexy Beast that brought him great acclaim from UK and international audiences, and brought him to the attention of the American film industry. Winstone plays "Gal" Dove, a retired and happily married former thief dragged back into London's underworld by a psychopathic former associate (Ben Kingsley, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance).

After a brief role alongside Burke again in the tragi-comic The Martins, he appeared in Last Orders, where he starred alongside Michael Caine, Helen Mirren, David Hemmings and Tom Courtenay.

Next Winstone would get a prime part in Ripley's Game, the sequel to The Talented Mr. Ripley, in which he once again played a gangster. He followed up with Lenny Blue, the sequel to Tough Love, and the short The Bouncer.

In 2000, he starred in To the Green Fields Beyond at the Donmar Warehouse (directed by Sam Mendes, the man behind American Beauty). In 2002 he performed at the Royal Court as Griffin in The Night Heron. Two years later, he joined Kevin Spacey for 24 Hour Plays at the Old Vic, a series of productions that were written, rehearsed and performed in a single day. Now internationally known, Winstone was next chosen by Anthony Minghella to play Teague, a sinister Home Guard boss, in the American Civil War drama Cold Mountain.

Perhaps inspired by Burke and Oldman, Winstone has now decided to direct and produce his own films, setting up Size 9 and Flicks production companies with his longtime agent Michael Wiggs. The first effort was She's Gone, in which he plays a businessman whose young daughter disappears in Istanbul (filming was held up by unrest in the Middle East). He followed it up with Jerusalem, in which he played poet and visionary William Blake.

Winstone made his action film debut in King Arthur, starring Clive Owen, directed by Antoine Fuqua, and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. In that film, Fuqua proclaimed him as "the British De Niro." He then provided the voice of Soldier Sam in the screen version of The Magic Roundabout.

In 2005, he appeared opposite Suranne Jones in ITV drama Vincent about a team of private detectives. He returned to the role in 2006 and was awarded an International Emmy. In 2005 he also portrayed a 19th-century English policeman trying to tame the Australian outback in The Proposition. A complete change of pace for Winstone was providing the voice for the cheeky-chappy Mr. Beaver in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, also in 2005. Winstone appeared in Martin Scorsese's 2006 film The Departed as Mr. French, an enforcer to Jack Nicholson's mob boss. He provided motion capture movements and voice-over work for the title character in the Robert Zemeckis' film Beowulf. He then co-starred in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was released on 22 May 2008. He returned to television drama in The Changeling inspired Compulsion, originally shown in May 2009.

He next starred as Arjan van Diemen in the film Tracker with Temuera Morrison. Filmed in New Zealand, Tracker, which tells the story of an Afrikaner commando leader who emigrates to New Zealand after the Second Boer War, was premiered at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival. Also in 2010, he appeared in 44 Inch Chest, alongside John Hurt and Ian McShane. He also had a role as CIA agent Darius Jedburgh in the Edge of Darkness remake, replacing Robert De Niro. In 2012 he played the role of Detective Inspector Jack Regan in a remake of The Sweeney. Winstone stars also in the slasher-thriller film Red Snow, directed by Stuart St. Paul and based on a short film by Adam Mason.

In 2011, Winstone starred in the British independent film The Hot Potato, a comedy thriller about two men who come into possession of a lump of uranium. The film, which is set in the East End of London in the 1960s, also stars Winstone's eldest daughter Lois Winstone, Jack Huston, Colm Meaney and David Harewood.

In April 2013, while a guest host of the comedy quiz show Have I Got News for You, he provoked controversy by stating that Scotland's chief exports were "oil, whisky, tartan and tramps", leading to a headline in The Scotsman claiming "Ray Winstone calls Scots 'tramps' on TV quiz show". Viewers complained to Ofcom and the BBC. In 2015, he played the role of ex-criminal Jimmy Rose in The Trials of Jimmy Rose, a 3-part drama for ITV.

Personal life

Winstone met his wife, Elaine, while filming That Summer in 1979. They have three daughters; the eldest two, Lois and Jaime, are both actresses.

Winstone lives with his wife in Roydon, Essex. He is an avid fan of West Ham United and promoted their 2009 home kit.

Winstone was declared bankrupt on 4 October 1988 and again on 19 March 1993.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1976	The Sweeney
1977	Scum	Carlin
1979	That Summer	Steve Brodie	Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer
1979	Scum	Carlin
1979	Quadrophenia	Kevin Herriot
1981	Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains	Billy
1983	Ninety percent proof, Bergerac	Tully
1983	Auf Wiedersehen, Pet	Colin	TV series (1 episode)
1984	Robin of Sherwood	Will Scarlet	TV movie
1989	Tank Malling	John 'Tank' Malling
1994	Ladybird, Ladybird	Simon
1996	One Foot in the Grave	Vagrant/Millichope	Christmas Special
1997	Nil by Mouth	Ray	British Independent Film Award for Best Actor Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1997	Face	Dave
1997	Our Boy	Woody Williamson	TV movie
1998	Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence	Pederesen
1998	Final Cut	Ray
1998	Brand New World	Colonel
1999	Darkness Falls	John Barrett
1999	The War Zone	Dad	Nominated - British Independent Film Award for Best Actor Nominated - European Film Award for Best Actor
1999	Births, Marriages and Deaths	Alan	Series nominated - BAFTA TV Award - Best Drama Serial
1999	Tube Tales	Father	Segment: My Father the Liar
2000	There's Only One Jimmy Grimble	Harry
2000	Sexy Beast	Gary 'Gal' Dove	Nominated - British Independent Film Award for Best Actor Nominated - Jameson People's Choice Award for Best European Actor
2000	Tough Love	DC Lenny Milton	2 episodes
2000	Love, Honour and Obey	Ray Kreed
2001	Last Orders	Vince 'Vincey' Dodds	Nominated - European Film Award for Best Actor (shared with Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings and Bob Hoskins)
2001	The Martins	Mr. Marvel
2002	Ripley's Game	Reeves
2002	Lenny Blue	DC Lenny Milton	2 episodes
2003	Henry VIII	Henry VIII	TV movie
2003	Cold Mountain	Teague
2004	Everything	Richard
2004	King Arthur	Bors
2004	She's Gone	Harry Sands	TV movie
2005	The Proposition	Captain Stanley	San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated - Australian Film Institute Award for Best Lead Actor
2005	The Magic Roundabout	Soldier Sam (voice)
2005	The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	Mr. Beaver (voice)
2005	Vincent	Vincent Gallagher	TV movie; International Emmy Award for best actor
2006	Sweeney Todd	Sweeney Todd	TV movie
2006	All in the Game	Frankie	TV movie
2006	The Departed	Arnold alias Mr. French
2006	Breaking and Entering	Bruno Fella
2007	Beowulf	Beowulf
2008	Fool's Gold	Moe Fitch
2008	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	George "Mac" McHale
2008	Compulsion	Don Flowers
2009	The Devil's Tomb	Blakely
2009	44 Inch Chest	Colin Diamond
2009	Fathers of Girls	Frank Horner
2010	Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll	William Dury
2010	Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief	Ares	Uncredited
2010	Edge of Darkness	Matthew Jedburgh
2010	13	Ronald Lynn
2010	London Boulevard	Gant
2010	Tracker	Arjan van Diemen
2010	Ben Hur	Quintus Arrius	TV mini series
2011	Killzone 3	Admiral Orlock (voice)	Video game, Also Motion Capture
2011	Rango	Bad Bill (voice)
2011	Hugo	Uncle Claude
2011	The Hot Potato	Kenny Smith
2011	Great Expectations	Abel Magwitch	TV series
2012	Elfie Hopkins	Butcher Bryn	Cameo role
2012	Snow White and the Huntsman	Gort	Head only
2012	The Sweeney	Jack Regan
2012	Run for Your Wife	Cameo role	Uncredited
2012	Ashes	Frank
2014	Lords of London	Terry Lord	aka Lost in Italy, direct-to-video
2014	Moonfleet	Elzevir Block	TV mini series
2014	Noah	Tubal-cain
2015	The Gunman	Stanley
2015	The Legend of Barney Thomson	Holdall
2015	Point Break	Angelo Pappas
2015	The Trials of Jimmy Rose	Jimmy Rose	TV series
2015	Zipper	Nigel Coaker	movie
2016	Of Kings and Prophets	Saul	TV series

[ Source: Wikipedia ]