Ray Winstone

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 has recounted how, as a child, he used to play with his friends on bomb sites (vacant lots with rubble from Second World War bombs).

He joined Brimsdown Primary School and later 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.

He recounted an early encounter with a notorious gangster:

"'I was still a baby the day Ronnie Kray came round to see Dad, but I've been told this story so many times I can see it unfolding in my mind. Everyone was on their best behaviour, but then Ronnie picked me up, and by all accounts I pissed all over him. He had a new mac on, which had probably cost a few bob, and I absolutely covered it. The room fell silent, then Ronnie cracked up, so everyone knew it was safe to join in.'"

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 Repton Amateur Boxing Club.

Over the next 10 years, he won 80 out of 88 bouts.

He was London schoolboy champion at welterweight on three occasions, and fought 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."

Deciding to pursue drama, Winstone enrolled at the Corona Stage Academy in Hammersmith, when he was aged "about seventeen".

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 in London, but he danced and sang badly, leading his usually supportive father to say "Give it up, while you're ahead."

Raymond Andrew Winstone (born 19 February 1957) is an English television, stage and film actor with a career spanning five decades.

Having worked with many prominent directors, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Winstone is perhaps best known for his "hard man" roles, usually delivered in his distinctive London accent.

Winstone was born on 19 February 1957 in Hackney Hospital, London.

He first lived in Caister Park Road, Plaistow E13, and attended Portway infants and junior school.

He moved to Enfield when he was seven and grew up on a council estate just off the A10 road.

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" (as he was in What a Crazy World) 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.

When he discovered that he was the only pupil not invited to the Christmas party he 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 which 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.

The first of these was That Summer! (1979) for which he received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer.

He also starred in the British independent films Scum (1979), Quadrophenia (1979), The War Zone (1999), Last Orders (2001), Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010).

The banned television play was entirely re-filmed in 1979 for cinematic release with many of the original actors playing the same roles, including Winstone.

He rose to prominence starring as Will Scarlet in the series Robin of Sherwood from 1984 to 1986.

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.

Winstone received a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role nomination for his performance in Nil by Mouth (1997).

Winstone's other notable films include Sexy Beast (2000), Ripley's Game (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), King Arthur (2004), The Departed (2006), Beowulf (2007), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Hugo (2011), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), and Black Widow (2021).