{"id":757854,"date":"2026-09-02T15:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T15:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/757854\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T15:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T15:12:14","slug":"the-gentlemens-ray-winstone-on-the-true-story-behind-his-guy-ritchie-feud-i-thought-it-was-a-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/757854\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gentlemen’s Ray Winstone on the True Story Behind His Guy Ritchie Feud: “I Thought It Was a Liberty”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday at the BVLGARI Hotel in Kensington, Esquire editor-in-chief Teo van den Broeke hosted the latest in a series of intimate conversations with the great and the good from the worlds of culture, film and food, exploring their life\u2019s work and aspirations.<\/p>\n

Last night\u2019s Esquire Sessions guest was one of Britain\u2019s most venerable and beloved actors: Sexy Beast star Ray Winstone, who returns in the highly anticipated second season of The Gentlemen, out Thursday. The man, the myth, the legend \u2013 or, as he put it himself, \u201cthe good, the bad and the ugly\u201d.<\/p>\n

The conversation covered everything from Winstone\u2019s feud with Guy Ritchie and filming The Gentlemen to how he finds softness in the rough characters he has become so famous for playing.
<\/p>\n

\"audience<\/p>\n

Esquire<\/p>\n

On His Better Man<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really tough question, because we all say our dads. My dad was a big influence on me. He was a grafter. He was a worker and he was all about family. That was back in the day, and I guess that kind of follows through with me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do we get up in the morning? Why do we go to work? I started off working in the fruit game. My dad was in supermarkets and I worked in Spitalfields Market as a barrel boy when I was 14. So that kind of ethos, in a way, was embedded in me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember once when I was in school, on a Saturday we used to go to Spitalfields Market or Covent Garden \u2013 depending on who we owed money to \u2013 and you\u2019d get up about two o\u2019clock in the morning and go to work. One morning I didn\u2019t get up for some reason, and I wasn\u2019t shaken or anything like that. I just got a bucket of water. And yeah, it\u2019s cruel, but it kind of instils in you very young that you have responsibility in your life.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what\u2019s the reason you get up to work? And not necessarily the work you enjoy sometimes, you know. But you have to work to pay the rent and feed your family. And so, in that way, I have to say my dad. I loved him and he loved me. It\u2019s tough love sometimes. But you learn from it, hopefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ray<\/p>\n

Sam Lort\/\/Esquire<\/p>\n

On Being a Better Man Over Time<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I think I\u2019m a better man now than I was in my twenties. I’m just a little kid that came out of East London, near West Ham really, and I don’t think your education, where I come from anyway, starts until you kind of leave school and you’re lucky enough to be in a job that takes you far afield.<\/p>\n

\u201cTravel helped with that. Forget about the politics, forget about the people who run countries. We’re just meeting people. It’s an education itself. And it changes opinion, travel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not an intellectual, by any means. I couldn’t read when I was 11. But that kind of travel, that kind of way of meeting people and having to work with them, is probably the best form of education that I could have ever wished for.<\/p>\n

\"audience<\/p>\n

Sam Lort\/\/Esquire<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then that calms you in a way. Because you kind of run out of people to hate. You do, because you\u2019re brought up thinking all these things, but you realise we all have the same problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Stopping Drinking <\/p>\n

\u201cI got fed up with drinking. I was kind of functioning, but the hard work was actually working with a hangover. It affects the work that you\u2019re doing. You don\u2019t think it does, but it does. I got fed up telling the same stories. You\u2019re with your mates and you tell a story about 50 times, and you\u2019re still laughing. I just didn\u2019t like it anymore. And so I stopped. I did a bit of exercise and I became a new man. It\u2019s made me much more chilled. When you\u2019re on the booze, you think you\u2019re clever, you think you know everything, and you think you can have a chat with anyone, and you\u2019re so smart. And you ain\u2019t.”<\/p>\n

On Playing Dark Characters <\/p>\n

\u201cI try to find a vulnerability somewhere, but if you\u2019re playing a gangster, gangsters are people that have no emotion. They might show they\u2019ve got emotion, but they haven\u2019t got emotion because they hurt people. And they take stuff off of people that go out and do an everyday job and work. They bully. And they take things away from people. There\u2019s no love. There\u2019s no love there \u201cPlaying a gangster is different from a thief, in a way. A thief may come from nothing, and he takes things because he wants to feed his family. A gangster wants to feed himself. And that\u2019s the difference, I think.”<\/p>\n

\"gold<\/p>\n

Sam Lort\/\/Esquire<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, if you pick up the script, you read it. It\u2019s written on the page: this is a bad man. They\u2019re good liars. You got to trust them. He kills people, right? So you haven\u2019t got to play that. You can play the guy who sees a little kid and says, \u2018How are you doing?\u2019 and all that. In the script, he\u2019s gonna do something very, very bad, so you haven\u2019t got to play that. <\/p>\n

On the Beauty of British Films <\/p>\n

\u201cI like making British films. We\u2019ve kind of lost it in a way. The French make films about French culture. When we make a British film and it\u2019s about our culture, about the way we live \u2013 if you take away the drink and the drugs and all that in Nil by Mouth, that\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about. We\u2019re talking about our society and how our society lives. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t make American films, really. Americans do it really well. But I just like watching a good British film that\u2019s about what we are.<\/p>\n

\"man<\/p>\n

Sam Lort\/\/Esquire<\/p>\n

On The Gentlemen Season 2<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I watched the first lot, one of the funniest scenes I\u2019ve seen on TV is the chickens. It\u2019s nuts. It\u2019s completely nuts. And it was played so well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching the series, I was so surprised because it turned out so different to the way you thought it would turn out. The scripts and the way they edit it \u2013 they don\u2019t edit it in the way you think they will. The story changes around from the edit, which is quite surprising, but it works. It\u2019s better.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when they were doing the second one, I thought, you know, it\u2019s a bit hard to top. But all the journalists who have seen it \u2013 if you want to believe the journalists \u2013 and the people we\u2019ve spoken to who have seen it say it\u2019s better.”<\/p>\n

On Making Up With Guy Ritchie<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just grow up. When I was younger, something happened. I just didn\u2019t like the way… the film was put on hold and I took umbrage to the fact that no one was told. These actors, this crew, have rents to pay. And if it\u2019s been put on hold and the money\u2019s not coming through for a film, tell everyone. They\u2019ve got a choice then \u2013 go and find some more work or whatever. And I just thought it was a liberty. I aired my opinion, said, \u2018See you later.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we had words a bit later on. I didn\u2019t like what he\u2019d done. There\u2019s a way of going about your business, and I\u2019ve probably got the wrong end of the stick anyway. But anyway, it was done, it was said, move on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could never see myself working in a Guy Ritchie film. And then you watch what he\u2019s doing. You know a Guy Ritchie film when you watch it. He\u2019s not copying anyone. He does what he does, and the more you get to know him, the more challenging you realise he is.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of liked what he was doing. And when it came through that he was interested in me doing this, I thought I owed him to go and see him and talk to him about it. And we had a little cuddle. And it was all right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad that did happen, because you can\u2019t go on. When you\u2019re kids, you do things, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"audience<\/p>\n

Sam Lort\/\/Esquire<\/p>\n

On Something He\u2019d Take Back \u2013 And Offending Martin Scorsese<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to open my mouth before I thought about it. You say things and, as you say it, you go, \u2018Oh, no.\u2019 If there\u2019s one thing I\u2019d take back? Martin Scorsese.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we finished filming, I was leaving and he said, \u2018Hey kid, you\u2019re going home just as I\u2019m beginning to understand what you\u2019re talking about.\u2019 I loved him. For me, it was like playing in the FA Cup final.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone goes, \u2018Marty, leave Marty alone, he\u2019ll shoot forever.\u2019 And I said to him, \u2018That\u2019s all right, Marty. I\u2019ll see you at the reshoots.\u2019 The whole crew were standing there and everyone went, \u2018Oh.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s never spoken to me since.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the difference between British humour and American humour. We say things like that. Would I take it back? Yeah. You know why? Because I really liked him. If I didn\u2019t like him, I wouldn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday at the BVLGARI Hotel in Kensington, Esquire editor-in-chief Teo van den Broeke hosted the latest in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,379,250088,12497,96,190731,1156,250087,223205,171413,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-757854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-83119342-0bbb-4696-a2f3-572244f4fadc","tag-displaytype-long-form-article","tag-entertainment","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-gb","tag-shorttitle-the-gentlemens-ray-winstone-on-the-true-story-behind-his-guy-ritchie-feud","tag-sponsored-false","tag-subsection-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}