Page "Ray Winstone" Paragraph 9

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 decent men softened by love 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.