Dark tale sheds light on desire and lust

BURLY Ray Winstone has carved out a career playing evil, tough guy roles, so it's a bit unnerving when he starts talking about his beloved pet pigs, Babe and Kelly.

"They've got really big now, they were only babies and now they're up 'ere," Ray says, his gruff Cockney voice filled with pride.

In the flesh, 52-year-old Ray is nothing like the violent characters he has played on screen – he's charming, funny and radiates a real warmth of spirit.

He's also the doting father of three daughters – 27-year-old musician Lois, 23-year-old actress Jaime and seven-year-old Ellie-Rae.

This comfortable family home life is a world away from Ray's next TV incarnation in ITV drama Compulsion.

The torrid one-off tale of desire and lust from Ray's production company Size 9 is loosely based on Jacobean tragedy The Changeling.

Ray plays Flowers, chauffeur for a wealthy Indian family, whose Cambridge graduate daughter Anjika (Parminder Nagra) is expected to marry the son of her father's business associate.

When Anjika despairs over the arranged marriage, Flowers steps forward and offers to make the problem "disappear" if she'll agree to sleep with him – drawing the ill-matched pair into a dark and obsessive sexual relationship.

"Flowers is a very dangerous man," Ray says.

"There are some very dangerous men about as we see in the news quite often. They manipulate their own, like the geezer in Austria.

"You know the Fred Wests of this world, they take it a step further, but then so does he. He kills for her, for his love.

"He goes from lust to love and then as an audience you start to like him hopefully but then you think, 'why do I like him? I shouldn't be liking this guy' and I like playing with that a little bit."

Although the part was written for Ray by Sweeney Todd writer Joshua St Johnson, he admits he had a few qualms about taking on the role because of the sex scenes.

"There were moments when I thought 'let someone else do this'. I suppose I had reservations about getting my kit off at 50. But in a way, that's what makes it really, because that's what we are like.

"There's very few of us who have got six packs and look all right. It could be the guy next door – and that's the thing about it. The monster could be anyone."

Ray says the script – and the relationship between the two characters – drew him into the role.

"I just think there's a moment in the film when she can say no and why doesn't she? People don't always do what you think they're going to do. In a split second, you make a decision which takes you on a different road in your life.

"Maybe there's some fascination, something that turns her on."

Flowers and Anjika couldn't be more different – she is educated, monied and Indian. He is none of those things, plus he's old enough to be her father.

Ray's full of praise for Bend It Like Beckham star Parminder for taking on such a tough role.

"We needed a young girl and an Indian girl and it's very difficult from that culture to play those kind of parts. I'm floating around doing what I do, yet to me the film's nothing without her performance."