Ray Winstone

Ray Winstone was born in Hackney Hospital in February 1957, and spent the early years of his life playing on the bombsites of Plaistow. At the age of eight, his family moved him up the A10 to the cultural wasteland of Enfield, and from that moment on, Ray was constantly looking for ways to get back home to the East End - from ‘banging up’ on his dad’s market stalls, to winning 80 out of 88 bouts as a three-time London schoolboy boxing champion for Bethnal Green’s famous Repton club.

Having achieved the rare distinction of being suspended from nursery school, he was asked to leave a series of educational establishments (including drama college), before finally graduating with first-class honours from the university of life.