Actor Ray Winstone has taking up a rather different career in Italy, as the Sexy Beast star enjoys some simpler pleasures at his home in Italy. The 66-year-old has also finally giving up smoking after 44 years, on what he calls the 'oilies', reports the Mirror.
The reason he calls them this is because oily rag rhymes with fag, which is slang for a cigarette in the UK. Roy took up smoking in 1979 after marrying wife Elaine, 63, as he appeared in the film Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains alongside Sex Pistol Steve Jones and Paul Simonon of The Clash.
However, he kicked smoking earlier in 2023 after realising the habit was not enjoyable, and admitted he never done it properly anyway.
Ray said: “I gave up smoking about five or six months ago. One day I just bought a packet of cigarettes and I lit one up and went, ‘What are you doing? I don’t even enjoy this’. I just threw them away, and I feel so much better for it. I loved an oily didn’t I?
"I started smoking on a film. I’d just got married. Maybe that’s got something to do with it? Don’t let Elaine hear me say that.
"I had to chain smoke in a film with the Sex Pistols and The Clash...that’s where I started, really. But I bum-suck them. I never really took them down, I wasn’t a proper smoker in a way. A bit like cigar smoking."
The star is also improving his fitness with some manual labour work near to his Italian mountaintop home in Sicily.
He said: "I’ve been doing a bit of labouring out here, a bit of graft. I hurt my back a couple of years ago, so I’ve been building my back up a little bit.
"There’s a writers' strike on at the moment, so that’s affecting a hell of a lot of stuff in my game. I’ve just been having a bit of time off. I’m just enjoying being lazy. It’s fine."
Ray, who co-founded Integral Sports Management with his friend Gary Pettit, added that he enjoys the simple Italian life.
He told the Pound for Pound podcast: "Here, I sit out at night. I’m at the top of the mountain and all you can see is the stars. At night you turn all the lights off and I’ve got a little telly outside and I watch the telly and have a drink outside. I’m here on my own at the moment.
"Don’t tell no one, though, in case someone comes up and robs me. I’ve got a great big bat with me and all that. But it’s lovely. I sit outside and all you hear is wild animals."
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