In a panel at the Sarajevo Film Festival, veteran actor Winstone bemoaned that Hollywood has “become a business” that’s “all about selling tickets,” per Variety. “We see what’s happening in Hollywood with Marvel and all that kind of stuff,” he continued. “There is room for it, and it’s fun, but it takes away from getting cultural films made, which are best for the actors, [and] are really good acting parts. It’s getting more and more difficult to do that.” Echoing Maya Hawke, he continued, “If you’re not on social media now, they might not even consider you for a movie because they want a fanbase to come with that.”
He also had some major gripes with the specific Marvel film he worked on, particularly the studio’s propensity for retroactive reshoots. “I worked with this amazing director, Cate Shortland, and we worked on what my character was going to be,” Winstone recalled. “He was like a pedophile running around all these girls, and they’d become Black Widows.” It sounds like, at least in the early stages of production, he did enjoy working on the tentpole. “We used to get applauded on set,” he said. “It was probably the best thing I’ve done for a really long time.”
But things soured quickly after the initial shoot wrapped. “I come home after finishing the job and get a call saying we need to do some reshoots,” he continued. “I say, ‘How many scenes? [Cate] says ‘all of them.’ So I said she should recast [the role], but I was contracted, so I had to do it. I go back, they do my hair all nice, put me in the suit, and I couldn’t do it. I’d already done it. I thought, ‘I’m not doing it now. I’ve done it. That’s how it’s going to be.’ That’s rejection, you know? There’s nothing worse than doing something, leaving it on the floor, and then being told it’s not right.”
Reshoots aren’t the only aspect of modern-day Hollywood the Beowulf actor has no interest in participating in. “I don’t want to go on fucking Instagram,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but if it brings people to the cinema and creates new jobs, then I’ll do it. But I’d like to see more cultural films being made, that’s where good cinema is. From my point of view, anyway.”
