Tough roles just got tougher for Ray Winstone as he plays a father looking for his missing daughter in TV drama She's Gone. Steve Pratt reports.

WITH three daughters of his own, hard man actor Ray Winstone was well able to understand the drama at the heart of the TV film She's Gone. He plays an ordinary businessman, Harry Sands, who endures every parent's worst nightmare when his daughter Olivia disappears during her gap year in Istanbul.

The project - his first with his new production company Size 9 - stemmed from his desire to make a film "about how we are as fathers with daughters, that special bond and how we have to let them grow up and go off to do their own thing".

Winstone has three daughters of his own, Lois, 22, Jamie, 18, and three-year-old Ellie-Rae.

His screen daughter's disappearance is made worse because it happens in a foreign country. "The film raises questions about how we deal with things we don't understand and have no experience of," he says.

"The idea of going to a country about which you know nothing and being helped by the people there struck me as a good premise for a drama.

"She's Gone confronts 'them and us' xenophobia head on. Once you get to Istanbul you find it's a fascinating, colourful city, which is the gateway to the East and has a marvellous history, but Harry is blind to this when he first arrives."

He admits it's a heavy subject but it hit home with him because his eldest girls are getting ready to get out there and see the world. "I'm on at them all the time before they even get in the car and drive away," he says.

"It's a constant worry and you feel guilty if you don't warn them about the dangers, but you can't wrap them in cotton wool. I go mad if they even go shopping in the West End, but they never listen. You just have to hope and pray they are safe."

In contrast to many of the tough nuts he's played on screen, Harry is a "salt of the earth dad who lives in suburbia and whose daughter leaves home". His main focus is his daughter, his mission is to find her.

Olivia's disappearance highlights tensions in the relationship between Harry and his wife Joanna (played by Lindsey Coulson). "They've grown apart, but an extreme situation like the one in She's Gone can draw people together," he says. "He isn't a bad man but he is tired of the domestic routine and likewise his wife is bored and unchallenged."

The fictional drama was threatened by real life events last November when filming was set to take place. Four days before Winstone was due to fly out to Istanbul with the rest of the cast and crew the city was hit by bomb blasts at the British Consul and HSBC bank, killing 26 people and injuring more than 400 others.

She's Gone was due to film near the British Consul. Other planned locations were ruled out after the blasts. "It's a worry, but 26 people have been killed, so you have to think about their families," he says.

"We had some beautiful locations set up in Istanbul and ready to go. We have to go on, but I feel guilty about making a film when so many people have died.

"After the bombing, we had to make some fast decisions about what to do and we eventually shot in Malta and added in bombing footage from Istanbul. It makes you realise there are more important things than making films."

On a lighter note, he loved working with ex-EastEnders actress Coulson, whom he's know since she was young when she was friends with his sister. "I've been waiting in the wings to play Ray's wife for a long time," she says.

"I was up for the role of his wife in Births, Marriages And Deaths but was beaten to it by Maggie O'Neill. Ray is very good at getting a naturalistic feel to scenes. He's very good at giving you something and letting you run with it. I'd like to work him again."

Gary Lucy, from Hollyoaks and Footballers' Wives, plays their son Michael, who helps with the search for his missing sister. He loved working with Winstone too. "Ray is great. If I can't learn from him, I won't be able to learn from anybody," he says.

"His quality is that you are drawn to watch him because he has such presence and is totally engrossing. Everything he does turns to gold. I particularly wanted to work with him because I grew up watching and admiring him in films like Love, Honour And Obey, Scum and Sexy Beast."

She's Gone marks Winstone's third project with director Adrian Shergold, whom he describes as the only choice for director after working with him on Births, Marriage And Deaths and Last Christmas.

"I love the way he works. He dealt with the Turkey disaster brilliantly by rethinking it all very quickly. I think he's one of the best directors working today," says the actor.

* She's Gone is on ITV1 on Sunday at 9pm.

Published: 16/09/2004