Mark Wingett

After my recent interview with Maria Austin, where we discussed Mercy, a film about life as a pig in a slaughterhouse. I decided to reach out to her co-star, Mark Wingett, who portrayed the slaughterman.

Mark, a familiar face on our screens for over 20 years as The Bill’s Jim Carver, got his first break as Dave in the British cult classic movie, Quadrophenia. Dave was Jimmy’s best friend, the one with the cool hat who ultimately betrays Jimmy at his lowest point by stealing his girl.

As a first job, this is quite an achievement. Mark was one of the youngest in the cast, he was just 17 and fresh out of the National Youth Theatre when he was cast. Now with a career spanning over 40 years, it was an honour to talk to this much accomplished actor about his career and dip into his personal life which involves scuba diving and biking with the Tokyo mods!

Mark reminisces about his first day on set and how many egg sandwiches he had to eat! We talk about the success behind the movie, Pete Townshend’s genius musical score and the admirable vision of the director, Franc Roddam. A director who took chances when selecting the actors and stuck to his interpretation of the story.

The bond between cast members is still as strong as ever, with Mark describing them as family. The cast have all had such illustrious careers including Phil Davis, one of my favourite actors. At the time of filming, Sting was launching his music career and Ray Winstone had made his third film in that year.

Mark mentions that Ray Winstone was always destined for greatness, I can’t help think that happened to Mark too.