Dif­fer­ent Class: the decline of British blue col­lar sto­ries on screen

Christ­mas time in the late 1990s: a fam­i­ly and friends sit around the kitchen of a coun­cil flat some­where in south Lon­don. Val, played by the great Kathy Burke, is talk­ing about her incar­cer­at­ed lit­tle broth­er Bil­ly; he’s just had to move cells after being stabbed by anoth­er inmate wield­ing a tooth­brush wrapped in razor blades. The screws have moved Bil­ly to the ​“frag­gle wing” — ​“with all the nonces and the rapists and that… poor sod,” snig­gers spread around the room. Then Val drops the punch­line: ​“Mind your backs!” And they’re piss­ing themselves.

This is the final scene from Nil By Mouth, a 1997 film direct­ed by Gary Old­man that deals in domes­tic abuse, drug addic­tion and pover­ty in work­ing-class Britain. In its most chill­ing scene Ray Winstone’s alco­holic drug addict Ray­mond accus­es Val, his part­ner, of behav­ing unfaith­ful­ly, then reacts with hor­rif­ic vio­lence when she denies it, while their infant daugh­ter watch­es from the stairs.

Yet despite its har­row­ing vio­lence Nil By Mouth is also dark­ly fun­ny, as evi­denced by its caus­tic clos­ing scene. ​“You always look around the audi­ence and there’s big smiles on people’s faces,” says Char­lie Creed-Miles, the Not­ting­ham-born actor who played Bil­ly in the film. ​“To me that’s like one of the purest moments of where some­thing real­ly dark is turned into a joke. And that’s what peo­ple who strug­gle with adver­si­ty in their lives have to do, and I think that’s some­thing the film real­ly cap­tures beautifully.”

Nil By Mouth won two BAF­TAs, Burke won Best Actress at Cannes and, in 2017 a Time Out poll of 150 movie experts placed it at num­ber 21 in a list of the great­est British films ever made. It also con­tains more uses of the word ​‘cunt’ than any oth­er film in his­to­ry (82). ​“That’s a record we can be very proud of,” says Creed-Miles. ​“One of my favourite lines in the film is ​‘Get in the cunt­ing car!’. Using ​‘cunt­ing’ as an adjec­tive. Top marks to Ray for that one.”

Has there been a bet­ter depic­tion of British work­ing-class life in the 25 years since Nil By Mouth’s release? Or rather, look­ing back on the end of a cen­tu­ry in which por­tray­als of work­ing-class Britain like Get Carter, The Long Good Fri­day, Kes and even Lock, Stock and Two Smok­ing Bar­rels were major cin­e­mat­ic events, per­haps the ques­tion should be: has British cin­e­ma for­got­ten the work­ing class altogether?

Old­man has nev­er direct­ed anoth­er film. Hav­ing large­ly fund­ed Nil By Mouth him­self, he found stu­dios were reluc­tant to pay for any­thing cut from the same cloth. ​“They don’t want anoth­er one of these,” Old­man told the BFI’s Geoff Andrew in Octo­ber 2022. ​“They want Four Wed­dings and a Funeral.”

Work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ties are now sore­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed by British cin­e­ma, by both the sto­ries being told onscreen and the actors telling them. In the last 10 years, cuts to arts fund­ing in schools has led to a drop in kids study­ing dra­ma at GCSE lev­el, mean­ing few­er state school kids grow up want­i­ng to act. ​“Soon the only actors are going to be priv­i­leged kids whose par­ents can afford to send them to dra­ma school,” said Julie Wal­ters in 2014, a sen­ti­ment echoed by James McAvoy months later.

In a 2017 episode of The Trip Steve Coogan (him­self from a ​“low­er mid­dle-class or upper work­ing-class back­ground”) list­ed the biggest British actors of the day — Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Eddie Red­mayne, Tom Hid­dle­stone, Dami­an Lewis — and asked: ​“How many of those are Eto­ni­ans?” Answer: all but one (Cum­ber­batch went to Har­row). Rob Bry­don replies: ​“You know what no one’s ever noticed? How ​‘Eddie Red­mayne’ is the kind of name an upper-mid­dle-class girl would give to her pony.”

In 2022 it seems like Wal­ters’ fore­cast may have come true. Take, for instance, GQ’s recent list of actors in line to play the next James Bond – lit­tle more than triv­ial spec­u­la­tion but a rea­son­able barom­e­ter for the biggest actors in Britain right now: names belong­ing to pri­vate­ly-edu­cat­ed actors — Har­ry Lawtey, Jamie Camp­bell Bow­er, Chi­we­tel Ejio­for, Robert Pat­tin­son, Jonathan Bai­ley — dom­i­nate the list.

Back in 2013, Max­ine Peak expressed sim­i­lar con­cerns about the cost of dra­ma schools to the Guardian, while also speak­ing out about her lack of patience for self-absorbed method actors: ​“I get very irate with actors when they talk about how dis­tress­ing it all is. I mean, it’s only acting.”

Old­man raised a sim­i­lar point at the BFI when dis­cussing his vam­pir­ic lead role in Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Drac­u­la. ​“I slept in a cou­ple of times,” he said. ​“Is that method?” He con­firmed that none of his prepa­ra­tion involved drink­ing blood. Is it mere coin­ci­dence that the declin­ing num­bers of work­ing-class actors has run con­cur­rent­ly with Hollywood’s recent reck­on­ing with the Method, epit­o­mised by Jared Leto’s con­dom-wield­ing turn on the set of Sui­cide Squad?

Old­man also not­ed the British­ness of keep­ing work­ing-class tal­ents from the biggest roles, argu­ing that, if Drac­u­la had been made in Britain, he’d have been cast not as the Count, but as his deranged ser­vant Ren­field. It seems as though Britain’s next gen­er­a­tion of work­ing-class actors may have wised up to this. Once upon a time actors like Old­man, Wal­ters, Tim Roth and (before them) Michael Caine would move to Hol­ly­wood only after mak­ing their names in grit­ty films about real British life.

Today’s equiv­a­lents — Daniel Kalu­uyah, John Boye­ga, Jodie Com­er, Olivia Cooke and (before them) Idris Elba — either spent their ear­ly careers toil­ing in TV and the­atre or for­went the British indus­try alto­geth­er. Per­haps our one true anom­aly is Stephen Gra­ham, who entered pub­lic con­scious­ness after act­ing in British films Snatch and This Is Eng­land, hav­ing stud­ied at an act­ing col­lege in south Lon­don sim­ply because Gary Old­man was among its alumni.

What impact does the film industry’s class imbal­ance have on the kind of cin­e­ma we’re watch­ing? Apart from the obvi­ous, much-report­ed over­load of super­hero fran­chise flot­sam in Hol­ly­wood, a lack of work­ing-class sto­ries on the sil­ver screen could mean audi­ences grow up unaware of the prob­lems faced by society’s poor­est com­mu­ni­ties. After 12 years of aus­ter­i­ty at the hands of a gov­ern­ment now led by a prime min­is­ter who once admit­ted he had no work­ing-class friends, cin­e­ma could play a role in the gap between society’s rich and poor becom­ing unbridgeable.

But even in a pure­ly artis­tic sense we should decry the decline of work­ing-class cin­e­ma as film fans. Old­man, Win­stone and Roth all cut their teeth act­ing under the great Alan Clarke — in Scum, Made in Britain and The Firm respec­tive­ly, works so hon­est, vis­cer­al and fun­ny they’re still revered by British actors today.

Creed-Miles remem­bers watch­ing Win­stone in Scum while he was grow­ing up. He was in his ear­ly twen­ties when he heard Old­man was direct­ing a film on home soil. ​“For a long time I was get­ting jobs like ​‘Thug 2’ and ​‘Mug­ger 1’ and ​‘Skin­head 5’,” he says. ​“When Nil By Mouth came along, every­one I knew was aware of it hap­pen­ing, ​‘Gary Oldman’s doing a film in Lon­don!’ Every­one want­ed to be in it. But I man­aged to nick the part.”

When it came to direct­ing, Clarke was Oldman’s clear­est inspi­ra­tion. At the BFI in Octo­ber he remem­bered mak­ing a habit of check­ing on his actors between takes, ensur­ing cups of tea were pro­vid­ed in make-up trucks and so on – ​“and that was this thing that Alan did.” Old­man dou­bled down, going as far as describ­ing some direc­tors he’s worked with as pigs. Clarke was dif­fer­ent – look­ing after actors and lis­ten­ing to their ideas – and Old­man want­ed to be like him.

On Nil By Mouth every cast mem­ber was mic’d up, mean­ing they were free to talk over one anoth­er dur­ing takes, leav­ing sound design­er Jim Green­horn to piece it togeth­er lat­er. Old­man insist­ed on exten­sive rehearsals before scenes, a rar­i­ty in film. As actors did their lines he encour­aged impro­vi­sa­tion, tak­ing any­thing he liked and adding it to the script. Creed-Miles reck­ons Old­man even filmed some rehearsals with­out his actors’ knowl­edge and that footage in the final cut.

In inter­views around the film’s release Old­man spoke about the dearth of real sto­ries in con­tem­po­rary film. ​“One would imag­ine that cin­e­ma start­ed with Reser­voir Dogs,” he said. ​“Peo­ple com­ing in and shoot­ing each oth­er up and it’s all trendy and wise­crack­ing and it’s absolute­ly sod-all to do with life. It’s movies imi­tat­ing movies imi­tat­ing movies imi­tat­ing movies.”

There are, of course, excep­tions to the work­ing-class film drought. Take Ash­ley Wal­ters’ name-mak­ing appear­ance in Bul­let Boy (2004), or his equal­ly good turn as a crack addict in the severe­ly under­rat­ed Sug­ar­house (2007). Fish Tank (2008) fea­tured a young Katie Jarvis, who was cast despite hav­ing no act­ing expe­ri­ence after an assis­tant to direc­tor Andrea Arnold saw her argu­ing with her boyfriend on the streets of Tilbury. Then there’s I, Daniel Blake (2016), which won the Palme d’or and made such an impact it was dis­cussed on Ques­tion Time, and just last year Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rush­brook lit up Clio Barnard’s Ali & Ava, danc­ing on mat­tress­es and car rooftops to the sound of UK techno. 

These films are not great because they’re about work­ing-class peo­ple. They’re great because they tell unflinch­ing sto­ries of work­ing-class life using actors who grew up in it, deal­ing with the pain, hard­ship and strug­gle that comes with liv­ing on the breadline.

But it’s not the strug­gle that makes it. It’s the details. It’s the char­ac­ters, the accents, the slang. It’s the swear­ing, the insults, the pubs, the fights, the Ford Escorts, the jun­gle sound­tracks, the Doc Martens, the track­suits, the pie and mash, the tat­toos, the trips to Ibiza, the Marl­boro reds, the Stafford­shire ter­ri­ers, the Rother­hithe Tun­nel, The Clash, the Stel­la Artois and the dance rou­tines on the roofs of cars. It’s real life, and it deserves to be recog­nised on screen. If British cin­e­ma los­es sight of that, I’d rather read a book. 

The 25^th anniver­sary BFI Nation­al Archive 4K remas­ter of Nil By Mouth is avail­able to rent on BFI Play­er to rent now, and out on lim­it­ed edi­tion Blu-ray 5 December.