Cook, thief and cop: 7 such different roles of Stephen Graham

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“Boiling Point” (2021)

Beautifully filmed in one long shot with no cuts, Phil Barantini’s thriller immerses viewers in the pre-Christmas routine of a new London restaurant run by Andy (Graham). Barantini, who once worked as a chef himself, knows what he is talking about, not only talking about constant time pressure, the whims of customers dissatisfied with the degree of fried meat or demanding something that is not on the menu, or late waiters and the constant war of chefs with management, but also, portraying the constant pressure on the chef and the addictions it generates. An already tense evening for Andy is worsened by the appearance of Ainsley (Jason Fleming) – the star of a television cooking show and his former chef, under whom he once worked – who came to an old friend for a reason.

“Boiling Point” looks in one breath, and Graham, who became friends with Barantini, even when they starred together in the series “Band of Brothers” (2001), wonderfully plays Andy, battered by life and very, very tired of her, whose strength is melting on eyes.

“Big Snatch” (2000)

Without exaggeration, Guy Ritchie’s cult film traditionally twisted the plot of several lines. In one, a promoter of illegal boxing fights nicknamed The Turk (Jason Statham) and his charming and narrow-minded partner Tommy, who owns a slot machine hall (he is just played by Graham), lose their proven fighter and are forced to turn to the talented but intractable Mickey (Brad Pitt). In another, a group of colorful heroes, including jeweler Avi Denovitz (Dennis Farina), Russian Boris “Razor” (Rade Sherbedzhia), and mercenary Tony (Vinnie Jones) hunt for a diamond stolen by Four-fingered Frankie (Benisil del Toro) in Antwerp. And then there’s the gangster nicknamed “Brick” (Alan Ford), who threatens the Turk and Tommy, and the klutzy robbers hired by Boris.

The role of the comically self-important Tommy went to Graham by accident. The actor, who had hardly acted in films before, went to an audition to support a friend, but Richie, when he saw him, offered to read the scene. Graham agreed, but the problem was that he was dyslexic. The actor had to improvise a lot, including portraying the Cockney accent, common in London (the actor himself was born near Liverpool). As a result, Graham got the role that made him famous.

“This is England” (2006)

The action of the film by Shane Meadows, an original English director of independent films, takes place in a small English town in 1983. The protagonist, 12-year-old Sean Field (Thomas Turgus), joins a slightly older skinhead group led by Woody (it must be said that, despite popular belief, this subculture has nothing to do with far-right ideologies). Sean joins a new group shared by the return from prison of Combo (Stephen Graham), an old acquaintance of Woody who has contracted Nazi ideology in prison. Combo attempts to spread it among their group members, but part of her, led by Woody and the mulatto Milky, opposes and separates. But young Sean goes after Combo.

The role of Combo has become for Graham one of the brightest, but at the same time difficult in his career. The fact is that despite the completely light skin color, the actor has Jamaican roots. His grandfather once arrived in England from there. The role of a racist was given to Graham hard, but how well he coped with it is that within six months after the premiere of the film he did not receive a single job offer – the producers were afraid that now he would be associated exclusively with this character. By the way, Graham returned to the role of Combo in the mini-series – “This is England. Year 1986” (2010), This is England. Year 1988 (2011) and “This is England. Year 1990” (2015), filmed by the same Meadows.

“Blood” (2012)

Graham also had an interesting role in “Blood” – an English psychological thriller about the murder of a young girl and two police brothers, Joey (Paul Bettany) and Chrissy Fairburn (Graham), investigating it. Their suspicion falls on Jason Buhle – the kind of slippery, obnoxious, and also unbalanced. However, they do not have enough evidence to bring charges against him. Bule is clearly playing with them, and then the brothers decide to intimidate him – take him to a sandy island and interrogate him thoroughly – but everything does not go according to plan. Enraged, Joey kills Bule in a fit of rage. The brothers get rid of him, but now there is blood on their hands, and doubts about his guilt still remain.

Graham, despite the ability to explode and play temperamental heroes, here skillfully plays the younger, “quietest” brother and is not at all lost against the background of Bettany or the famous Brian Cox (“Heirs”), who played the father of the brothers in the film.

“Strange sins” (2018)

Graham has played many notable roles on television. Suffice it to think of him as Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire, McMaster in Parade’s End, or prison guard McNally in Time (2021). However, in the mini-series Sins of Others, Graham showed himself from a slightly different side.

The script was written and directed by an old acquaintance of the actor Shane Meadows. Graham plays here Joseph, whose wife flew with her son to Australia. Left alone and once again broken after a long period of sobriety, he decides to visit his sister in Ireland, where he has not been for the last thirty years. Here, Joseph, who once escaped from an orphanage, will have to sort out the events of the past, which he flooded with alcohol all his adult life. As in “Boiling Point”, Graham plays the role of a deeply addicted person in “Sins of Others”, which once again speaks of his acting skills, because in life he does not drink alcohol at all.

“The Irishman” (2019)

Graham was lucky to star in three Martin Scorsese projects at once – the films “Gangs of New York” (2003) and “The Irishman” (2019), as well as the series “Boardwalk Empire”. In The Irishman, Graham played the role of Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, a real-life Sicilian mafia man in New Jersey who led the Teamsters Union.

According to the plot, the paths of the main characters – crime boss Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and his bodyguards and cleaner Sheeran (Robert De Niro) – intersect with Tony Pro, with whom they cannot share the business, several times, and each of their joint scenes literally cuts sparks. Graham said that Scorsese created ideal conditions for the actors to improvise. In particular, he recalled a joint scene with Al Pacino, in which it occurred to him to brush off all the dishes from the table before jumping on Pacino’s hero. The legendary actor later admitted to Graham that he managed to really scare him. Graham, if you remember also his role as Baby Nelson in “Johnny D.” (2009), in general, the roles of criminals ready to explode at any moment are remarkably successful.

“Foggy Relationships” (2015)

Another “quiet” role of Graham, in which he made a wonderful duet with Conleth Hill, known for his role as Lord Varys in “Game of Thrones”. Hill plays Sandy Duffy, a super-popular novelist who now teaches literature at a university and is a TV presenter. In general, Daffy’s life is a success, but he can’t overcome the vicious craving for petty theft, in which he is once caught by the store’s security guard, Robert Green, played by Graham.

Greene extorts Daffy in exchange for an incriminating pub meeting. And then another one, and then another and another… Strange and unsteady relationships are formed between them, captivating with their inconstancy and somewhat reminiscent of the plot of the cult “Misery” (1990) or Roman Polanski’s film “Based on true events” (2017). Graham here perfectly succeeded in the role of vulnerable and weak, but at the same time domineering “little man”.