Burly Ray Winstone has carved out a career playing evil, tough guy roles, so it's a bit unnerving when he starts talking about his beloved pet pigs, Babe and Kelly.

"They've got really big now, they were only babies and now they're up 'ere," Ray says, his gruff Cockney voice filled with pride.

"They will eat spaghetti and that, but I don't feed 'em meat. I give them a lot of apples, so if you were to cook 'em, they'd have the apple flavour already. But no, I wouldn't do that, they're our piggies!"

In the flesh, 52-year-old Ray is nothing like the violent characters he has played on screen - he's charming, funny and radiates a real warmth of spirit, which explains why he's become so popular with directors and audiences alike.

He's also the doting father of three daughters - 27-year-old musician Lois, 23-year-old actress Jaime and seven-year-old Ellie-Rae.

This comfortable family home life is a world away from Ray's next TV incarnation in ITV drama Compulsion.

The torrid one-off tale of desire and lust from Ray's production company Size 9 is loosely based on Jacobean tragedy The Changeling.

Ray plays Flowers, chauffeur for a wealthy Indian family, whose Cambridge graduate daughter Anjika (Parminder Nagra) is expected to marry the son of her father's business associate.

When Anjika despairs over the arranged marriage, Flowers steps forward and offers to make the problem 'disappear' if she'll agree to sleep with him - drawing the ill-matched pair into a dark and obsessive sexual relationship.

"Flowers is a very dangerous man," Ray says.

"There are some very dangerous men about as we see in the news quite often. They manipulate their own, like the geezer in Austria.

"You know the Fred Wests of this world, they take it a step further, but then so does he. He kills for her, for his love.

"He goes from lust to love and then as an audience you start to like him hopefully, but then you think, 'why do I like him? I shouldn't be liking this guy' and I like playing with that a little bit."

Although the part was written for Ray by Sweeney Todd writer Joshua St Johnson, he admits he had a few qualms about taking on the role because of the sex scenes.

"There were moments when I thought 'let someone else do this'. I suppose I had reservations about getting my kit off at 50. But in a way, that's what makes it really, because that's what we are like.

"There's very few of us who have got six packs and look all right. It could be the guy next door - and that's the thing about it. The monster could be anyone."

For all his fears about getting naked, the bedroom scenes aren't actually that explicit.

"I could say 'yeah, there's lots of titillation, watch it' but it's not like that at all. It's kind of like violence when you don't see it, but you know it's there.

"I think it becomes quite beautiful in a way, but the undertone of that is the horror of the manipulation, because it's a manipulation of someone."

Ray says the script - and the relationship between the two characters - drew him into the role.

"I just think there's a moment in the film when she can say no and why doesn't she? People don't always do what you think they're going to do. In a split second, you make a decision which takes you on a different road in your life.

"Maybe there's some fascination, something that turns her on. But for me, it's purely the manipulation of the guy and in the end she becomes him, the character, because she's been manipulated so much, that's all she knows."

Flowers is based on the servant De Flores from the 17th century play The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. But don't expect Ray to give you a synopsis.

"No I didn't read a Jacobean book - it would drive me insane, I'd rather go and see a film," he protests.

Flowers and Anjika couldn't be more different - she is educated, monied and Indian. He is none of those things, plus he's old enough to be her father.

Ray admits it was hard to get his head round the age difference.

"I've got daughters of 27 and 23 and seven, you know," he says.

"Women are much more developed in their head than guys, so when a man's 25 and he going out with a girl of 17, it's usually because he can't find a girl of 25 he can dominate.

"I've had daughters who've probably gone out with older guys and I've always looked at them and thought 'you're a nonce'. I think there's some of that in Flowers, that domination thing.

"But what worries me is he's watched her right from a little girl, he's worked for the family and that strangeness of watching someone who's been a baby, a kid, and then to want them sexually, it puts him on a different planet."

Ray's full of praise for Bend It Like Beckham star Parminder for taking on such a tough role.

"We needed a young girl and an Indian girl and it's very difficult from that culture to play those kind of parts. I'm floating around doing what I do, yet to me the film's nothing without her performance."

East London-born Ray got the acting bug when his cab-driver dad took him to the cinema as a young boy. He watched Albert Finney in Saturday Night And Sunday Morning and thought 'I could be that geezer'.

Acting school followed, as well as stage and TV roles, including The Bill, Minder and his breakthrough in Scum, before he was cast as an alcoholic wife-beater in Gary Oldman's 1997 film Nil By Mouth, which won him a Bafta nomination.

Hollywood took note and Ray has since been cast in a string of big budget films including Sexy Beast, The Departed, Beowulf and last year's Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

In June, Ray will be back on the big screen alongside John Hurt, Ian McShane and Tom Wilkinson in 44 Inch Chest, from the writers of Sexy Beast, about a man who has a nervous breakdown after his wife cheats on him.

He's also due to play Jack Regan in a much-talked about film version of 70s TV show The Sweeney.

With so much work under his belt and ahead of him, it's clear Ray's family - and the pigs - are crucial in helping him relax and to distance himself from some of his nastier characters.

"I've been away quite a bit lately, so it's nice for me to go home and unwind," he says, preparing to go home and feed the pigs.

"I'm having pork chops tonight, but I better not tell the pigs."