Producer’s Perspective: Executive Producer Ralph Winter Shares His Perspective on Actor Preparation, Craft, & the Power of Leverage

“He brought a gravitas to the role,” Ralph Winter begins when asked about how Hugh Jackman came into the hit franchise X-Men. “Everyone forgets that he worked hard at his craft, an opportunity he had prepared for, for many years.” 

Flashback. It’s the early 2000s, Hugh Jackman, a relatively unknown actor, is asked to audition for what would become Marvel’s hit franchise X-Men. “Other actors were considered [for Wolverine] but Jackman blew everyone away with the physicality of his performance,” says Winter. When it came to the grisly, unkempt, feral Wolverine, Jackman reveals he studied animals and the X-Men comics to create those classic postures.

“Movement has always been very important to me,” Jackman said in a 2018 interview, “I will spend sometimes hours walking around a room, inhabiting a character. It really informs how you play.” 

Hugh Jackman isn’t the only actor Ralph Winter has worked with that harbors an intense dedication to their craft. Over the span of 30 years, Winter has produced a number of films including Star Trek III, IV, & V, Hackers, starring a young Angelina Jolie, and The Promise, a harrowing historical drama trailing the 1915 Armenian genocide. The film, The Promise stars Christian Bale, as a love-torn Associated Press reporter during World War II. A role-based on Theron J. Damon, a World War II War Correspondent. On Bale’s performance Winter notes, “making a performance believable, to me, is all about authenticity. The actors I know, soak themselves in the period, the culture, and the specific circumstances to understand their characters. Bale did his own research so he could understand the Armenian Genocide and the importance of the part he was going to play.” 

It’s no secret that Christian Bale is known for his radical transforms often citing humiliation, mental discipline, and his ability to recreate excitement while filming as the keys to his success.

Over the span of 30 years, Winter has produced a number of films including Star Trek III, IV, & V, Hackers, starring a young Angelina Jolie, and The Promise, a harrowing historical drama trailing the 1915 Armenian genocide. The film, The Promise stars Christian Bale, as a love-torn Associated Press reporter during World War II. A role-based on Theron J. Damon, a World War II War Correspondent. On Bale’s performance Winter notes, “making a performance believable, to me, is all about authenticity. The actors I know, soak themselves in the period, the culture, and the specific circumstances to understand their characters. Bale did his own research so he could understand the Armenian Genocide and the importance of the part he was going to play.”

His last bit of advice, learn the value of leverage . “I started out at Paramount Pictures in the late ’70s in Post Production,” Winter recalls. “I knew videotape. Paramount wanted to convert their film TV shows to the newer technology. Later I leveraged my post-experience into producing, and my computer science background from UC Berkeley into VFX experience and leverage that also into producing. I have been able to leverage my experience from one job to the next. ”A lesson he learned from his mentor Harve Bennett. “ He took a chance on me,” Winter states of the former Paramount producer and VP of Programming at ABC. “I was taught to become an expert in a specific field over a 3-5 year period. Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours of experience, I believe that works today.”