Lights, Camera, Action: In going from fighting to films, Gary Stretch lived the post-boxing dream

By Thomas Gerbasi

IT MAY not be accurate to say that Gary Stretch has unlocked the secrets of the universe, but he certainly figured out how to escape the boxing world relatively unscathed then get a rewarding second act as an actor, director, producer and screenwriter.

That’s a magic trick of epic proportions for a 58-year-old ex-boxer, but Stretch doesn’t necessarily see it as such. In fact, he has some regrets about leaving the sport when he did.

“I think I got out a little too early, which I have regret because if you look at my career,

at my weight I always felt very confident with anybody,” Stretch said. “I worked with everybody in the gym and held my own with everybody at my weight. So I should have gone back down to junior-middle after I lost the Eubank fight and carved out my career so that I could have retired knowing one way or the other how far I could have gone.”

A 1991 bout with Chris Eubank was the defining one of his eight-year pro career, a WBO middleweight title fight where the British super-welterweight champion dared to be great on the world’s stage. The only catch was that Stretch, whose previous fight (and win) against Eduardo Domingo Contreras was in May of 1990, hadn’t been in the gym for the previous year and he had less than five weeks to prepare. He called trainer Freddie Roach, who bluntly told him: “Impossible.”

“I went to bed,” laughed Stretch. “Then I woke up at five in the morning and said, ‘I’m going to do it.’ I never knew losing, so I thought I’ll find a way to beat him. I got on a flight, knocked on Freddie’s door and said, ‘I’m f**king doing it, Fred. You want to help me?’”

Roach was in. Stretch was in. And they worked harder than they ever had before. Stretch showed up to the Olympia Grand Hall in Kensington on weight and ready to win a world title. And through five rounds, he looked to be on his way to upsetting the unbeaten champion.

“I had some of the easiest five rounds I’ve had,” said Stretch. “I don’t think he touched me for five rounds.”

Eubank did touch him in the sixth and, at 1-56 of the frame, after scoring two knockdowns, he halted the challenger.

“I just burned out too fast,” Stretch said. “I trained too hard, too quick. No excuses. Eubank won a lot of these fights late, and so we could have been the same, I don’t know. All I know is I wasn’t myself for the fight. I was not giving myself the best opportunity to win, which I so greatly regret.”

At the time of the stoppage, Stretch led on all scorecards, 48-47, 48-47 and 49-47.

“My life changed,” he said. “We tried for about a year to get Eubank to give me another shot, but they were not interested.”

He also expected a million-dollar payday but ended up with 20 thousand, adding to his disillusionment with the sport.

“I was so angry with the business, I just was like, f**k boxing. And so I retired for all the wrong reasons and I should have took a page out of Mayweather’s book. I should have just said, ‘F**k it, I’ll promote myself,’ or tried to go back to my weight. I should have locked myself away for a couple of years and see where I could have gone. I regret it, but I could have been a different person now. I could have got hurt. Who knows? We don’t know. So I just think things are meant to be. I had a decent career. I could never say I was the best because I never proved it. But in my heart, I say, you could have gone a little bit further than you went. But again, you never know. Boxing is a strange profession. One fight can change everything. So you just don’t know. But my one regret was that I really don’t know how far I could have gone.”

Stretch did fight once more, decisioning Steve Goodwin over six rounds in July of 1993, but that was it. He was 27 years old with an uncertain future, but a trip to Los Angeles after the Eubank fight did give him some clarity that he didn’t know he had until he was in the thick of it.

“I never wanted to be an actor, never wanted to be an actor,” Stretch admits. But I had a friend who was an actor and he asked me to visit him in LA. I just got beat and I thought, f**k it, I’ll go and see him.”

On the way from the airport, Stretch’s friend had an audition to go to, so the soon to be ex-boxer had to wait in the car. As he waited, he watched an older woman get into a dispute with two men over a parking spot. Stretch, his fighting instincts still strong, intervened.

“She got out of the car, and we had this incredible conversation,” he recalled. “I love old people and kids, and she was a fascinating woman from New York. Somehow, we started talking about food and that’s a hobby of mine since I’m a baby. I love cooking. She said, ‘So have you been out to eat?’ I said, ‘I’ve been here 10 minutes.’

“Look,” she told Stretch. “I owe you lunch for what you did it; let’s have lunch.”

The woman gave Stretch her number and the two went their separate ways. When his friend returned, he was shocked, not by the story, but who it involved. Stretch had just saved Janet Alhanti, one of the most respected acting coaches in the business, and his friend wanted in.

Stretch called Alhanti but didn’t get the response he was hoping for.

“Look Gary, the most valuable thing you have in life is time,” she said. “And as you can see, I’m not a spring chicken, so I spend mine wisely and I don’t take a lot of students anymore.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“Sure.”

“Well, you met me to meet my friend.”

Stretch laughs.

“I thought he was a good actor. He used to do a monologue, he used to cry, he used to think he was amazing. He could cry. He still did the same f**king monologue. He’s still crying, can’t act s**t.”

Stretch’s friend got the interview and the St. Helens native sat in on it. At the end, Alhanti asked both a question.

“There’s no right or wrong answer, but I often take my students based on the answer they’ve given me,” she said. “What’s the difference between love and lust? Tell me in one sentence.”

“He proceeded to go on for half an hour,” Stretch laughs. “He went on about all this garbage. I wanted to vomit it and she stopped him after about 20 minutes. She said, ‘Okay, thank you.’”

As the pair started to leave, Alhanti asked Stretch for an answer to the question. He wasn’t interested, insisting that he didn’t want to be an actor. She pressed him and he responded.

“With love you give, with lust you take.”

Alhanti called Stretch that night.

“I still owe you lunch, and I can’t take your friend, but you’re very interesting. You can’t learn to be interesting, Gary. You either are or you’re not.”

Gary Stretch soon had clarity about his future, and it had nothing to do with boxing. And after sitting on a class that featured Sidney Poitier reading poetry, he was hooked.

“I sat there for two hours,” he said. “I laughed, I cried, it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. I was just fascinated. And I never forgot it. We finished the class and I was physically moved and I had a strange feeling. We had lunch, and at the end of the lunch, she said, ‘Okay, I’m not going to see you again.’ I said, ‘I can, and I want to be an actor. She said, ‘Start Monday.’ And I studied with her for 20 years.”

Since then, Stretch has thrown himself into his craft with the same intensity and dedication that he put into his boxing career. And just like boxing, there are the wins in big-budget films like Alexander and Savages, as well as low-key indie films. Perhaps his most notable role was as Sonny in the 2004 cult classic Dead Man’s Shoes, which was nominated for eight British Independent Film Awards. One of those nominations went to Stretch for Best Supporting Actor.

Gary Stretch with Paddy Considine in Dead Man’s Shoes

“What’s funny is that I just finished Alexander – Oliver Stone, a 200-million-dollar film,” Stretch recalled. “I worked on it nine months. I’d been up and down as an actor until then and it was my big break. Oliver hired me, great role, great film, and it did okay. I’d just come off this movie, and in acting you’re as good as your last film, meaning the price they pay you and then you try and keep going up and up and up. So I got paid a lot of money to do ‘Alexander.’ It was a big movie. And so this movie, Dead Man’s Shoes, came up and they didn’t have any money.”

Stretch’s agent didn’t mince words, telling his client that he couldn’t do the film. Stretch loved the script, wanted to work with director Shane Meadows, and subsequently left that agent. He was in.

“It was funny, the role was written for a six-foot-nine skinhead, and I was completely opposite,” he laughs. “I was not what they expected, but I brought a different kind of colour to it and he (Meadows) liked it and he gave me the movie. So we went and we did it. It was a three-week shoot, run and gun. It was like a f**king war to make the movie. And a bunch of great guys, Shane’s amazing, Paddy (Considine)’s amazing. Toby Kebbell was great. It was his first film. And we basically just got a bunch of guys together and shot a movie.”

One that still resonates with viewers to this day, nearly 20 years after it’s release.

“I’ve only ever watched it once,” said Stretch.

Boxing News tells him he should watch it more. He laughs.

“Maybe I don’t like watching me, but once I’ve done it, I’m just done,” he explains. “As long as I feel I did my best. And I don’t often look at them, but I watched it. I love what everybody did. And yeah, it’s one of the movies where I keep seeing things like ‘greatest British film ever.’ I’m thinking, wow, somehow it struck a chord in British people.”

Stretch didn’t win that Best Supporting Actor award, but his career continued to move forward. Whether acting, directing, writing or producing, he’s a visible figure in a tough business, just like he was in the ring. Not bad for a plumber’s son.

“If I wouldn’t have been a fighter and I wouldn’t have been an actor, I’d have probably been a plumber, which I don’t say that as a joke,” said Stretch. “My dad was a plumber and I looked up to him. He was my hero. My mother left when I was a kid, and my dad raised three boys. He was an amazing guy, motorcycle racer. And he raised us like a man.”

Ronnie Stretch did well. And his son is doing the same in a second chapter most fighters don’t get.

“The fascination was not so much to be an actor because, to be honest, the little fame I had, I didn’t like,” Stretch said. “The only good thing about being famous is getting a table in a restaurant, That’s about as good as it gets for me. The rest is all bulls**t. And so I wasn’t searching for that. I was just looking to grow. And if I could make a few bucks, great. I just got into it for the love of it. It took a while, I did a few bad films, a few good ones, and it goes on. But I put in a lot of work. Most fighters retire, and that’s all they know. And they don’t really invest in something; they just try and get by. But I’ve always said when people ask, ‘What’s your favorite performance?’ I say, my next one.”

Gary Stretch