Ballerina star Ian McShane ‘furious’ his fight scene with Ana de Armas was cut

Ian McShane is “furious” his fight scene with Ana de Armas was cut from ‘Ballerina’.

The 82-year-old actor - who plays the New York Continental head Winston in the ‘John Wick’ series - had filmed an action sequence with Ana's assassin Eve Macarro for the upcoming spin-off, though was left fuming after the scene was left on the cutting room floor.

In a joint interview with Collider, McShane said: “We have a long scene together where she comes to visit me at the Continental and tries to fight …

“We don’t talk about that. I’m furious. They cut one of my fight scenes.”

While he is disappointed his action sequence won’t be in the final cut of ‘Ballerina’, the ‘Lovejoy’ star added there was still “a fight scene with dialogue” between Winston and Eve.

He continued: “My scenes are dialogue fight scenes. We have a scene where you [de Armas] try to get information from me, and that’s like getting blood out of a stone, as we say, trying to get Winston to give anything away.

“So, in a sense, it’s a fight scene with dialogue, which you only accept after you know that I’m on your side.”

Reflecting on Winston’s relationship with Eve, McShane teased he knew “secrets about her that she will try to find out later on”.

He explained: “Obviously, I kept tabs on her over the years since she’s been under the ballet tutelage of the character [played by] Anjelica Huston [The Director]. But Winston, you still don’t know who he is, which is kind of nice. He’s the more enigmatic character.

“At the end of the movie — I’m not giving anything away — you still don’t know more about the relationship. All I can say is that he admires her. I mean, a ballerina and an assassin? That’s a lethal combination.”

Meanwhile, Ana, 36, revealed “the grenade fight” Eve has with an onslaught of assailants was her favourite action sequence of ‘Ballerina’, which she teased “gets very intimate and nasty”.

She said: “For me, I do love the grenade fight. You see a little bit of that in the trailer, but that grenade fight is really long.

“The location is really cool, the way it happens and is set up is really cool, and it’s a combination of throwing a grenade, which is long distance, but it gets very intimate and nasty. It’s a lot of people in there, so I really like it.”

‘Ballerina’ - which also stars Norman Reedus, Lorenza Izzo, and the late Lance Reddick - follows Eve as she begins her training in the assassin tradition of the Ruska Roma.

While Ana will be becoming an action heroine of her own, the ‘Blade Runner 2049’ star insisted she would not just be a female version of Keanu Reeves' John Wick.

She explained: “I think there are some trademarks in the style of the fights in John Wick, and things that he does that are very particular to him.

“But because in this movie we’re seeing through Eve’s eyes the background of that training that John had, and how these assassins and ballerinas, how these people become these assassins, there are some little details that are the same, but Eve Macarro is Eve Macarro. She’s not John Wick!”