Friday's Guardian article on Vinnie
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,1778128,00.html
Vinnie Jones is smacking a punch bag. Thwack, thwack. They have brought it in to reduce his stress, he says. Thwack, thwack. Can't get by without it. Thwack, thwack. His face is frightening - granite carved, starey-eyed, irony free. He looks born to play the kind of baddie who grins through a mouthful of metal and kills for kicks.
Jones is in an east London warehouse-come-film-studio preparing for his close-up. It's eight years since he made his film debut in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. His performance was competent but unsurprising: the football hardman was typecast as a heavy who reshapes the heads of those who have wronged him. Critics suggested he had only one film in him.
"They say that about every film - that it will be my last one. My next one, in Australia, will be my 30th," he semi-snarls. And this summer he will be all over your local cinema screens. He's in X-Men III in another typical role - Juggernaut, a 6ft 10in, 900-lb metal-clad battering ram who can run through walls. But the part he's playing today is very different - as a sports reporter desperate to break into crime reporting in Brendan Foley's The Riddle. He plays the lead, is on screen virtually throughout, and is supported by Derek Jacobi and Vanessa Redgrave. He wanders over to the set for his close-up. He might not be Brando, but he's certainly competent and extraordinarily efficient. Within two takes and 15 minutes, the shot is done.
The scene complete, Jones and I retire for lunch at the local greasy caff, along with his manager, Peter Burrell, and acting coach Vinnie II. I comment on the size of his part. "You seen the script? You should see the ****in' dialogue I've got." He eyeballs me. So many of his sentences seem to end up as threats - perhaps unwittingly, perhaps he's just got too used to playing the part of Vinnie Jones.
I ask him if he can check that the tape recorder is still moving. He asks why I'm not doing shorthand. Because I won't be able to look at you when you talk, I say.
"Have you heard this bollocks?" He turns to Burrell and Vinnie II. "Have you heard this ****? Lazy bastard should be writing it down anyway. Then he says 'I wouldn't be able to see what you're doing.' I'm sitting here, look." He laughs his intimidating laugh.
OK, I say, there's that and the fact that I can't do shorthand. "Tell the truth then. ****in' learn it."
He tells me he doesn't like British newspapers, especially the redtops, "the rags". They always build people up to knock him down - or in his case knock him down then knock him down again. "The newspapers in LA would love it, but our boys, our reporters, keep digging the knife into me, y'know. They'll never drop it. Footballer-turned-actor and all this ****, yknowhatImean?"
What's wrong with that, I say. After all you are a footballer-turned-actor. "No, I don't mind it, but what galls me is the context. It's a dig, footballer-turned-actor as if they're dirty movies. But I'm working with the best. I've worked with Angelina, Nic Cage, John Travolta, Bobby Duvall, Halle Berry, and then - oh, hold on - the lead role in a movie with Derek Jacobi, Mel Smith, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Flemyng. I'm the lead, buddy."
How does that feel? "Well you know what? I used to love being the captain. When I was captain of the football team, I loved it, and I'm the captain of this. You ask the crew, I get on great with them, on a Wednesday or a Saturday I buy 'em all a lottery ticket, always buy 'em ice creams or you know, little gifts, the whole crew. I like being the captain, y'know."
Jones is a funny mix. One second he tells me that he doesn't bother reading newspapers, that he sticks with Country Life or Shooting Times. The next second he tells me they came close to destroying his life. "I've always felt that people put me down, and I'd fight back. I played football 15 years, and nobody gave me any credit, and they never will do." He reckons he's always been misunderstood - sure he was aggressive on the pitch, but he never wanted to be nasty or hated. "All I've ever wanted to be is the people's champion, yknowwhatImean? I'm just flying the flag wherever I go, doing a movie, I have the Union flag up above the trailer."
Vinnie Jones was a hod-carrier before becoming a footballer. As a boy he was signed up to Watford, spent his schooldays playing every spare moment and dreaming of being Glenn Hoddle - all poise and balance and balletic volleys. In his mid-teens the dream turned sour. His parents split up, he went to live with his dad, he left school a year early without taking exams, Watford released him, he left home and worked on building sites. By the time Wimbledon signed him, he was 21 years old, had spent a lifetime standing on the terraces and knew what fans wanted from their heroes - passion. Which was lucky because it turned out Jones was not equipped to be a Glenn Hoddle.
He was the ultimate football bruiser. So much so that he became a caricature of a bruiser. He grabbed Paul Gascoigne by the balls, captured in a photo that defined his career, bit chunks out of reporters' noses, fought with neighbours, threatened players with broken legs.
Was he as hard as he seemed or was it a carefully packaged image? He looks shocked at the suggestion, and a little crestfallen. "It was genuine. What you saw is what you got, yknow. I mean I've done two GBHs, one ABH, ****in' hell, it's not really a ****in' very good CV. I've grown up since I've turned 40."
Does he regret his misdemeanours? "Yeah, course you do. ****in' ell. Course." What does he regret most? "I dunno. Just not ****in' stepping back and havin' a look before I blew me top." Would he think now before exploding? "I wouldn't get myself in situations."
He might have appeared to revel in his loutishness, but it was never as simple as that. I had read that he considered suicide once, but wondered if it was apocryphal - it seems so unlikely. I ask if it's true. "Yeah. Everybody was after me. I was hounded by the press. I kept tripping up if you like, kept shooting myself in the foot. In the end I thought, do I have to keep putting everybody bloody through this? My family, my wife, my teammates, my manager?"
How serious was he? "Oh I planned it. Planned it. I didn't want me missus coming to find me. I sent her down the shops. I said I'm going up the woods, going to shoot pigeons up the woods."
His dog followed him down to the woods, and he found himself unable to shoot himself. "The dog brought me out of a trance, y'know. I thought I better come back. This ain't ****in right, not fair on her, yknow." He talks so lovingly about Tanya, who had a heart transplant in 1987 after falling ill giving birth to her daughter. Had he left a message for her? "No. I'm glad I never. I was going to." What happened when she found out? "She said don't you ever do that to me, whatever ****in' trouble, however bad it is, you can't just leave me like that."
He softens up so much when he talks about real things. He's gone from terrifying to terrifyingly vulnerable in the time it takes to eat a curry. He tells me about friends who have killed themselves. "I've had three mates do it." He stops, as if he can't quite believe it. "Three of my mates. I dropped one of my mates off, him and his wife, Christmas before last, got a phone call the next day - he went in, they had a drink, and he hung himself up. I was the last one to ****in' see him. You wouldn't believe it."
If you had killed yourself, I say, would people have realised how bad you had been feeling? "I think if you'd have weighed it up, yeah. You can only be held under so long, d'you know what I mean? You've only got so much breath. That's what happened with me."
Now he's in the business of rehabilitating himself. He hasn't drunk for 16 months, since his 40th birthday. "It's great - you ****in' stay out of trouble." He's trying to think before he acts or punches or bites. He says that's why he always sits with his back to the wall - so he can see what's going on, weigh up the situation. "It's what I've learned, trying not to get into them situations. Just try and defuse it, and walk away, yeah. I can sort of suss it."
We leave the cafe, and Jones insists on paying for my lunch. He says I better write something nice because he knows where I live, even though he doesn't.
Back on set, he's sitting in his Vinnie Jones director's chair talking about how much he has learned as an actor. Who has he learned most from? "Bobby Duvall probably. I learned a lot from Bobby. I used to chat with Bobby. We're close, me and Bobby Duvall. Always get a Christmas card every year." What did he teach him? "He just gave me advice, y'know. He says you learn the other actors' lines better than you learn your own and then you listen to what they're saying. Bobby said to me, you listen to him and he listens to you, and that's acting."
Is he surprised he's managed to make a career of it? He shakes his head. "Y'know I'm really a believer in if you work hard enough you can achieve your goals, you know. And that's what we do whenever we get a script like this. We work our cods off. And it pays off, y'know."
· X Men: The Last Stand is released on May 25
Loved the beginning shot of him.
