Vinnie Jones was called many things in his football career: a thug, a bully, an enforcer, a breaker, the dirtiest player at the dirtiest club in the league.
No one ever called him a gentleman, especially not Paul Gascoigne, who was famously photographed having the worst encounter with the Wimbledon defender in 1988.
As he crowded Gazza for a free-kick, Jones reached down and, using a technique he later claimed to have learned in an under-12s squad, grabbed his crotch. The referee didn’t see it, but when Gascoigne doubled up, experienced sports snapper Monte Fresco did.
That was the year Jones won the FA Cup with the team called the Crazy Gang. None of the opponents he insulted, threatened and disgusted could ever have believed that four decades later this professional villain would be one of Britain’s most successful and respected actors.
But while director Guy Ritchie’s gangster hit The Gentlemen is topping the Netflix charts worldwide – from Austria and Australia to Britain and Ukraine – it’s Vinnie Jones whose performance is receiving the most praise.
Fellow hardman Ray Winstone delivers a larger-than-life performance as a drug lord in prison. Hugh Bonneville is downright hilarious as a perverted colleague and Theo James is a dashing criminal aristocrat. But the real glory belongs to Jones, who as gamekeeper and occasional assassin Geoff brings a touch of vulnerability and humility to his role.
Amidst the cartoon violence and among a gallery of villains, he is the real Gentleman.
No one ever called Vinnie Jones a gentleman during his footballing days, especially not Paul Gascoigne (right), who was caught in the worst of an encounter with the defender in 1988.
Vinnie Jones during the 1988 FA Cup final. Four decades later, this professional villain would be one of Britain’s most successful and respected actors, writes Christopher Stevens
Vinnie Jones with partner Emma Ford at the world premiere of The Gentlemen series two
There is even a sense of sexual attraction in his attentive affection for the lady of the house, Lady Sabrina, played by Joely Richardson.
Being the actress who shot to fame in the 1993 version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (opposite another mild-mannered hardman, Sean Bean), it won’t be the first time she’s had a gamekeeper turn on screen as the Dowager Duchess tumbles before Geoff.
The gulf between First Division football (as it was then) and A-list television may seem unbridgeable, but a closer examination of Jones’ career reveals how his personality on the pitch – and his frequent violence off it – made the transition possible.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, his penchant for fighting was so notorious that many people expected his football days to end in prison.
In 1995, after a riot in Dublin forced the cancellation of a match between Ireland and England, he attacked a Fleet Street reporter in a pub and sunk his teeth into his nose. “Vinnie Jones Bites Newsman” read the Daily Mail headline.
Jones said he was so ashamed of his behavior that he considered suicide. But three years later he was charged with assault and battery after an argument with a neighbor turned violent. Jones believed the man, a 27-year-old driving instructor named Timothy Gear, had damaged a stile on his farm.
“He told me if he caught me there,” Gear told the court, “he would shoot the horse and if I was in the way he would shoot me too.”
Jones hammered on the door of Gear’s mobile home, smashing a window and when his victim opened the door, he punched him in the face, pushed him backwards into his bedroom and sunk his teeth into his scalp. Such incidents earned Jones the nickname “The Human Rottweiler.”
He admitted that his seething anger was partly due to heavy drinking, but also blamed it on his parents’ breakup. Born in a bedroom in Watford in 1965, he grew up as a keen footballer until he went off the rails at the age of 14 after his mother and father split up. His father, Peter, a builder and gamekeeper, began bringing women home. ‘It made me so angry. Without my mother there were no boundaries, so I just rebelled.”
He left home at the age of 16 after an argument and found work as a groundskeeper at a public school in Hertfordshire. As he marked the lines on the field, he prayed to his late grandfather to help him pursue a career in football.
His prayers were answered when the manager of Wealdstone FC, whose players trained on the school field, invited him to play in a match. That led to a place in the squad, before Wealdstone sold him to Wimbledon for £10,000 at the age of 21.
“I was older than most, so I knew I had to work harder,” he said. “My life up to that point had been such a struggle that when I had the opportunity, I decided I wasn’t going to fail.
‘Playing football has given me some self-respect. Without it, I’m sure I would have been in and out of jail.”
He reveled in his reputation as a bov boy, using his name and his voiceover in a video celebrating football’s nastiest fouls… and telling young players how to get away with them. The FA fined him £20,000 for this.
His gift for banter and a well-crafted taunt earned him further celebrity. When Gary Lineker dismissed him as a ‘self-hyped personality’, Jones sneered that the England striker had ‘the charisma of a jellyfish’.
American ballerina Cynthia Harvey told a showbiz reporter that Vinnie was nothing like his public image: “He is one of the most loyal, sensitive and generous men I have ever met.”
“I don’t understand why she said that,” Jones replied. “I only slept with her once.”
All of which made him a logical candidate for a supporting role in Guy Ritchie’s low-budget breakthrough film, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. This 1998 heist film launched Jason Statham’s career and also featured Jason Flemyng, Nick Moran and Steven Mackintosh.
But it was Jones who became the emblematic face of the film, with the two shotguns of the title slung over his shoulders and behind his head – like a living skull.
Jones played debt collector Big Chris, a devoted father who, in the film’s most violent scene, kills a gang rival by repeatedly bashing his head against a car door.
He next starred in another Ritchie hit, Snatch, starring Brad Pitt. American audiences praised him in films such as the spectacular car chase Gone In 60 Seconds, and as Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand. Later this year he will star opposite Statham in Viva La Madness, also directed by Ritchie.
It was Jones who became the emblematic face of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (seen), with the two shotguns of the title slung over his shoulders – like a living skull-and-crossbones
Director Guy Ritchie gives Vinnie Jones a kiss at the premiere of Snatch in Hollywood, 2001
When he married his former high school sweetheart Tanya in 1994, he described falling in love with her as “like being punched by Mike Tyson.” Tanya died seven years ago at the age of 53
To the casual eye it may seem that he has simply exchanged football violence for Hollywood violence. But the real secret of his success lies in the contrast between his brutality and chivalry.
In November 2019, Jones made headlines when a restaurant at the Centurion Club golf club in St Albans began choking and collapsing. As other bystanders froze in panic, Jones – who remains an ambassador for the club to this day – rushed over to administer CPR before paramedics arrived.
Meanwhile, his personal life is notable for both romance and tragedy. When he married his former high school sweetheart Tanya in 1994, he described falling in love with her as “like being punched by Mike Tyson.”
She had a daughter, Kaley, from a previous marriage, who Jones adopted (he also has a son, Aaron, from a previous relationship). When Kaley was born, Tanya went into heart failure and later received a heart transplant.
After decades of fragile health, including cervical and skin cancer, she died seven years ago at the age of 53. Jones is now in a relationship with producer Emma Ford.
“He’s not as big, tough a character as everyone thinks,” Tanya once said. ‘He has a naivety that people on the outside are not aware of. He is so gentle, so loving, and when he loves you, you are the center of his world. He puts you on a pedestal.”
In other words, no matter how unlikely it always seemed, Vinnie Jones is the complete Gentleman.
