He has an almost unrivalled talent for delivering terminal justice with fists or firearms — on screen. So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Jason Statham earned £32 million last year… as much as Leo DiCaprio.
But never assume Statham, who lives in a dazzling £7.5 million house in Chelsea with his equally dazzling fiancee Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, takes anything for granted.
I can disclose that the 56-year-old, who’s been admiringly described as ‘the last action star’, has started a new venture, as founder and sole director of Little Marsh Construction.
Its business is categorised as ‘construction of domestic buildings’. Statham’s representatives, based in Los Angeles where his career exploded into global stardom, do not comment on this intriguing development or on the kind of projects that Little Marsh will tackle.
But it’s difficult to imagine any other major British film star following suit.
Statham’s life has always been free from convention. Far from dreaming of a place at drama school, he spent from the age of 14 onwards on the streets of London, often outside Harrods.There he learned to emulate his father — known as ‘Nogger’ — selling jewellery of less than illustrious provenance.
The most adroit salesmen, like Nogger and his allies, Peckhead Pete and Colin the Dog, entranced passers-by with artful presentation.
‘We’d display it in boxes and we’d wrap it up in tissue paper. We’d place it in their palms: ‘Here you are, madam!’ ‘ Statham has recalled.
It was the authenticity of Statham’s street presence — and the physicality which saw him selected for England’s diving squad for the 1990 Commonwealth Games — that persuaded Guy Ritchie to cast him in his 1998 box-office hit, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
‘I got £5,000 for doing Lock, Stock. And then, for Guy’s next movie, Snatch, I got £15,000,’ Statham has reflected, adding that he ‘would have done them for free’.
Those days are far behind him — but what he describes as a ‘peasant mentality’ endures.
‘When you’re kicking around and you ain’t got no money,’ he has said, ‘that don’t feel too good.’
Difficult to imagine that Little Marsh’s customers will make the mistake of paying late.