Nobody knows anything about you, I suggest. In the days before meeting him, his people bombard me with calls and emails reminding me that under no circumstance should I ask him about anything even remotely private. He doesn't have a mystique-destroying Twitter account. He rarely does press, and certainly not in the usual self-serving fashion. In an age when the public demands more and more access to the inner lives of its stars, Statham is refreshingly old-school. You can't fault these people for wanting to make money. Whereas if you go, 'All he does is get in the car, hit someone on the head, shoot someone in the fucking feet,' then, yep, they'll give you $20m. So if you've got a story about a depressed doctor whose estranged wife doesn't wanna be with him no more, and you put me in it, people aren't gonna put money on the table.
"You can't have a sushi restaurant and then put cheese on toast on the menu, because they'd go 'Why did you do that? We came here to eat sushi.' The dilemma is that you have to do something that people want to see. He'd like to make more dramatic films, he says, but is reluctant because he knows what sells. He's fond of a good food metaphor, and often compares his work to hamburgers. If there's a sense that Hummingbird has opened Statham's eyes up to new possibilities, it's backed up by the language he uses to describe some of his older films. There's not another one of those coming next month." It's fabulous to have something that fits me in so many ways. "Most of the scripts that land on my desk are stuff you read and go, 'Is someone really gonna make this?' It's been a revelation. "This is one of the most rewarding experiences that I've had," he enthuses. And it's undeniably clear that Statham is proud of the results. But given that it's also the directorial debut of Eastern Promises screenwriter Steven Knight, the film gives Statham a chance to flex his dramatic chops in a way that he's deliberately avoided since Guy Ritchie's disastrous Revolver in 2005.
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Despite its relatively small scale, and the fact that Statham is almost unrecognisable as a down-and-out (to start with, at least), it's absolutely a Jason Statham film, full of grit and action and absurd mid-fight one-liners ("You've got a knife, I've got a spoon" in particular looks set to become a classic). We're here to talk about his new film, Hummingbird, the story of a homeless alcoholic who uses a rare stroke of good luck to clean up the crime-ridden streets of London. Reading this on mobile? Click here to view
Jason Statham's primary off-screen mode, it would appear, is "chatty". At one point, he rolls out a dead-on impression of Steptoe's Harry H Corbett. He laughs, he reminisces, he flings himself about on the sofa. Far from being the taciturn meathead that his films generally make him out to be, he barely lets up for the 45 minutes I spend with him. Who's making money off that? Seven ninety fucking nine? Fuck! I should try and claim back the nine pence!" "Where did you get this? That's the worst fucking picture of me I've ever seen.
"What's that?!" he squeals as he yanks the calendar out of my hands. There's a good reason why Jason Statham doesn't laugh much in his films: his laugh is the single least Statham-ish noise that exists on the entire face of this planet. It's the sort of noise a goose might make if caught in the throes of autoerotic asphyxiation. It's a giddy, high-pitched, strangulated thing that comes out of nowhere and tears a vacuum in the atmosphere. This is apparently how Jason Statham laughs. He actually shrieks, so loudly that I recoil. As soon as he sees what I'm doing, Jason Statham shrieks. I start to worry about how my face will end up.īut then something weird happens. Or all three at once, during a car chase where everything's on fire. What you have seen, however, is Jason Statham punching people in the face. For more than a decade, a consistent theme has run through the man's work: You Don't Mess With Jason Statham. And I don't realise what a stupid present it is until it's halfway out of my bag. It's hideous: cheaply made and impossible to annotate, with each month containing a different but equally dreadful paparazzi close-up of his own giant head. It's an unofficial 2013 Jason Statham calendar.